ARY STACKS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES

 
 MY LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1911 
 
 IS
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911, 
 BT F. BUUCKMANN, LTD., MUNCHEN 
 
 COPTBIGHT, 1911, 
 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 Published, June, 1911 
 
 All rightt reserved. 
 
 4
 
 wivm 
 
 I/. I 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE contents of these volumes have been written down directly 
 from my dictation, over a period of several years, by my friend 
 and wife, who wished me to tell her the story of my life. It 
 was the desire of both of us that these details of my life 
 should be accessible to our family and to our sincere and 
 trusted friends ; and we decided therefore, in order to provide 
 against a possible destruction of the one manuscript, to have 
 a small number of copies printed at our own expense. As the 
 value of this autobiography consists in its unadorned veracity, 
 which, under the circumstances, is its only justification, there- 
 DC accompanied by precise names and 
 be no question of their publication 
 death, should interest in them still 
 . , and on that point I intend leaving 
 /ill 
 
 do not refuse certain intimate friends 
 w, it is that, relying on their genuine 
 i are confident that they will not pass 
 who do not share *their feelings in 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER.
 
 ;: ::: 
 ' y : .:l :': : '' *''
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I. 1813-1842 
 
 PAGES 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS 1-53 
 
 MUSICAL STUDIES 53-89 
 
 TRAVELS IN GERMANY (FIRST MARRIAGE) 89-195 
 
 PARIS: 1839-42 195-264 
 
 PART II. 1842-1850 (DRESDEN) 
 
 'RIENZI' 265-285 
 
 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN' 285-321 
 
 LISZT, SPONTINI, MARSCHNER, ETC 321-363 
 
 TANNHAUSER ' 363-383 
 
 FRANCK, SCHUMANN, SEMPER, GUTZKOW, AUERBACH . . . 383-393 
 
 'LOHENGRIN' (LIBRETTO) 393-397 
 
 NINTH SYMPHONY 397-403 
 
 SPOHR, GLUCK, HILLER, DEVRIENT 403-412 
 
 OFFICIAL POSITION. STUDIES IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE . 412-417 
 
 'RIENZI' AT BERLIN 417-429 
 
 RELATIONS WITH THE MANAGEMENT, MOTHER'S DEATH, ETC. 429-439 
 
 GROWING SYMPATHY WITH POLITICAL EVENTS, BAKUNIN . . 439-472 
 
 THE MAY INSURRECTION 472-500 
 
 FLIGHT : WEIMAR, ZURICH, PARIS, BORDEAUX, GENEVA, ZURICH 500-543 
 
 vii 
 

 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FRONTISPIECE FOR VOLUME I 
 Richard Wagner in 1842, from the Portrait by E. Kietz. 
 
 FRONTISPIECE FOR VOLUME II 
 Richard Wagner about 1872 by Lenbach. 
 
 Original in the possession of Frau Cosima Wagner 
 These frontispieces are used by the courtesy of Mr. F. Bruckmann

 
 MY LIFE 
 
 PAKT I 
 1813-1842 
 
 I WAS horn at Leipzig on the 22nd of May 1813, in a room on 
 the second floor of the ' Eed and White Lion,' and two days 
 later was baptized at St. Thomas's Church, and christened 
 Wilhelm Richard. 
 
 My father, Friejirich^^WagnerLwas at the time of my birth 
 a clerk in the police service at Leipzig, and hoped to get 
 the post of Chief Constable in that town, but he died in the 
 October of that same year. His death was partly due to the 
 great exertions imposed upon him by the stress of police work 
 during the war troubles and the battle of Leipzig, and partly 
 to the fact that he fell a victim to the nervous fever which 
 was raging at that time. As regards his father's position in 
 life, I learnt later that he had held a small civil appointment 
 as toll collector at the Ranstadt Gate, but had distinguished 
 himself from those in the same station by giving his two sons 
 a superior education, my father, Friedrich, studying law, and 
 the younger son, Adolph, theology. 
 
 My uncle subsequently exercised no small influence on ,my 
 development; we shall meet him again at a critical turning- 
 point in the story of my youth. 
 
 My father, whom I had lost so early, was, as I discovered 
 afterwards, a great lover of poetry and literature in general, 
 and possessed in particular an almost passionate affection for 
 the drama, which was at that time much in vogue among the 
 educated classes. My mother told me, among other things, 
 that he took her to Lauchstadt for the first performance of the 
 Braut von Messina, and that on the promenade he pointed out 
 Schiller and Goethe to her, and reproved her warmly for never 
 having heard of these great men. He is said to have been not
 
 2 MY LIFE 
 
 altogether free from a gallant interest in actresses. My mother 
 used to complain jokingly that she often had to keep lunch 
 waiting for him while he was paying court to a certain famous 
 \ actress of the day. 1 When she scolded him, he vowed that 
 he had been delayed by papers that had to be attended to, 
 and as a proof of his assertion pointed to his fingers, which were 
 supposed to be stained with ink, but on closer inspection were 
 found to be quite clean. His great^QDdneas.-ioj^tbe .theatre 
 was further shown by his choice of the actor, Ludwig Geyer, 
 as one of his intimate friends. Although his choice of this 
 friend was no doubt mainly due to his love for the theatre, he 
 at the same time introduced into his family the noblest of 
 benefactors; for this modest artisit, prompted by a warm 
 interest in the lot of his friend's large family, so unexpectedly 
 left destitute, devoted the remainder of his life to making 
 strenuous efforts to maintain and educate the orphans. Even 
 J when the police official was spending his evenings at the theatre, 
 the worthy actor generally filled his place in the family circle, 
 and it seems had frequently to appease my mother, who, 
 rightly or wrongly, complained of the frivolity of her husband. 
 
 How deeply the homeless artist, hard pressed by life and 
 tossed to and fro, longed to feel himself at home in a sympa- 
 thetic family circle, was proved by the fact that a year after 
 his friend's death he married his widow, and from that time 
 forward became a most loving father to the seven children that 
 had been left behind. 
 
 In this onerous undertaking he was favoured by an unex- 
 pected improvement in his position, for he obtained a remuner- 
 ative, respectable, and permanent engagement, as a character 
 actor, at the newly established Court Theatre in Dresden. 
 His talent for painting, which had already helped him to earn 
 a livelihood when forced by extreme poverty to break off his 
 university studies, again stood him in good stead in his position 
 at Dresden. True, he complained even more than his critics 
 that he had been kept from a regular and systematic study of 
 this art, yet his extraordinary aptitude, for portrait painting 
 in particular, secured him such important commissions that 
 he unfortunately exhausted his strength prematurely by his 
 1 Madame Hartwig.
 
 MOVE TO DRESDEN. RICHARD 'GEYER' 3 
 
 twofold exertions as painter and actor. Once, when he was 
 invited to Munich to fulfil a temporary engagement at the Court 
 Theatre, he received, through the distinguished recommendation 
 of the Saxon Court, such pressing commissions from the Bava- 
 rian Court for portraits of the royal family that he thought it 
 wise to cancel his contract altogether. He also had a turn for 
 poetry. Besides fragments often in very dainty verse he 
 wrote several comedies, one of which, Der Bethlehemitische 
 Kindermord, in rhymed Alexandrines, was often performed; 
 it was published and received the warmest praise from Goethe. 
 
 This excellent man, under whose care our family moved to 
 Dresden when I was two years old, and by whom my mother 
 had another daughter, Cecilia, now also took my education in 
 hand with the greatest care and affection. He wished to 
 adopt me altogether, and accordingly, when I was sent to my? 
 first school, he gave me his own name, so that till the age of 
 fourteen I was known to my Dresden schoolfellows as Richard 
 Geyer; and it was not until some years after my stepfather's 
 death, and on my family's return to Leipzig, the home of my 
 own kith and kin, that I resumed the name of Wagner. 
 
 The earliest recollections of my childhood are associated with 
 my stepfather, and passed from him to the theatre. I well | 
 remember that he would have liked to see me develop a talent 
 for painting; and his studio, with the easel and the pictures I 
 upon it, did not fail to impress me. I remember in particular 
 that I tried, with a childish love of imitation, to copy a portrait 
 of King Frederick Augustus of Saxony; but when this simple 
 daubing had to give place to a serious.,study of drawing^! could 
 not stand it, possibly because I was<3Tscouraged by the 
 pedantic technique of my teacher, a cousin of mine, who was 
 rather a bore. At one time during.my early boyhood I became 
 so weak after some childish ailment that my mother told me 
 later she used almost to wish me dead, for it seemed as though 
 I should never get well. However, my subsequent good health \ 
 apparently astonished my parents. I afterwards learnt the 
 noble part played by my excellent stepfather on this occasion 
 also; he never gave way to despair, in spite of the cares and 
 troubles of so large a family, but remained patient through- 
 out, and never lost the hope of pulling me through safely.
 
 4 MY LIFE 
 
 My imagination at this time was deeply impressed by my 
 acquaintance with the theatre, with which I was brought into 
 contact, not only as a childish spectator from the mysterious 
 stagebox, with its access to the stage, and by visits to ^ the 
 wardrobe with its fantastic costumes, wigs and other disguises, 
 but also by taking a part in the performances myself. After 
 I had been filled with fear by seeing my father play the villain's 
 part in such tragedies as Die Waise und der Morder, Die leiden 
 Galeerensklaven, I occasionally took part in comedy. I re- 
 member that I appeared in Der Weinberg an der Elbe, a piece 
 specially written to welcome the King of Saxony on his return 
 from captivity, with music by the conductor, C. M. von Weber. 
 In this I figured in a tableau vivant as an angel, sewn up in 
 tights with wings on my back, in a graceful pose which I had 
 laboriously practised. I also remember on this occasion being 
 given a big iced cake, which I was assured the King had 
 intended for me personally. Lastly, I can recall taking a 
 child's part in which I had a few words to speak in Kotzebue's 
 Menschenhass und Reue, 1 which 'furnished me with an excuse 
 
 [ at school for not having learnt my lessons. I said I had too 
 much to do, as I had to learn by heart an important part in 
 Den Menschen ausser der Reihe. 2 
 
 On the other hand, to show how seriously my father regarded 
 my education, when I was six years old he took me to a clergy- 
 man in the country at Possendorf, near Dresden, where I was 
 
 - to be given a sound and healthy training with other boys 
 of my own class. In the evening, the vicar, whose name 
 was Wetzel, used to tell us the story of Robinson Crusoe, 
 and discuss it with us in a highly instructive manner. I 
 was, moreover, much impressed by a biography of Mozart 
 which was read aloud; and the newspaper accounts and 
 monthly reports of the events of the Greek War of Independ- 
 ence stirred my imagination deeply. My love for Greece, 
 which afterwards made me turn with enthusiasm to the myth- 
 ology and history of ancient Hellas, was thus the natural 
 outcome of the intense and painful interest I took in the 
 
 1 ' Misanthropy and Remorse.' 
 
 1 ' The Man out of the Rank or Row.' In the German this is a simple 
 phonetic corruption of Kotzebue's title, which might easily occur to a child 
 who had only heard, and not read, that title. EDITOB.
 
 GEYER'S DEATH. JOURNEY TO EISLEBEN 5 
 
 events of this period. In after years the story of the struggle 
 of the Greeks against the Persians always revived my impres- 
 sions of this modern revolt of Greece against the Turks. 
 
 One day, when I had been in this country home scarcely a 
 year, a messenger came from town to ask the vicar to take me 
 to my parents' house in Dresden, as my father was dying. 
 
 We did the three hours' journey on foot; and as I was very 
 exhausted when I arrived, I scarcely understood why my 
 mother was crying. The next day I was taken to my father's 
 bedside; the extreme weakness with which he spoke to me, 
 combined with all the precautions taken in the last desperate 
 treatment of his complaint acute hydrothorax made the 
 whole scene appear like a dream to me, and I think I was too 
 frightened and surprised to cry. 
 
 In the next room my mother asked me to show her what I 
 could play on the piano, wisely hoping to divert my father's 
 thoughts by the sound. I played Ueb' immer Treu und 
 Redlichkeitj and my father said to her, ' Is it possible he 
 has musical talent ? ' 
 
 In the early hours of the next morning my mother came 
 into the great night nursery, and, standing by the bedside of 
 each of us in turn, told us, with sobs, that our father was dead, 
 and gave us each a message with his blessing. To me she 
 said, ' He hoped to make, something of you.' 
 
 In the afternoon my schoolmaster, Wetzel, came to take 
 me back to the country. We walked the whole way to Possen- 
 dorf, arriving at nightfall. On the way I asked him many 
 questions about the stars, of which he gave me my first intelli- 
 gent idea. 
 
 A week later my stepfather's brother arrived from Eisleben 
 for the funeral. He promised, as far as he was able, to support 
 the family, which was now once more destitute, and undertook 
 to provide for my future education. 
 
 I took leave of my companions and of the kind-hearted 
 clergyman, and it was for his funeral that I paid my next visit 
 to Possendorf a few years later. I did not go to the place 
 again till long afterwards, when I visited it on an excursion 
 such as I often made, far into the country, at the time when I 
 was conducting the orchestra in Dresden. I was much grieved
 
 6 MY LIFE 
 
 not to find the old parsonage still there, but in its place a more 
 pretentious modern structure, which so turned me against the 
 locality, that thenceforward my excursions were always made 
 in another direction. 
 
 This time my uncle brought me back to Dresden in the 
 carriage. I found my mother and sister in the deepest mourn- 
 ing, and remember being received for the first time with a 
 n-U'lrnii' not usual in our family; and I noticed that the same 
 trmlrrm-< marked our leavetaking, when, a few days later, 
 my uncle took me with him to Eisleben. 
 
 This uncle, who was a younger brother of my stepfather, 
 had settled there as a goldsmith, and Julius, one of my elder 
 brothers, had already been apprenticed to him. Our old 
 grandmother also lived with this bachelor son, and as it was 
 evident that she could not live long, she was not informed of 
 the death of her eldest son, which I, too, was bidden to keep 
 to myself. The servant carefully removed the crape from my 
 coat, telling me she would keep it until my grandmother died, 
 which was likely to be soon. 
 
 I was now often called upon to tell her about my father, and 
 it was no great difficulty for me to keep the secret of his death, 
 as I had scarcely realised it myself. She lived in a dark back 
 room looking out upon a narrow courtyard, and took a great 
 delight in watching the robins that fluttered freely about her, 
 and for which she always kept fresh green boughs by the 
 stove. When some of these robins were killed by the cat, I 
 managed to catch others for her in the neighbourhood, which 
 pleased her very much, and, in return, she kept me tidy and 
 clean. Her death, as had been expected, took place before 
 long, and the crape that had been put away was now openly 
 worn in Eisleben. 
 
 The back room, with its robins and green branches, now 
 knew me no more, but I soon made myself at home with a 
 Axap-boiler's family, to whom the house belonged, and became 
 popular with them on account of the stories I told them. 
 
 I was sent to a private school kept by a man called Weiss, 
 who left an impression <>f -rravity and dignity upon my mind. 
 
 Towards the end ..f tlic fifties I was greatly moved at reading 
 in a. musical paper the account of a concert at Eisleben, con-
 
 RETURN TO LEIPZIG 7 
 
 sist )arts of Tanrih'duser, at which my former master, 
 
 \vh >t forgotten his young pupil, had been present. 
 
 e old town with Luther's house, and the numberless 
 memorials it contained of his stay there, has often, in later 
 days, come back to me in dreams. I have always wished to 
 revisit it and verify the clearness of my recollections, but, 
 strange to say, it has never been my fate to do so. We lived 
 in the market-place, where I was often entertained by strange 
 sights, such, for instance, as performances by a troupe of 
 acrobats, in which a man walked a rope stretched from tower 
 to tower across the square, an achievement which long inspired 
 me with a passion for such feats of daring. Indeed, I got so 
 far as to walk a rope fairly easily myself with the help of a 
 balancing-pole. I had made the rope out of cords twisted 
 together and stretched across the courtyard, and even now I 
 still feel a desire to gratify my acrobatic instincts. The thing 
 that attracted me most, however, was the brass band of a 
 Hussar regiment quartered at Eisleben. It often played a 
 certain piece which had just come out, and which was making 
 a great sensation, I mean the ' Huntsmen's Chorus ' out of the 
 Freischuiz, that had been recently performed at the Opera in 
 Berlin. My uncle and brother asked me eagerly about its com- 
 poser, Weber, whom I must have seen at my parents' house 
 in Dresden, when he was conductor of the orchestra there. 
 
 About the same time the Jungfernkranz was zealously 
 played and sung by some friends who lived near us. These 
 two pieces cured me of my weakness for the ' Ypsilanti ' 
 Waltz, which till that time I had regarded as the most won- 
 derful of compositions. 
 
 I have recollections of frequent tussles with the town boys, 
 who were constantly mocking at me for my ' square ' cap ; and 
 I remember, too, that I was very fond of rambles of adventure 
 among the rocky banks of the Unstrut. 
 
 My uncle's marriage late in life, and the starting of his new 
 home, brought about a marked alteration in his relations to 
 my family. 
 
 After a lapse of a year I was taken by him to Leipzig, 
 and handed over for some days to the Wagners, my own 
 father's relatives, consisting of my uncle Adolph and his sister
 
 8 MY LIFE 
 
 Frioderike Wagner. This extraordinarily interesting man, 
 whose influence afterwards became ever more stimulating to 
 me. now for the first time brought himself and his singular 
 c ii \ ironment into my life. 
 
 He and my aunt were very close friends of Jeannette Thome, 
 a queer old maid who shared with them a large house in the 
 market-place, in which, if I am not mistaken, the Electoral 
 family of Saxony had, ever since the days of Augustus the 
 Strong, hired and furnished the two principal storeys for their 
 own use whenever they were in Leipzig. 
 
 So far as I know, Jeannette Thome really owned the second 
 storey, of which she inhabited only a modest apartment look- 
 ing out on the courtyard. As, however, the King merely 
 occupied the hired rooms for a few days in the year, Jeannette 
 and her circle generally made use of his splendid apartments, 
 and one of these staterooms was made into a bedroom for me. 
 
 The decorations and fittings of these rooms also dated from 
 the days of Augustus the Strong. They were luxurious with 
 heavy silk and rich rococo furniture, all of which were much 
 soiled with age. As a matter of fact, I was delighted by these 
 large strange rooms, looking out upon the bustling Leipzig 
 market-place, where I loved above all to watch the students 
 in the crowd making their way along in their old-fashioned 
 ' Club ' attire, and filling up the whole width of the street. 
 
 There was only one portion of the decorations of the rooms 
 that I thoroughly disliked, and this consisted of the various 
 portraits, but particularly those of high-born dames in hooped 
 petticoats, with youthful faces and powdered hair. These 
 appeared to me exactly like ghosts, who, when I was alone in 
 the room, seemed to come back to life, and filled me with the 
 most abject fear. To sleep alone in this distant chamber, 
 in that old-fashioned bed of state, beneath those unearthly 
 pictures, was a constant terror to me. It is true I tried to hide 
 my fear from my aunt when she lighted me to bed in the 
 evening with her candle, but never a night passed in which I 
 was not a prey to the most horrible_^i_Qatly_visions, my dread 
 of which would leave me in a bath of perspiration. 
 
 The personality of the three chief occupants of this storey 
 was admirably adapted to materialise the ghostly impressions
 
 JEAOTETTE THOMfi. AUNT FRIEDERIKE 9 
 
 of the house into a reality that resembled some strange 
 fairy-tale. 
 
 Jeannette Thome was very small and stout; she wore a fair 
 Titus wig, and seemed to hug to herself the consciousness of 
 vanished beauty. My aunt, her faithful friend and guardian, 
 who was also an old maid, was remarkable for the height and 
 extreme leanness of her person. The oddity of her otherwise 
 very pleasant face was increased by an exceedingly pointed chin. 
 My uncle Adolph had chosen as his permanent study a dark 
 room in the courtyard. There it was that I saw him for the 
 first time, surrounded by a great wilderness of books, and attired 
 in an unpretentious indoor costume, the most striking feature of 
 which was a tall, pointed felt cap, such as I had seen worn by the 
 clown who belonged to the troupe of rope-dancers at Eisleben. 
 A great love of independence had driven him to this strange 
 retreat. He had been originally destined for the Church', but 
 he soon gave that up, in order to devote himself _ entirely to 
 philological studies. But as he had the^ greatest dislike of 
 acting as a professor and teacher in a regular post, he soon tried 
 to make a meagre livelihood by literary work. He haol certain 
 social gifts, and especially a fine tenor voice, ^ and appears in 
 his youth to have been welcome as a man of letters among a 
 fairly wide circle of friends at Leipzig. 
 
 On a trip to Jena, during which he and a companion seem 
 to have found their way into various musical and oratorical 
 associations, he paid a visit to Schiller. With this object in 
 view, he had come armed with a request from the management 
 of the Leipzig Theatre, who wanted to secure the rights of 
 Wallenstein, which was just finished. He told me later of the 
 magic impression made upon him by Schiller, with his tall 
 slight figure and irresistibly attractive blue eyes. His only 
 complaint was that, owing to a well-meant trick played on 
 him by his friend, he had been placed in a most trying position ; 
 for the latter had managed to send Schiller a small volume of 
 Vagner's poems in advance. 
 
 )ung poet was much embarrassed to hear Schiller 
 im in flattering terms on the subject of his poetry, 
 onvinced that the great man was merely encouraging 
 )f kindness. Afterwards he devoted himself entirely
 
 10 MY LIFE 
 
 to philological studies one of his best-known publications 
 in that department being his Parmsso Italiano, which he 
 dedicated to Goethe in an Italian poem. True, I have heard 
 experts say that the latter was written in unusually pompous 
 Italian ; but Goethe sent him a letter full of praise, as well as 
 a .xihvr cup from his own household plate. The impression 
 that I, as a boy of eight, conceived of Adolph Wagner, amid the 
 surroundings of his own home, was that he was a peculiarly 
 puzzling character. 
 
 I soon had to leave the influence of this environment and 
 was brought back to my people at Dresden. Meanwhile my 
 family, under the guidance of my bereaved mother, had been 
 obliged to settle down as well as they could under the circum- 
 stances. My eldest brother Albert, who originally intended 
 to study medicine, had, upon the advice of Weber, who had 
 much admired his beautiful tenor voice, started his theatrical 
 career in Breslau. My second sister Louisa soon followed his 
 example, and became an actress. My eldest sister Rosalie 
 had obtained an excellent engagement at the Dresden Court 
 Theatre, and the younger members of the family all looked 
 up to her; for she was now the main support of our poor 
 sorrowing mother. My family still occupied the same com- 
 fortable home which my father had made for them. Some of 
 the spare rooms were occasionally let to strangers, and Spohr 
 was among those who at one time lodged with us. Thanks to her 
 great energy, and to help received from various sources (among 
 which the continued generosity of the Court, out of respect 
 to the memory of my late stepfather, must not be forgotten), 
 my mother managed so well in making both ends meet, that 
 even my education did not suffer. 
 
 After it had been decided that my sister Clara, owing to her 
 exceedingly beautiful voice, should also go on the stage, my 
 mother took the greatest care to prevent me from developing 
 any taste whatever for the theatre. She never ceased to 
 reproach herself for having consented to the theatrical career 
 of my eldest brother, and as my second brother showed no 
 greater talents than those which were useful to him as a gold- 
 smith, it was now her chief desire to see some progress made 
 towards the fulfilment of the hopes and wishes of my step-
 
 THE KKEUZ GRAMMAR SCHOOL 11 
 
 father, ' who hoped to make something of me.' On the com- 
 pletion of my eighth year I was sent to the Kreuz (jtrammar 
 School in Dresden, where it \vas hoped I would study! There 
 I was placed at the bottom of the lowest class, and started my 
 education under the most unassuming auspices. 
 
 My mother noted with much interest the slightest signs I 
 might show of a growing love and ability for my work. She 
 herself, though not highly educated, always created a lasting 
 impression on all who really learnt to know her, and displayed 
 a peculiar combination of practical domestic efficiency and 
 keen intellectual animation. She never gave one of her chil- 
 dren any definite information concerning her antecedents. She 
 came from Weissenfels, and admitted that her parents had been 
 bakers 1 there. Even in regard to her maiden name she always 
 spoke with some embarrassment, and intimated that it was 
 ' Perthes,' though, as we afterwards ascertained, it was in reality 
 t Bertz.' Strange to say, she had been placed in a high-class 
 boarding-school in Leipzig, where she had enjoyed the advan- 
 tage of the care and interest of one of ' her father's influential 
 friends,' to whom she afterwards referred as being a Weimar 
 prince who had been very kind to her family in Weissenfels. 
 Her education in that establishment seems to have been 
 interrupted on account of the sudden death of this ' friend.' 
 She became acquainted with my father at a very early age, 
 and married him in the first bloom of her youth, he also being 
 very young, though he already held an appointment. Her 
 chief characteristics seem to have been a keen sense of humour 
 and an amiable' temper, so we need not suppose that it was 
 merely a sense of duty towards the family of a departed com- 
 rade that afterwards induced the admirable Ludwig Geyer to 
 enter into matrimony with her when she was no longer youth- 
 ful, but rather that he was impelled to that step by a sincere 
 and warm regard for the widow of his friend. A portrait of 
 her, painted by Geyer during the lifetime of my father, gives 
 one a very favourable impression of what she must have been. 
 Even from the time when my recollection of her is quite dis- 
 tinct, she always had to wear a cap owing to some slight 
 affection of the head, so that I have no recollection of her as 
 
 1 According to more recent information mill-owners.
 
 12 MY LIFE 
 
 a young and pretty mother. Her trying position at the head 
 of a numerous family (of which I was the seventh surviving 
 member), the difficulty of obtaining the wherewithal to rear 
 them, and of keeping up appearances on very limited resources, 
 did not conduce to evolve that tender sweetness and solicitude 
 which are usually associated with motherhood. I hardly ever 
 recollect her having fondled me. Indeed, demonstrations of 
 affection were not common in our family, although a certain 
 impetuous, almost passionate and boisterous manner always 
 characterised our dealings. This being so, it naturally seemed 
 to me quite a great event when one night I, fretful with sleepi- 
 ness, looked up at her with tearful eyes as she was taking me 
 to bed, and saw her gaze back at me proudly and fondly, and 
 speak of me to a visitor then present with a certain amount of 
 tenderness. 
 
 What struck me more particularly about her was the strange 
 enthusiasm and almost pathetic manner with which she spoke 
 of the great and of the beautiful in Art. Under this heading, 
 however, she would never have let me suppose that she included 
 dramatic art, but only Poetry, Music, and Painting. Conse- 
 quently, she often even threatened me with her curse should 
 I ever express a desire to go on the stage. Moreover, she was 
 very religiously inclined. With intense fervour she would 
 often give us long sermons about God and the divine quality 
 in man, during which, now and again, suddenly lowering her 
 voice in a rather funny way, she would interrupt herself in order 
 to rebuke one of us. After the death of our stepfather she used 
 to assemble us all round her bed every morning, when one of 
 us would read out a hymn or a part of the Church service from 
 the prayer-book before she took her coffee. Sometimes the 
 choice of the part to be read was hardly appropriate, as, for 
 instance, when my sister Clara on one occasion thoughtlessly 
 read the ' Prayer to be said in time of War,' and delivered it 
 with so much expression that my mother interrupted her, 
 saying : ' Oh, stop ! Good gracious me ! Things are not quite 
 so bad as that. There 's no war on at present ! ' 
 
 In spite of our limited means we had lively and as they 
 appeared to my boyish imagination even brilliant evening 
 parties sometimes. After the death of my stepfather, who,
 
 A PUPPET SHOW AND A CHIVALRIC DRAMA 13 
 
 thanks to his success as a portrait painter, in the later years of 
 his life had raised his income to what for those days was a 
 really decent total, many agreeable acquaintances of very 
 good social position whom he had made during this nourishing 
 period still remained on friendly terms with us, and would 
 occasionally join us at our evening gatherings. Amongst those 
 who came were the members of the Court Theatre, who at that 
 time gave very charming and highly entertaining parties of 
 their own, which, on my return to Dresden later on, I found 
 had been altogether given up. 
 
 Very delightful, too, were the picnics arranged between us 
 and our friends at some of the beautiful spots around Dresden, 
 for these excursions were always brightened by a certain 
 artistic spirit and general good cheer. I remember one such 
 outing we arranged to Loschwitz, where we made a kind of 
 gypsy camp, in which Carl Maria von Weber played his part 
 in the character of cook. At home we also had some music. 
 My sister Rosalie played the piano, and Clara was beginning 
 to sing. Of the various theatrical performances we organised 
 in those early days, often after elaborate preparation, with the 
 view of amusing ourselves on the birthdays of our elders, I can 
 hardly remember one, save a parody on the romantic play of 
 Sapplio, by Grillparzer, in which I took part as one of the 
 singers in the crowd that preceded Phaon's triumphal car. I 
 endeavoured to revive these memories by means of a fine 
 puppet show, which I found among the effects of my late step- 
 father, and for which he himself had painted some beautiful 
 scenery. It was my intention to surprise my people by means 
 of a brilliant performance on this little stage. After I had 
 very clumsily made several puppets, and had provided them 
 with a scanty wardrobe made from cuttings of material pur- 
 loined from my sisters, I started to compose a chivalric drama, 
 in which I proposed to rehearse my puppets. When I had 
 drafted the first scene, my sisters happened to discover the MS. 
 and literally laughed it to scorn, and, to my great annoyance, 
 for a long time afterwards they chaffed me by repeating one 
 particular sentence which I had put into the mouth of the 
 heroine, and which was Ich Iwre schon den Bitter trdbsen (' I 
 hear his knightly footsteps falling ').
 
 14 MY LIFE 
 
 I now returned with renewed ardour to the theatre, with 
 which, even at this time, my family was in close touch. Den 
 Freischiitz in particular appealed very strongly to my imagina- 
 tion, mainly on account of its ghostly theme. The emotions 
 of terror and the dread of ghosts formed quite an important 
 factor in the development of my mind. From my earliest 
 childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things exercised 
 an enormous influence over me. If I were left alone in a room 
 for long, I rememher that, when gazing at lifeless objects such 
 as pieces of furniture, and concentrating my attention upon 
 them, I would suddenly shriek out with fright, because they 
 seemed to me alive. Even during the latest years of my 
 boyhood, not a night passed without my waking out of some 
 ghostly dream and uttering the most frightful shrieks, which 
 subsided only at the sound of some human voice. The most 
 severe rebuke or even chastisement seemed to me at those 
 times no more than a blessed release. None of my brothers or 
 sisters would sleep anywhere near me. They put me to sleep 
 as far as possible away from the others, without thinking that 
 my cries for help would only be louder and longer; but in the 
 end they got used even to this nightly disturbance. 
 
 In connection with this childish terror, what attracted me 
 so strongly to the theatre by which I mean also the stage, 
 the rooms behind the scenes, and the dressing-rooms was 
 not so much the desire for entertainment and amusement such 
 as that which impels the present-day theatre-goers, but the 
 fascinating pleasure of finding myself in an entirely different 
 atmosphere, in a world that was purely fantastic and often 
 gruesomely attractive. Thus to me a scene, even a wing, 
 representing a bush, or some costume or characteristic part of 
 it, seemed to come from another world, to be in some way 
 as attractive as an apparition, and I felt that contact with 
 jit might serve as a lever to lift me from the dull reality of 
 daily routine to that delightful region of spirits. Everything 
 connortnl with a theatrical performance had for mo the charm 
 of mystery, it both bewitched and fascinated me, and while 
 I was trying, with the help of a few playmates, to imitate the 
 performance of Der Freischiitz , and to devote myself energetic- 
 ally to reproducing the needful costumes and masks in my
 
 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS AND THE CLASSICS 15 
 
 grotesque style of painting, the more elegant contents of my 
 sisters' wardrobes, in the beautifying of which I had often 
 seen the family occupied, exercised a subtle charm over my 
 imagination; nay, my heart would beat madly at the very 
 touch of one of their dresses. 
 
 In spite of the fact that, as I already mentioned, our family 
 was not given to outward manifestations of affection, yet the 
 fact that I was brought up entirely among feminine surround- 
 ings must necessarily have influenced the development of the 
 sensitive side of my nature. //Perhaps it was precisely because 
 my immediate circle was generally rough and impetuous, that 
 the opposite characteristics of womanhood, especially such as 
 were connected with the imaginary world of the theatre, 
 created a feeling of such tender longing in me. 
 
 Luckily these fantastic humours, merging from the gruesome 
 into the mawkish, were counteracted and balanced by more 
 serious influences undergone at school at the hands of my 
 teachers and schoolfellows. Even there, it was chiefly the 
 weird that aroused my keenest interest. I can hardly judge 
 whether I had what would be called a good head for study. I 
 think that, in general, what I really liked I was soon able to 
 grasp without much effort, whereas I hardly exerted myself 
 at all in the study of subjects that were uncongenial/ This 
 characteristic was most marked in regard to arithmetic and, 
 later on, mathematics. In neither of these subjects did I 
 ever succeed in bringing my mind seriously to bear upon the 
 tasks that were set me. \In the matter of the Classics, too, I 
 paid only just as much attention as was absolutely necessary 
 to enable me to get a grasp of them; for I was stimulated by; 
 the desire to reproduce them to myself dramatically^ In this 
 way Greek particularly attracted me, because the stories from 
 Greek mythology so seized upon my fancy that I tried to 
 imagine their heroes as sneaking to me in their native tongue, 
 so as to satisfy my longing for complete familiarity with them. ) 
 In these circumstances it will be readily understood that the 
 grammar of the language seemed to me merely a tiresome 
 obstacle, and bv no means in itself an interesting branch of 
 knowledge. 
 
 The fact that my study of languages was never very thorough, 

 
 16 MY LIFE 
 
 perhaps best explains the fact that I was afterwards so ready 
 to cease troubling about them altogether. Not until much 
 later did this study really begin to interest me again, and that 
 was only when I learnt to understand its physiological and 
 philosophical side, as it was revealed to our modern Gennanists 
 by the pioneer work of Jakob Grimm. Then, when it was 
 too late to apply myself thoroughly to a study which at last 
 I had learned to appreciate, I regretted that this newer con- 
 ception of the study of languages had not yet found acceptance 
 in our colleges when I was younger. 
 
 Nevertheless, by my successes in philological work I managed 
 to attract the attention of a young teacher at the Kreuz 
 Grammar School, a Master of Arts named Sillig, who proved 
 very helpful to me. He often permitted me to visit him and 
 show him my work, consisting of metric translations and a few 
 original poems, and he always seemed very pleased with my 
 efforts in recitation. What he thought of me may best be 
 judged perhaps from the fact that he made me, as a boy of 
 about twelve, recite not only ' Hector's Farewell ' from the 
 Iliad, but even Hamlet's celebrated monologue. On one 
 occasion, when I was in the fourth form of the school, one of 
 my schoolfellows, a boy named Starke, suddenly fell dead, and 
 the tragic event aroused so much* sympathy, that not only did 
 the whole school attend the funeral, but the headmaster also 
 ordered that a poem should be written in commemoration of 
 the ceremony, and that this poem should be published. Of the 
 various poems submitted, among which there was one by my- 
 self, prepared very hurriedly, none seemed to the master 
 worthy of the honour which he had promised, and he there- 
 fore announced his intention of substituting one of his own 
 speeches in the place of our rejected attempts. Much dis- 
 tressed by this decision, I quickly sought out Professor Sillig, 
 with the view of urging him to intervene on behalf of my poem. 
 We thereupon went through it together. Its well-constructed 
 and well-rhymed verses, written in stanzas of eight lines, 
 determined him to revise the whole of it carefully. Much 
 of its imagery was bombastic, and far beyond the conception 
 of a boy of my age. I recollect that in one part I had drawn 
 usively from the monologue in Addison's Cato, spoken
 
 ATTEMPTED TRAGEDIES AND EPICS 17 
 
 by Catp just before his suicide. I had met with this passage 
 in an English grammar, and it had made a deep impression > 
 upon me. The words : ' The stars shall fade away, the sun , 
 himself grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,' which, 
 at all events, were a direct plagiarism, made Sillig laugh a 
 thing at which I was a little offended. However, I felt very 
 grateful to him, for, thanks to the care and rapidity with which 
 he cleared my poem of these extravagances, it was eventually 
 accepted by the headmaster^ printed, and widely circulated. 
 
 The effect of this success was extraordinary, both on my 
 schoolfellows and on my own family. My mother devoutly 
 folded her hands in thankfulness, and in my own mind my 
 vocation seemed quite a settled thing. It was clear, beyond 
 the possibility of a doubt, that I was destined to be a poet. 
 Professor Sillig wished me to compose a grand epic, and sug- 
 gested as a subject ' The Battle of Parnassus,' as described by 
 Pausanias. His reasons for this choice were based upon the 
 legend related by Pausanias, viz., that in the second century 
 B.C. the Muses from Parnassus aided the combined Greek 
 armies against the destructive invasion of the Gauls by provok- 
 ing a panic among the latter. I actually began my heroic 
 poem in hexameter verse, but could not get through the first 
 canto. 
 
 Not being far enough advanced in the language to under- 
 stand the Greek tragedies thoroughly in the original, my own 
 attempts to construct a tragedy in the Greek form were greatly 
 influenced by the fact that quite by accident I came across 
 August Apel's clever imitation of this style in his striking 
 poems ' Polyi'dos ' and ' Aitolier.' For my theme I selected 
 the death of Ulysses, from a fable of Hyginus, according to 
 which the aged hero is killed by his son, the offspring of hia 
 union with Calypso. But I did not get very far with this work 
 either, before I gave it up. 
 
 My mind became so bent upon this sort of thing, that duller 
 studies naturally ceased to interest me. The mythology, 
 legends, and, at last, the history of Greece alone attracted me. 
 
 I was fond of life, merry with my companions, and always 
 ready for a joke or an adventure. Moreover, I was constantly I/ 
 forming friendships, almost passionate in their ardour, with '/
 
 18 MY LIFE 
 
 one or the other of my comrades, and in choosing my 
 
 , associates I was mainly influenced by the extent to which 
 
 inv new acquaintance appealed to my eccentric imagina- 
 
 'tion. At one time it would be poetising and versifying that 
 
 decided my choice of a friend ; at another, theatrical enterprises, 
 
 while now and then it would be a longing for rambling and 
 
 mischief. 
 
 Furthermore, when I reached my thirteenth year, a great 
 change came over our family affairs. My sister Rosalie, who 
 had become the chief support of our household, obtained an 
 advantageous engagement at the theatre in Prague, whither 
 mother and children removed in 1826, thus giving up the 
 I )resden home altogether. I was left behind in Dresden, so 
 that I might continue to attend the Kreuz Grammar School 
 until I was ready to go up to the university. I was therefore 
 sent to board and lodge with a family named Bohme, whose 
 sons I had known at school, and in whose house I already felt 
 **> I quite at home. With my residence in this somewhat rough, 
 poor, and not particularly well-conducted family, my years of 
 dissipation began. I no longer enjoyed the quiet retirement 
 necessary for work, nor the gentle, spiritual influence of my 
 sisters' companionship. On the contrary, I was plunged into 
 a busy, restless life, full of rough horseplay and of quarrels, 
 ertheless, it was there that I began to experience the 
 influence of the gentler sex in a manner hitherto unknown 
 to me, as the grown-up daughters of the family and their 
 friends often filled the scanty and narrow rooms of the house. 
 Indeed, my first recollections of boyish love date from this 
 period. I remember a very beautiful young girl, whose name, 
 if I am not mistaken, was Amalie Hoffmann, coming to call at 
 the house one Sunday. She was charmingly dressed, and her 
 appearance as she came into the room literally struck me 
 <liiinl> with amazement. On other occasions I recollect pre- 
 tending to be too helplessly sleepy to move, so that I might be 
 carried up to bed by the girls, that being, as they thought, the 
 only remedy for my condition. And I repeated this, because 
 I found, to my surprise, that their attention under these 
 circumstances brought me into closer and more gratifying 
 proximity with them.
 
 PRAGUE. THE TALES OF HOFFMANN 19 
 
 The most important event during this year of separation 
 from my family was, however, a short visit I paid to them in 
 Prague. In the middle of the winter my mother came to 
 Dresden, and took me back with her to Prague for a week. 
 Her way of travelling was quite unique. To the end of her 
 days she preferred the more dangerous mode of travelling in a 
 hackney carriage to the quicker journey by mail-coach, so that 
 we spent three whole days in the bitter cold on the road from 
 Dresden to Prague. The journey over the Bohemian moun- 
 tains often seemed to be beset with the greatest dangers, 
 but happily we survived our thrilling adventures and at last 
 arrived in Prague, where I was suddenly plunged into entirely 
 new surroundings. 
 
 For a long time the thought of leaving Saxony on another 
 visit to Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite >a 
 romantic attraction for me. The foreign nationality, the 
 broken German of the people, the peculiar headgear of the 
 women, the native wines, the harp-girls and musicians, and 
 finally, the ever present signs of Catholicism, its numerous 
 chapels and shrines, all produced on me a strangely exhilarating i 
 impression. This was probably due to my craze for everything 
 theatrical and spectacular, as distinguished from simple i 
 bourgeois customs. Above all, the antique splendour and* 
 beauty of the incomparable city of Prague became indelibly 
 stamped on my fancy. Even in my own family surroundings 
 I found attractions to which I had hitherto been a stranger. 
 For instance, my sister Ottilie, only two years older than my- 
 self, had won the devoted friendship of a noble family, that of 
 Count Pachta, two of whose daughters, Jenny and Auguste, 
 who had long been famed as the leading beauties of Prague, 
 had become fondly attached to her. To me, such people and 
 such a connection were something quite novel and enchanting. 
 Besides these, certain beaux esprits of Prague, among them 
 W. Marsano, a strikingly handsome and charming man, were 
 frequent visitors at our house. They often earnestly discussed 
 the tales of Hoffmann, which at that date were comparatively 
 new, and had created some sensation. It was now that I made 
 my first though rather superficial acquaintance with this 
 romantic visionary, and so received a stimulus which influenced
 
 20 MY LIFE 
 
 me for many years even to the point of infatuation, and gave 
 me very peculiar ideas of the world. 
 
 In the following spring, 1827, I repeated this journey from 
 Dresden to Prague, but this time on foot, and accompanied by 
 my friend Rudolf Bohme. Our tour was full of adventure. 
 We got to within an hour of Teplitz the first night, and next 
 day we had to get a lift in a wagon, as we had walked our 
 feet sore; yet this only took us as far as Lowositz, as our 
 funds had quite run out. Under a scorching sun, hungry and 
 half-fainting, we wandered along bypaths through absolutely 
 unknown country, until at sundown we happened to reach 
 the main road just as an elegant travelling coach came in sight. 
 I humbled my pride so far as to pretend I was a travelling 
 journeyman, and begged the distinguished travellers for alms, 
 while my friend timidly hid himself in the ditch by the road- 
 side. Luckily we decided to seek shelter for the night in an 
 inn, where we took counsel whether we should spend the alms 
 just received on a supper or a bed. We decided for the supper, 
 proposing to spend the night under the open sky. While we 
 were refreshing ourselves, a strange-looking wayfarer entered. 
 He wore a black velvet skull-cap, to which a metal lyre was 
 attached like a cockade, and on his back he bore a harp. Very 
 cheerfully he set down his instrument, made himself comfort- 
 able, and called for a good meal. He intended to stay the 
 night, and to continue his way next day to Prague, where he 
 lived, and whither he was returning from Hanover. 
 
 My good spirits and courage were stimulated by the jovial 
 manners of this merry fellow, who constantly repeated his 
 favourite motto, ' non plus 'ultra.' We soon struck up an 
 acquaintance, and in return for my confidence, the strolling 
 player's attitude to me was one of almost touching sympathy. 
 It was agreed that we should continue our journey together 
 next day on foot. He lent me two twenty-kreutzer pieces 
 (about ninepence), and allowed me to write my Prague address 
 in his pocket-book. I was highly delighted at this personal 
 success. My harpist grew extravagantly merry; a good deal 
 of Czernosek wine was drunk ; he sang and played on his harp 
 like a madman, continually reiterating his ' non plus ultra/ till 
 at last, overcome with wine, he fell down on the straw, which
 
 ADVENTURES ON THE WAY TO PRAGUE 21 
 
 had been spread out on the floor for our common bed. When 
 the sun once more peeped in, we could not rouse him, and we 
 had to make up our minds to set off in the freshness of the early 
 morning without him, feeling convinced that the sturdy fellow 
 would overtake us during the day. But it was in vain that we 
 looked out for him on the road and during our subsequent stay 
 in Prague. Indeed, it was not until several weeks later that 
 the extraordinary fellow turned up at my mother's, not so 
 much to collect payment of his loan, as to inquire about the 
 welfare of the young friend to whom that loan had been made. 
 
 The remainder of our journey was very fatiguing, and the 
 joy I felt when I at last beheld Prague from the summit of a 
 hill, at about an hour's distance, simply beggars description. 
 Approaching the suburbs, we were for the second time met by 
 a splendid carriage, from which my sister Ottilie's two lovely 
 friends called out to me in astonishment. They had recognised 
 me immediately, in spite of my terribly sunburnt face, blue 
 linen blouse, and bright red cotton cap. Overwhelmed with 
 shame, and with my heart beating like mad, I could hardly 
 utter a word, and hurried away to my mother's to attend at 
 once to the restoration of my sunburnt complexion. To this 
 task I devoted two whole days, during which I swathed my 
 face in parsley poultices; and not till then did I seek the 
 pleasures of society. When, on the return journey, I looked 
 back once more on Prague from the same hilltop, I burst into 
 tears, flung myself on the earth, and for a long time could not 
 be induced by my astonished companion to pursue the journey. 
 I was downcast for the rest of the way, and we arrived home 
 in Dresden without any further adventures. 
 
 During the same year I again gratified my fancy for long 
 excursions on foot by joining a numerous company of grammar 
 school boys, consisting of pupils of several classes and of various 
 ages, who had decided to spend their summer holidays in a 
 tour to Leipzig. This journey also stands out among the 
 memories of my youth, by reason of the strong impressions it 
 left behind. The characteristic feature of our party was that 
 we all aped the student, by behaving and dressing extravagantly 
 in the most approved student fashion. After going as far as 
 Meissen on the market-boat, our path lay off the main road,
 
 H MY LIFE 
 
 through villages with which I was as yet unfamiliar. We spent 
 the night in the vast bam of a village inn, and our adventures 
 were of tin- wildest description. There we saw a large marion- 
 ette show, with almost life-sized figures. Our entire party 
 settled themselves in the auditorium, where their presence 
 was a source of some anxiety to the managers, who had only 
 reckoned on an audience of peasants. Genovefa was the play 
 given. The ceaseless silly jests, and constant interpolations 
 and jeering interruptions, in which our corps of embryo- 
 students indulged, finally aroused the anger even of the 
 peasants, who had come prepared to weep. I believe I was the 
 only one of our party who was pained by these impertinences, 
 and in spite of involuntary laughter at some of my comrades' 
 jokes, I not only defended the play itself, but also its original, 
 simple-minded audience. A popular catch-phrase which oc- 
 curred in the piece has ever since remained stamped on my 
 memory. l Golo ' instructs the inevitable Kaspar that, when 
 the Count Palatine returns home, he must l tickle him behind, 
 so that he should feel it in front ' (hinten zu Tcitzeln, doss er es 
 vorne fuhle). Kaspar conveys Golo's order verbatim to the 
 Count, and the latter reproaches the unmasked rogue in the 
 following terms, uttered with the greatest pathos : l Golo, 
 Golo! thou hast told Kaspar to tickle me behind, so that I 
 shall feel it in front ! ' 
 
 From Grimma our party rode into Leipzig in open carriages, 
 but not until we had first carefully removed all the outward 
 emblems of the undergraduate, lest the local students we were 
 likely to meet might make us rue our presumption. 
 * Since my first visit, when I was eight years old, I had only 
 once returned to Leipzig, and then for a very brief stay, and 
 under circumstances very similar to those of the earlier visit. 
 I now renewed my fantastic impressions of the Thome house, 
 but this time, owing to my more advanced education, I looked 
 forward to more intelligent intercourse with my uncle Adolph. 
 An opening for this was soon provided by my joyous astonish- 
 ment on learning that a bookcase in the large anteroom, con- 
 taining a goodly collection of books, was my property, having 
 been left me by my father. I went through the books with 
 my uncle, selected at once a number of Latin authors in the
 
 THE 'COMMENT' CONFIRMATION (1827) 23 
 
 handsome Zweibriick edition, along with sundry attractive 
 looking works of poetry and belles-lettres, and arranged for them 
 to be sent to Dresden. During this visit I was very much 
 interested in the life of the students. In addition to my 
 impressions of the theatre and of Prague, now came those of 
 the so-called swaggering undergraduate. A great change had 
 taken place in this class. When, as a lad of eight, I had my 
 first glimpse of students, their long hair, their old German 
 costume with the black velvet skull-cap and the shirt collar 
 turned back from the bare neck, had quite taken my fancy. 
 But since that time the old student ' associations ' which 
 affected this fashion had disappeared in the face of police 
 prosecutions. On the other hand, the national student clubs, 
 no less peculiar to Germans, had become conspicuous. These 
 clubs adopted, more or less, the fashion of the day, but with 
 some little exaggeration. Albeit, their dress was clearly dis- 
 tinguishable from that of other classes, owing to its picturesque- 
 ness, and especially its display of the various club-colours. The 
 ' Comment/ that compendium of pedantic rules of conduct for 
 the preservation of a defiant and exclusive esprit de corps, as 
 opposed to the bourgeois classes, had its fantastic side, just as 
 the most philistine peculiarities of the Germans have, if you 
 probe them deeply enough. To me it represented the idea of 
 emancipation from the yoke of school and family. The longing 
 to become a student coincided unfortunately with my growing 
 dislike for drier studies and with my ever-increasing fond- 
 ness for cultivating romantic poetry. The results of this soon 
 showed themselves in my resolute attempts to make a change. 
 
 At the time of my confirmation, at Easter, 1827, I had 
 considerable doubt about this ceremony, and I already felt 
 a serious falling off of my reverence for religious observances. 
 The boy who, not many years before, had gazed with agonised 
 sympathy on the altarpiece in the Kreuz Kirche (Church of 
 the Holy Cross), and had yearned with ecstatic fervour to 
 hang upon the Cross in place of the Saviour, had now so far 
 lost his veneration for the clergyman, whose preparatory 
 confirmation classes he attended, as to be quite ready to make 
 fun of him, and even to join with his comrades in withholding 
 part of his class fees, and spending the money in sweets. How
 
 24 MY LIFE 
 
 matters stood with me spiritually was revealed to me, almost 
 to my horror, at the Communion service, when I walked in 
 procession with my fellow-communicants to the altar to the 
 sound of organ and choir. The shudder with which I received 
 the Bread and Wine was so ineffaceably stamped on my memory, 
 that I never again partook of the Communion, lest I should do 
 so with levity. To avoid this was all the easier for me, seeing 
 that among Protestants such participation is not compulsory. 
 
 I soon, however, seized, or rather created, an opportunity 
 of forcing a breach with the Kreuz Grammar School, and thus 
 compelled my family to let me go to Leipzig. In self-defence 
 against what I considered an unjust punishment with which I 
 was threatened by the assistant headmaster, Baumgarten- 
 Crusius, for whom I otherwise had great respect, I asked to be 
 discharged immediately from the school on the ground of sudden 
 summons to join my family in Leipzig. I had already left the 
 Bohme household three months before, and now lived alone in 
 a small garret, where I was waited on by the widow of a court 
 plate-washer, who at every meal served up the familiar thin 
 Saxon coffee as almost my sole nourishment. In this attic I did 
 little else but write verses. Here, too, I formed the first out- 
 lines of that stupendous tragedy which afterwards filled my 
 family with such consternation. The irregular habits I ac- 
 quired through this premature domestic independence induced 
 my anxious mother to consent very readily to my removal to 
 Leipzig, tha more so as a part of our scattered family had 
 already migrated there. 
 
 My longing for Leipzig, originally aroused by the fantastic 
 impressions I had gained there, and later by my enthusiasm 
 for a student's life, had recently been still further stimulated. 
 I had seen scarcely anything of my sister Louisa, at that time 
 a girl of about twenty-two, as she had gone to the theatre of 
 Breslau shortly after our stepfather's death. Quite recently 
 she had been in Dresden for a few days on her way to Leipzig, 
 having accepted an engagement at the theatre there. This 
 meeting with my almost unknown sister, her hearty mani- 
 festations of joy at seeing me again, as well as her sprightly, 
 merry disposition, quite won my heart. To live with her 
 seemed an alluring prospect, especially as my mother and
 
 SISTER LOUISA, ST. NICHOLAS'S SCHOOL 25 
 
 Ottilie had joined her for a while. For the first time a sister 
 had treated me with some tenderness. When at last I reached 
 Leipzig at Christmas in the same year (1827), and there found 
 my mother with Ottilie and Cecilia (my half-sister), I fancied 
 myself in heaven. Great changes, however, had already 
 taken place. Louisa was betrothed to a respected and well- 
 to-do bookseller, Friedrich Brockhaus. This gathering to- 
 gether of the relatives of the penniless bride-elect did not 
 seem to trouble her remarkably kind-hearted fiance. But 
 my sister may have become uneasy on the subject, for she 
 soon gave me to understand that she was not taking it quite 
 in good part. Her desire to secure an entree into the higher 
 social circles of bourgeois life naturally produced a marked 
 change in her manner, at one time so full of fun, and of this 
 I gradually became so keenly sensible that finally we were 
 estranged for a time. Moreover, I unfortunately gave her 
 good cause to reprove my conduct. After I got to Leipzig 
 I quite gave up my studies and all regular school work, prob- 
 ably owing to the arbitrary and pedantic system in vogue at 
 the school there. 
 
 In Leipzig there were two higher-class schools, one called 
 St. Thomas's School, and the other, and the more modern, 
 St. Nicholas's School. The latter at that time enjoyed a 
 better reputation than the former; so there I had to go. But 
 the council of teachers before whom I appeared for my entrance 
 examination at the New Year (1828) thought fit to maintain 
 the dignity of their school by placing me for a time in the 
 upper third form, whereas at the Kreuz Grammar School in 
 Dresden I had been in the second form. My disgust at having 
 to lay aside my Homer from which I had already mado 
 written translations of twelve songs and take up the lighter 
 Greek prose writers was indescribable. It hurt my feelings 
 so deeply, and so influenced my behaviour, that I never made 
 a friend of any teacher in the school. The unsympathetic 
 treatment I met with made me all the more obstinate, and 
 various other circumstances in my position only added to this 
 feeling. While student life, as I saw it day by day, inspired 
 me ever more and more with its rebellious spirit, I unexpectedly 
 met with another cause for despising the dry monotony of 

 
 26 MY LIFE 
 
 school regime. I refer to the influence of my uncle, Adolpk 
 uer, which, though he was long unconscious of it, went a 
 
 I..,,-: way towards moulding the growing stripling- that 1 then 
 
 The fact that my romantic tastes were not based solely on 
 a tendency to superficial amusement was shown by my ardent 
 attachment to this learned relative. TTI his manner and con-^ 
 natiou !" was certainty very attractive; the many-sidedness 
 f hi- knowledge, which nnhra.vd not only philology but also 
 philosophy and general poetic literature, rendered intercourse 
 with him a most entertaining pastime, as all those who knew 
 him used to admit. On the other hand, the fact that he was 
 denied the gift of writing with equal charm, or clearness, was 
 a singular defect which seriously lessened his influence upon 
 the literary world, and, in fact, often made him appear ridicu- 
 lous, as in a written argument he would perpetrate the most 
 pompous and involved sentences. This weakness could not 
 have alarmed me, because in the hazy period of my youth the 
 more incomprehensible any literary extravagance was, the more 
 I admired it; besides which, I had more experience of his 
 conversation than of his writings. He also seemed to find 
 pleasure in associating with the lad who could listen with so 
 much heart and soul. Yet unfortunately, possibly in the 
 fervour of his discourses, of which he was not a little proud, 
 he forgot that their substance, as well as their form, was far 
 above my youthful powers of comprehension. I called daily 
 to accompany him on his constitutional walk beyond the city 
 gates, and I shrewdly suspect that we often provoked the 
 smiles of those passers-by who overheard the profound and 
 often earnest discussions between us. The subjects generally 
 ranged over everything serious or sublime throughout the 
 whole realm of knowledge. I took the^-jaggt^ enthusiastic 
 interest in !ii- copious lil.rary. and fastc-d eagerly of almost 
 all branches of literature, without really grounding myself 
 in any one of them. 
 
 My uncle was delighted to find in me a very willing listener 
 to his recital of classic tragedies. He had made a translation 
 of (Edipus, and, according to his intimate friend Tieck, justly 
 flattered himself on being an excellent reader.
 
 ADOLPH WAGNER 27 
 
 I remember once, when he was sitting at his desk reading 
 out a Greek tragedy to me, it did not annoy him when I fell 
 fast asleep, and he afterwards pretended he had not noticed it. 
 I was also induced to spend my evenings with him, owing to 
 the friendly and genial hospitality his wife showed me. A' 
 very great change had come over my uncle's life since my 
 first acquaintance with him at Jeannette Thome's. The 
 home which he, together with his sister Friederike, had found 
 in his friend's house seemed, as time went on, to have brought 
 in its train duties that were irksome. As his literary work 
 assured him a modest income, he eventually deemed it more 
 in accordance with his dignity to make a home of his own. A 
 friend of his, of the same age as himself, the sister of the 
 aesthete Wendt of Leipzig, who afterwards became famous, 
 was chosen by him to keep house for him. Without saying a 
 word to Jeannette, instead of going for his usual afternoon walk 
 he went to the church with his chosen bride, and got through 
 the marriage ceremonies as quickly as possible; and it was 
 only on his return that he informed us he was leaving, and 
 would have his things removed that very day. He managed 
 to meet the consternation, perhaps also the reproaches, of his 
 elderly friend with quiet composure ; and to the end of his life 
 he continued his regular tlaily visits to l Mam'selle Thome,' 
 who at times would coyly pretend to sulk. It was only poor 
 Friederike who seemed obliged at times to atone for her 
 brother's sudden unfaithfulness. 
 
 What attracted me in my uncle most strongly was his blunt 
 contempt of the modern pedantry in State, Church, and School, 
 to which he gave vent with some humour. Despite the great 
 moderation of his usual views on life, he yet produced on me 
 the effect of a thorough free-thinker. I was highly delighted 
 by his contempt for the pedantry of the schools. Once, when 
 I had come into serious conflict with all the teachers of the 
 Nicolai School, and the rector of the school had approached 
 my uncle, as the only male representative of my family, with 
 a serious complaint about my behaviour, my uncle asked in<> 
 during a stroll round the town, with a calm smile as though 
 he were speaking to one of his own age, what I had been up 
 t<> with the people at school. I explained the whole affair to
 
 28 MY LIFE 
 
 him, and described the punishment to which I had been 
 subjected, and which seemed to me unjust He pacified me, 
 and exhorted me to be patient, telling me to comfort myself 
 with the Spanish proverb, un rey no puede morir, which he 
 explained as meaning that the ruler of a school must of 
 necessity always be in the right. 
 
 He could not, of course, help noticing, to his alarm, the 
 effect upon me of this kind of conversation, which I was far 
 too young to appreciate. Although it annoyed me one day, 
 when I wanted to begin reading Goethe's Faust, to hear him 
 say quietly that I was too young to understand if, yet, accord- 
 ing to my thinking, his other conversations about our own 
 great poets, and even about Shakespeare and Dante, had made 
 me so familiar with these sublime figures that I had now for 
 some time been secretly busy working out the great tragedy 
 I had already conceived in Dresden. Since my trouble at 
 school I had devoted all my energies, which ought by rights 
 to have been exclusively directed to my school duties, to the 
 accomplishment of this task. In this secret work I had only 
 one confidante, my sister Ottilie, who now lived with me at 
 my mother's. I can remember the misgivings and alarm 
 which the first confidential communication of my great poetic 
 enterprise aroused in my good sister; yet she affectionately 
 suffered the tortures I sometimes inflicted on her by reciting 
 to her in secret, but not without emotion, portions of my 
 work as it progressed. Once, when I was reciting to her one 
 of the most gruesome scenes, a heavy thunderstorm came on. 
 When the lightning flashed quite close to us, and the thunder 
 rolled, my sister felt bound to implore me to stop; but she 
 soon found it was hopeless, and continued to endure it with 
 touching devotion. 
 
 But a more significant storm was brewing on the horizon 
 of my life. My neglect of school reached such a point that it 
 could not but lead to a rupture. Whilst my dear mother had 
 no presentiment of this, I awaited the catastrophe with longing 
 rather than with fear. 
 
 In order to meet this crisis with dignity I at length decided 
 to surprise my family by disclosing to them the secret of my 
 tragedy, which was now completed. They were to be informed
 
 'LEUBALD UKD ADELAIDE* 29 
 
 of this great event by my uncle. I thought I could rely upon 
 his hearty recognition of my vocation as a great poet on account 
 of the deep harmony between us on all other questions of life, 
 science, and art. I therefore sent him my voluminous manu- 
 script, with a long letter which I thought would please him 
 immensely. In this I communicated to him first my ideas 
 with regard to the St. Nicholas's School, and then my firm deter- 
 mination from that time forward not to allow any mere school 
 pedantry to check my free development. But the event 
 turned out very different from what I had expected. It was 
 a great shock to them. My uncle, quite conscious that he had 
 been indiscreet, paid a visit to my mother and brother-in-law, 
 in order to report the misfortune that had befallen the family, 
 reproaching himself for the fact that his influence over me 
 had not always, perhaps, been for my good. To me he wrote 
 a serious letter of discouragement; and to this day I cannot 
 understand why he showed so small a sense of humour in 
 understanding my bad behaviour. To my surprise he merely 
 said that he reproached himself for having corrupted me by 
 conversations unsuited to my years, but he made no attempt 
 to explain to me good-naturedly the error of my ways. 
 
 The crime this boy of fifteen had committed was, as I 
 before, to have written a great tragedy, entitled Leubald ur 
 Adelaide. 
 
 The manuscript of this drama has unfortunately been lost,' 
 but I can still see it clearly in my mind's eye. The handwriting 
 was most affected, and the backward-sloping tall letters with 
 which I had aimed at giving it an air of distinction had already 
 been compared by one of my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. 
 In this composition I had constructed a drama in which I had 
 drawn largely upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and 
 Macbeth, and Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen. The plot was 
 really based on a modification of Hamlet, the difference con- 
 sisting in the fact that my hero is so completely carried away 
 by the appearance of the ghost of his father, who has been 
 murdered under similar circumstances, and demands venge- 
 ance, that he is driven to fearful deeds of violence; and, with 
 a series of murders on his conscience, he eventually goes mad. 
 Leubald, whose character is a mixture of Hamlet and Harry
 
 30 MY LIFE 
 
 Hotspur, had promised his father's ghost to wipe from the face 
 of the earth the whole race of Roderick, as the ruthless murderer 
 of the best of fathers was named. After having slain Roderick 
 himself in mortal combat, and subsequently all his sons and 
 other relations who supported him, there was only one obstacle 
 that prevented Leubald from fulfilling the dearest wish of his 
 heart, which was to be united in death with the shade of his 
 father: a child of Roderick's was still alive. During the 
 storming of his castle the murderer's daughter had been carried 
 away into safety by a faithful suitor, whom she, however, 
 detested. I had an irresistible impulse to call this maiden 
 ' Adelaide.' As even at that early age I was a great enthusiast 
 for everything really German, I can only account for the ob- 
 viously un-German name of my heroine by my infatuation 
 for Beethoven's Adelaide, whose tender refrain seemed to me 
 the symbol of all loving appeals. The course of my drama was 
 now characterised by the strange delays which took place in 
 the accomplishment of this last murder of vengeance, the chief 
 obstacle to which lay in the sudden passionate love which arose 
 between Leubald and Adelaide. I succeeded in representing 
 the birth and avowal of this love by means of extraordinary 
 adventures. Adelaide was once more stolen away by a robber- 
 knight from the lover who had been sheltering her. After 
 Leubald had thereupon sacrificed the lover and all his relations, 
 he hastened to the robber's castle, driven thither less by a 
 thirst for blood than by a longing for death. For this reason 
 he regrets his inability to storm the robber's castle forthwith, 
 because it is well defended, and, moreover, night is fast falling ; 
 he is therefore obliged to pitch his tent. Alter raving for a 
 while he sinks down for the first time exhausted, but being 
 urged, like his prototype Hamlet, by the spirit of his father to 
 complete his vow of vengeance, he himself suddenly falls into 
 the power of the enemy during a night assault. In the subter- 
 ranean dungeons of the castle he meets Roderick's daughter 
 for the first time. She is a prisoner like himself, and is craftily 
 devising flight. Under circumstances in which she produces 
 on him the impression of a heavenly vision, she makes her 
 appearance before him. They fall in love, and fly together 
 into the wilderness, where they realise that they are deadly
 
 'LEUBALD UND ADELAIDE > 31 
 
 enemies. The incipient insanity which was already noticeable 
 in Leubald breaks out more violently after this discovery, 
 and everything that can be done to intensify it is contributed 
 by the ghost of his father, which continually comes between 
 the advances of the lovers. But this ghost is not the only 
 disturber of the conciliating love of Leubald and Adelaide. 
 The ghost of Roderick also appears, and according to the 
 method followed by Shakespeare in Richard III., he is joined 
 by the ghosts of all the other members of Adelaide's family 
 whom Leubald has slain. From the incessant importunities 
 of these ghosts Leubald seeks to free himself by means of 
 sorcery, and calls to his aid a rascal named Flamming. Ono 
 of Macbeth' s witches is summoned to lay the ghosts; as she 
 is unable to do this efficiently, the furious Leubald sends her 
 also to the devil; but with her dying breath she despatches 
 the whole crowd of spirits who serve her to join the ghosts of 
 those already pursuing him. Leubald, tormented beyond 
 endurance, and now at last raving mad, turns against his 
 beloved, who is the apparent cause of all his misery. He stabs 
 her in his fury; then finding himself suddenly at peace, he 
 sinks his head into her lap, and accepts her last caresses as her 
 life-blood streams over his own dying body. 
 
 I had not omitted the smallest detail that could give this 
 plot its proper colouring, and had drawn on all my knowledge 
 of the tales of the old knights, and my acquaintance with Lear 
 and Macbeth, to furnish my drama with the most vivid situa- 
 tions. But one of the chief characteristics of its poetical form 
 I took from the pathetic, humorous, and powerful language of 
 Shakespeare. The boldness of my grandiloquent and bom- 
 bastic expressions roused my uncle Adolph's alarm and aston- 
 ishment. He was unable to understand how I could have 
 selected and used with inconceivable exaggeration precisely 
 the most extravagant forms of speech to be found in Lear and 
 Gotz von Berlicliingen. Nevertheless, even after everybody had 
 deafened me with their laments over my lost time and per- 
 verted talents, I was still conscious of a wonderful secret solace 
 in the face of the calamity that had befallen me. I knew, a 
 fact that no one else could know, namely, that my work could 
 only be rightly judged when set to the music which I had
 
 32 MY LIFE 
 
 resolved to write for it, and which I intended to start composing 
 
 immediately. . 
 
 - I must now explain my position with respect to music hitherto. 
 For this purpose I must go back to my earliest attempts in 
 the art. In my family two of my sisters were musical; the 
 elder one, Rosalie, played the piano, without, however, dis- 
 playing any marked talent. Clara was more gifted; in 
 addition to a great deal of musical feeling, and a fine rich 
 touch on the piano, she possessed a particularly sympathetic 
 voice the development of which was so premature and remark- 
 able that, under the tuition of Mieksch, her singing master, 
 who was famous at that time, she was apparently ready for 
 the role of a prima donna as early as her sixteenth year, and 
 made her debut at Dresden in Italian opera as ' Cenerentola ' 
 in Rossini's opera of that name. Incidentally I may remark 
 that this premature development proved injurious to Clara's 
 voice, and was detrimental to her whole career. As I have 
 said, music was represented in our family by these two sisters. 
 It was chiefly owing to Clara's career that the musical con- 
 ductor C. M. von Weber often came to our house. His visits 
 were varied by those of the great male-soprano Sassaroli ; and 
 in addition to these two representatives of German and Italian 
 music, we also had the company of Mieksch, her singing master. 
 It was on these occasions that I as a child first heard German 
 and Italian music discussed, and learnt that any one who 
 wished to ingratiate himself with the Court must show a prefer- 
 ence for Italian music, a fact which led to very practical results 
 in our family council. Clara's talent, while her voice was still 
 sound, was the object of competition between the representa- 
 tives of Italian and German opera. I can remember quite 
 distinctly that from the very beginning I declared myself in 
 favour of German opera; my choice was determined by the 
 tremendous impression made on me by the two figures of 
 /.Sassaroli and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge pot- 
 ' bellied giant, horrified me with his high effeminate voice, his 
 astonishing volubility, and his incessant screeching laughter. 
 In spite of his boundless good-nature and amiability, particu- 
 larly to my family, I took an uncanny dislike to him. On 
 account of this dreadful person, the sound of Italian, either 

 
 C. M. VON WEBER. FREISCHUTZ 33 
 
 spoken or sung, seemed to my ears almost diabolical; and 
 when, in consequence of my poor sister's misfortune, I heard , \Js 
 them often talking about Italian intrigues and cabals, I con- \Y 
 ceived so strong a dislike for everything connected with 
 this nation that even in much later years I used to feel 
 myself carried away by an impulse of utter detestation and 
 abhorrence. 
 
 The less frequent visits of Weber, on the other hand, seemed] 
 to have produced upon me those first sympathetic impressions/ 
 which I have never since lost. In contrast to Sassaroli's re-l 
 pulsive figure, Weber's really refined, delicate, and intellectual 
 appearance excited my ecstatic admiration. His narrow face 
 and finely-cut features, his vivacious though often half -closed 
 eyes, captivated and thrilled me; w r hilst even the bad limp 
 with which he walked, and which I often noticed from our 
 windows when the master was making his way home past our 
 house from the fatiguing rehearsals, stamped the great musician 
 in my imagination as an exceptional and almost superhuman 
 being. When, as a boy of nine, my mother introduced me to 
 him, and he asked me what I was going to be, whether I wanted 
 perhaps to be a musician, my mother told him that, though I 
 was indeed quite mad on Freischutz, yet she had as yet seen 
 nothing in me which indicated any musical talent 
 
 This showed correct observation on my mother's part; 
 nothing had made so great an impression on me as the music 
 of Freischutz, and I tried in every possible way to procure a 
 repetition of the impressions I had received from it, but, 
 strange to say, least of all by the study of music itself. Instead 
 of this, I contented myself with hearing bits from Freischutz 
 played by my sisters. Yet my passion for it gradually grew 
 so strong that I can remember taking a particular fancy for a 
 young man called Spiess, chiefly because he could play the 
 overture to Freischutz, which I used to ask him to do whenever 
 I met him. It was chiefly the introduction to this overture 
 which at last led me to attempt, without ever having received 
 any instruction on the piano, to play this piece in my own 
 peculiar way, for, oddly enough, I was the only child in our j 
 family who had not been given music lessons. This was prob- \ 
 ably due to my mother's anxiety to keep me away from any I
 
 34 MY LIFE 
 
 artisticjnteresteof .fluaJpnd in case they might arouse in me 
 a li'iii^in ir fur tho theatre. 
 
 . When I was about twelve years old, however, my mother 
 (engaged a tutor for me named Humann, from whom I received 
 (regular music lessons, though only of a very mediocre descrip- 
 tion. As soon as I had acquired a very imperfect knowledge 
 of fingering I begged to be allowed to play overtures in the 
 form of duets, always keeping Weber as the goal of my am- 
 bition. When at length I had got so far as to be able to play 
 the overture to Freischiiiz myself, though in a very faulty 
 manner, I felt the object of my study had been attained, and 
 I had no inclination to devote any further attention to per- 
 fecting my technique. 
 
 Yet I had attained this much: I was no longer dependent 
 for music on the playing of others; from this time forth I 
 used to try and play, albeit very imperfectly, everything I 
 wanted to know. I also tried Mozart's Don Juan, but was 
 unable to get any pleasure out of it, mainly because the Italian 
 text in the arrangement for the piano placed the music in a 
 frivolous light in my eyes, and much in it seemed to me trivial 
 and unmanly. (I can remember that when my sister used 
 to sing Zerlinen's ariette, Batti, batii, ben Masetto, the music 
 repelled me, as it seemed so mawkish and effeminate.) 
 
 On the other hand, my bent for music grew stronger and 
 stronger, and I now tried to possess myself of my favourite 
 pieces by making my own copies. I can remember the hesi- 
 tation with which my mother for the first time gave me the 
 money to buy the scored paper on which I copied out Weber's 
 Lutzow's Jagd, which was the first piece of music I transcribed. 
 Music was still a secondary occupation with me when the 
 news of Weber's death and the longing to learn his music to 
 Oberon fanned my enthusiasm into flame again. This received 
 fresh impetus from the afternoon concerts in the Grosser 
 Garten at Dresden, where I often heard my favourite music 
 played by Zillmann's Town Band, as I thought, exceedingly 
 well. The mysterious joy I felt in hearing an orchestra play 
 quite close to me still remains one of my most pleasant memo- 
 ries. The mere tuning up of the instruments put me in a state 
 of mystic excitement; even the striking of fifths on the violin
 
 MUSIC IN THE GROSSEK GARTEN 35 
 
 seemed to me like a greeting from the spirit world which, I 
 may mention incidentally, had a very real meaning for me. 
 When I was still almost a baby, the sound of these fifths, which 
 has always excited me, was closely associated in my mind 
 with ghosts and spirits. I remember that even much later in 
 life I could never pass the small palace of Prince Anthony, at 
 the end of the Ostra Alice in Dresden, without a shudder ; for it 
 was there I had first heard the sound of a violin, a very common 
 experience to me afterwards. It was close by me, and seemed 
 to my ears to come from the stone figures with which this 
 palace is adorned, some of which are provided with musical 
 instruments. When I took up my post as musical conductor 
 at Dresden, and had to pay my official visit to Morgenroth, 
 the President of the Concert Committee, an elderly gentleman 
 who lived for many years opposite that princely palace, it 
 seemed odd to find that the player of fifths who had so strongly 
 impressed my musical fancy as a boy was anything but a super- 
 natural spectre. And when I saw the well-known picture in 
 which a skeleton plays on his violin to an old man on his 
 deathbed, the ghostly character of those very notes impressed 
 itself with particular force upon my childish imagination. 
 When at last, as a young man, I used to listen to the Zillmann 
 Orchestra in the Grosser Garten almost every afternoon, one 
 may imagine the rapturous thrill with which I drew in all 
 the chaotic variety of sound that I heard as the orchestra 
 tuned up: the long drawn A of the oboe, which seemed like 
 a call from the dead to rouse the other instruments, never 
 failed to raise all my nerves to a feverish pitch of tension, 
 and when the swelling C in the overture to Freischiitz told me 
 that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the 
 magic realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at 
 that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was 
 in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer 
 on the piano. 
 
 Another work also exercised a great fascination over me, 
 namely, the overture to Fidelio in E major, the introduction 
 to which affected me deeply. I asked my sisters about 
 Beethoven, and learned that the news of his death had just 
 arrived. Obsessed as I still was by the terrible grief causec
 
 36 MY LIFE 
 
 by Weber's death, this fresh loss, due to the decease of this 
 great master of melody, who had only just entered my life, 
 filled me with strange anguish, a feeling nearly akin to my 
 (childish dread of the ghostly fifths on the violin. It was now 
 \Beethoven's music that I longed to know more thoroughly; 
 /I came to Leipzig, and found his music to Egmont on the piano 
 at my sister Louisa's. After that I tried to get hold of his 
 sonatas. At last, at a concert at the Gewandthaus, I heard 
 pne of the master's symphonies for the first time; it was the 
 ymphony in A major. The effect on me was indescribable. 
 To this must be added the impression produced on me by 
 Beethoven's features, which I saw in the lithographs that 
 were circulated everywhere at that time, and by the fact that 
 he was deaf, and lived a quiet secluded life. I soon conceived 
 an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique super- 
 natural being, with whom none could compare. This image 
 was associated in my brain with that of Shakespeare; in ecs- 
 tatic dreams I met both of them, saw and spoke to them, and 
 on awakening found myself bathed in tears. 
 
 It was at this time that I came across Mozart's Requiem, 
 which formed the starting-point of my enthusiastic absorption 
 in the works of that master. His second finale to Don Juan 
 inspired me to include him in my spirit world. 
 
 I was now filled with a desire to compose, as I had before 
 been to write verse. I had, however, in this case to master 
 the technique of an entirely separate and complicated subject. 
 This presented greater difficulties than I had met with in 
 writing verse, which came to me fairly easily. It was these 
 difficulties that drove me to adopt a career which bore some 
 resemblance to that of a professional musician, whose future 
 distinction would be to win the titles of Conductor and Writer 
 of Opera. 
 
 I now wanted to set Leubald und Adelaide to music, 
 similar to that which Beethoven wrote to Goethe's Egmont; 
 the various ghosts from the spirit world, who were each to 
 display different characteristics, were to borrow their own dis- 
 tinctive colouring from appropriate musical accompaniment. 
 In order to acquire the necessary technique of composition 
 quickly I studied Logier's Methode des Generalbasses, a wor-1;
 
 SECKET STUDY OF HARMONY 37 
 
 which was specially recommended to me at a musical lending 
 library as a suitable text-book from which this art might be 
 easily mastered. I have distinct recollections that the financial 
 difficulties with which I was continually harassed throughout 
 my life began at this time. I borrowed Logier's book on the 
 weekly payment system, in the fond hope of having to pay for 
 it only during a few weeks out of the savings of my weekly 
 pocket-money. But the weeks ran on into months, and I 
 was still unable to compose as well as I wished. Mr. Frederick 
 Wieck, whose daughter afterwards married Robert Schumann, 
 was at that time the proprietor of that lending library. He 
 kept sending me troublesome reminders of the debt I owed him ; 
 and when my bill had almost reached the price of Logier's 
 book I had to make a clean breast of the matter to my family, 
 who thus not only learnt of my financial difficulties in general, 
 but also of my latest transgression into the domain of music, 
 from which, of course, at the very most, they expected nothing 
 better than a repetition of Leubald und Adelaide. 
 
 There was great consternation at home; my mother, sister, 
 and brother-in-law, with anxious faces, discussed how my 
 studies should be superintended in future, to prevent my hav- 
 ing any further opportunity for transgressing in this way. No 
 one, however, yet knew the real state of affairs at school, and 
 they hoped I would soon see the error of my ways in this case 
 as I had in my former craze for poetry. 
 
 But other domestic changes were taking place which necessi.-' 
 tated my being for some little time alone in our house at i 
 Leipzig during the summer of 1829, when I was left entirely . 
 to my own devices. It was during this period that my passion \ 
 for music rose to an extraordinary degree. I had .secretly 
 been taking lessons in harmony from G. Miiller, afterwards 
 organist at Altenburg, an excellent musician belonging to the 
 Leipzig orchestra. Although the payment of these lessons 
 was also destined to get me into hot water at home later on, 
 I could not even make up to my teacher for the delay in the / 
 payment of his fees by giving him the pleasure of watching; 
 me improve in my studies. His teaching and exercises soon I 
 filled me with the greatest disgust, as to my mind it all seemed I 
 so dry. For me music was a spirit, a noble and mystic monster, / 
 
 ! 8 
 
 U .
 
 38 MY LIFE 
 
 and any attempt to regulate it seemed to lower it in my eyes. 
 I gathered much more congenial instruction about it from 
 Hoffmann's Phantasiestucken than from my Leipzig orchestra 
 player; and now came the time when I really lived and 
 breathed in Hoffmann's artistic atmosphere of ghosts and 
 spirits. With my head quite full of Kreissler, Krespel, and 
 other musical spectres from my favourite author, I imagined 
 that I had at last found in real life a creature who resembled 
 them : this ideal musician in whom for a time I fancied I had 
 discovered a second Kreissler was a man called Flachs. He 
 was a tall, exceedingly thin man, with a very narrow head and 
 an extraordinary way of walking, moving, and speaking, whom 
 ;I had seen at all those open-air concerts which formed my 
 I principal source of musical education. He was always with 
 the members of the orchestra, speaking exceedingly quickly, 
 first to one and then the other; for they all knew him, and 
 seemed to like him. The fact that they were making fun of 
 him I only learned, to my great confusion, much later. I 
 remember having noticed this strange figure from my earliest 
 days in Dresden, and I gathered from the conversations which 
 I overheard that he was indeed well known to all Dresden 
 musicians. This circumstance alone was sufficient to make 
 me take a great interest in him ; but the point about him which 
 attracted me more than anything was the manner in which 
 he listened to the various items in the programme: he used 
 to give peculiar, convulsive nods of his head, and blow out his 
 cheeks as though with sighs. All this I regarded as a sign of 
 spiritual ecstasy. I noticed, moreover, that he was quite alone, 
 that he belonged to no party, and paid no attention to anything 
 in the garden save the music; whereupon my identification of 
 this curious being with the conductor Kreissler seemed quite 
 natural. I was determined to make his acquaintance, and I 
 succeeded in doing so. Who shall describe my delight when, 
 on going to call on him at his rooms for the first time, I found 
 innumerable bundles of scores! I had as yet never seen a 
 score. It is true I discovered, to my regret, that he possessed 
 nothing either by Beethoven, Mozart, or Weber ; in fact, noth- 
 ing but immense quantities of works, masses, and cantatas by 
 composers such as Staerkel, Stamitz, Steibelt, etc., all of whom
 
 FLACHS AS A SHAM KEEISSLEK 39 
 
 were entirely unknown to me. Yet Flachs was able to tell me 
 so much that was good about them that the respect which I 
 felt for scores in general helped me to overcome my regret at 
 not finding anything by my beloved masters. It is true I 
 learnt later that poor Flachs had only come into the possession 
 of these particular scores through unscrupulous dealers, who 
 had traded on his weakness of intellect and palmed off this 
 worthless music on him for large sums of money. At all events, 
 they were scores, and that was quite enough for me. Flachs 
 and I became most intimate; we were always seen going about 
 together I, a lanky boy of sixteen, and this weird, shakj 
 flaxpole. The doors of~my deserted home were often openec 
 for this strange guest, who made me play my compositions to 
 him while he ate bread and cheese. In return, he once 
 arranged one of my airs for wind instruments, and, to my* 
 astonishment, it was actually accepted and played by the band! 
 in Kintschy's Swiss Chalet. That this man had not thel 
 smallest capacity to teach me anything never once occurred 
 to me; I was so firmly convinced of his originality that there 
 was no need for him to prove it further than by listening 
 patiently to my enthusiastic outpourings. But as, in course 
 of time, several of his own friends joined us, I could not help 
 noticing that the worthy Flachs was regarded by them all as 
 a half-witted fool. At first this merely pained me, but a 
 strange incident unexpectedly occurred which converted me to 
 the general opinion about him. Flachs was a man of some 
 means, and had fallen into the toils of a young lady of dubious 
 character who he believed was deeply in love with him. One 
 day, without warning, I found his house closed to me, and 
 discovered, to my astonishment, that jealousy was the cause. 
 The unexpected discovery of this liaison, which was my first 
 experience of such a case, filled me with a strange horror. My 
 friend suddenly appeared to me even more mad than he really 
 was. I felt so ashamed of my persistent blindness that for 
 some time to come I never went to any of the garden concerts 
 for fear I should meet my sham Kreissler. 
 
 By this time I had composed my first Sonata in D minor. 
 I had also begun a pastoral play, and had worked it out in 
 what I felt sure must be an entirely unprecedented way.
 
 
 40 MY LIFE 
 
 I chose Goethe's Laune der Verliebten as a model for the form 
 and plot of my work. I scarcely even drafted out the libretto, 
 however, but worked it out at the same time as the music and 
 orchestration, so that, while I was writing out one page of 
 the score, I had not even thought out the words for the 
 next page. I remember distinctly that following this extra- 
 ordinary method, although I had not acquired the slightest 
 knowledge about writing for instruments, I actually worked 
 out a fairly long passage which finally resolved itself into a 
 scene for three female voices followed by the air for the tenor. 
 My bent for writing for the orchestra was so strong that I 
 procured a score of Don Juan, and set to work on what I then 
 considered a very careful orchestration of a fairly long air for 
 soprano. I also wrote a quartette in D major after I had 
 myself sufficiently mastered the alto for the viola, my ignorance 
 of which had caused me great difficulty only a short time be- 
 fore, when I was studying a quartette by Haydn. 
 
 Armed with these works, I set out in the summer on my 
 ' first journey as a musician. My sister Clara, who was married 
 to the singer Wolfram, had an engagement at the theatre at 
 Magdeburg, whither, in characteristic fashion, I set forth upon 
 my adventure on foot. 
 
 My short stay with my relations provided me with many 
 experiences of musical life. It was there that I met a new 
 freak, whose influence upon me I have never been able to forget. 
 , He was a musical conductor of the name of Kiihnlein, a most 
 I extraordinary person. Already advanced in years, delicate 
 ' and, unfortunately, given to drink, this man nevertheless im- 
 pressed one by something striking and vigorous in his ex- 
 pression. His chief characteristics were an enthusiastic 
 worship of Mozart and a passionate depreciation of Weber. 
 He had read only one book Goethe's Faust and in this 
 work there was not a page in which he had not underlined some 
 passage, and made some remark in praise of Mozart or in 
 disparagement of Weber. It was to this man that my brother- 
 in-law confided the compositions which I had brought with 
 me in order to learn his opinion of my abilities. One evening, 
 as we were sitting comfortably in an inn, old Kiihnlein came in, 
 and approached us with a friendly, though serious manner.
 
 CONDUCTOR KUHNLEIN 41 
 
 I thought I read good news in his features, but when my 
 brother-in-law asked him what he thought of my work, he 
 answered quietly and calmly, l There is not a single good note 
 in it ! ' My brother-in-law, who was accustomed to Kiihnlein's 
 eccentricity, gave a loud laugh which reassured me somewhat. 
 It was impossible to get any advice or coherent reasons for his 
 opinion out of Kiihnlein; he merely renewed his abuse of 
 Weber and made some references to Mozart which, neverthe- 
 less, made a deep impression upon me, as Kuhnlein's language 
 was always very heated and emphatic. 
 
 On the other hand, this visit brought me a great treasu 
 which was responsible for leading me in a very different din 
 tion from that advised by Kiihnlein. This was the score o 
 Beethoven's great Quartette in E flat major, which had onl 
 been fairly recently published, and of which my brother-in-law 
 had a copy made for me. Richer in experience, and in the 
 possession of this treasure, I returned to Leipzig to the nursery 
 of my queer musical studies. But my family had now returned 
 with my sister Rosalie, and I could no longer keep secret from 
 them the fact that my connection with the school had been 
 entirely suspended, for a notice was found saying that I had 
 not attended the school for the last six months. As a com- 
 plaint addressed by the rector to my uncle about me had not 
 received adequate attention, the school authorities had appar- 
 ently made no further attempts to exercise any supervision 
 over me, which I had indeed rendered quite impossible by 
 absenting myself altogether. 
 
 A fresh council of war was held in the family to discuss 
 what was to be done with me. As I laid particular stress on 
 my bent for music, my relations thought that I ought, at any 
 rate, to learn one instrument thoroughly. My brother-in-law, 
 Brockhaus, proposed to send me to Hummel, at Weimar, tot 
 be trained as a pianist, but as I loudly protested that by I 
 * music ' I meant ' composing,' and not ' playing an instru- J 
 ment,' they gave way, and decided to let me have regular I 
 lessons in harmony from Miiller, the very musician from whom < 
 I had had instruction on the sly some little while before, and 
 who had not yet been paid. In return for this I promised 
 faithfully to go back to work conscientiously at St. Nicholas's!
 
 42 MY LIFE 
 
 /School. I soon grew tired of both. I could brook no control, 
 and this unfortunately applied to my musical instruction as 
 well. The dry study of harmony disgusted me more and more, 
 though I continued to conceive fantasias, sonatas, and over- 
 tures, and work them out by myself. On the other hand, I 
 was spurred on by ambition to show what I could do at school 
 if I liked. When the Upper School boys were set the task of 
 writing a poem, I composed a chorus in Greek, on the recent 
 War of Liberation. I can well imagine that this Greek poem 
 had about as much resemblance to a real Greek oration and 
 poetry, as the sonatas and overtures I used to compose at that 
 time had to thoroughly professional music. My attempt was 
 scornfully rejected as a piece of impudence. After that I 
 have no further recollections of my school. My continued 
 attendance was a pure sacrifice on my side, made out of con- 
 sideration for my family: I did not pay the slightest atten- 
 tion to what was taught in the lessons, but secretly occupied 
 myself all the while with reading any book that happened to 
 attract me. 
 
 As my musical instruction also did me no good, I continued 
 in my wilful process of self-education by copying out the 
 scores of my beloved masters, and in so doing acquired a 
 neat handwriting, which in later years has often been ad- 
 mired. I believe my copies of the C minor Symphony and 
 the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven are still preserved as 
 souvenirs. 
 
 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony became the mystical goal of all 
 my strange thoughts and desires about music. I was first 
 attracted to it by the opinion prevalent among musicians, 
 not only in Leipzig but elsewhere, that this work had been 
 written by Beethoven when he was already half mad. It was 
 considered the non plus ultra of all that was fantastic and 
 incomprehensible, and this was quite enough to rouse in me a 
 passionate desire to study this mysterious work. At the very 
 first glance at the score, of which I obtained possession with such 
 difficulty, I felt irresistibly attracted by the long-sustained 
 pure fifths with which the first phrase opens: these chords, 
 which, as I related above, had played such a supernatural 
 part in my childish impressions of music, seemed in this case
 
 THE NINTH SYMPHONY. VIOLIN LESSONS 43 
 
 to form the spiritual keynote of my own life. This, I thought, 
 must surely contain the secret of all secrets, and accordingly 
 the first thing to be done was to make the score my own by a 
 process of laborious copying. I well remember that on one 
 occasion the sudden appearance of the dawn made such an 
 uncanny impression on my excited nerves that I jumped into 
 bed with a scream as though I had seen a ghost. The symphony 
 at that time had not yet been arranged for the piano; it had 
 found so little favour that the publisher did not feel inclined: 
 to run the risk of producing it. I set to work at it, and actually! 
 composed a complete piano solo, which I tried to play to myself. 
 I sent my work to Schott, the publisher of the score, at Mainz. 
 I received in reply a letter saying ' that the publishers had not 
 yet decided to issue the Ninth Symphony for the piano, but 
 that they would gladly keep my laborious work,' and offered 
 me remuneration in the shape of the score of the great Missa 
 Solemnis in D, which I accepted with great pleasure. 
 
 In addition to this work I practised the violin for some time, 
 as my harmony master very rightly considered that some knowl- 
 edge of the practical working of this instrument was indis- 
 pensable for any one who had the intention of composing for 
 the orchestra. My mother, indeed, paid the violinist Sipp (who 
 was still playing in the Leipzig orchestra in 1865) eight thalers 
 for a violin (I do not know what became of it), with which 
 for quite three months I must have inflicted unutterable torture 
 upon my mother and sister by practising in my tiny little 
 room. I got so far as to play certain Variations in F sharp 
 by Mayseder, but only reached the second or third. After 
 that I have no further recollections of this practising, in which 
 my family fortunately had very good reasons of their own for 
 not encouraging me. 
 
 But the time now arrived when my interest in the theatre 
 again took a passionate hold upon me. A new company 
 had been formed in my birthplace under very good auspices. 
 The Board of Management of the Court Theatre at Dresden 
 had taken over the management of the Leipzig theatre for 
 three years. My sister Rosalie was a member of the company, 
 and through her I could always gain admittance to the per- 
 formances; and that which in my childhood had been merely
 
 44 MY LIFE 
 
 the interest aroused by a strange spirit of curiosity now became 
 a more deep-seated and conscious passion. 
 
 Julius Cassar, Macbeth, Hamlet, the plays of Schiller, and 
 to crown all, Goethe's Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. 
 The Opera was giving the first performances of Marschner's 
 Vampir and Templer und Jiidin. The Italian company ar- 
 rived from Dresden, and fascinated the Leipzig audience by 
 their consummate mastery of their art. Even I was almost 
 carried away by the enthusiasm with which the town was over- 
 whelmed, into forgetting the boyish impressions which Signor 
 Sassaroli had stamped upon my mind, when another miracle 
 which also came to us from Dresden suddenly gave a new 
 direction to my artistic feelings and exercised a decisive influ- 
 ence over my whole life. This consisted of a special per- 
 formance given by Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, who at that 
 time was at the zenith of her artistic career, young, beautiful, 
 and ardent, and whose like I have never again seen on the 
 stage. She made her appearance in Fidelio. 
 
 If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event 
 that produced so profound an impression .upon me. Any one 
 who can remember that wonderful woman at this period of her 
 life must to some extent have experienced the almost satanic 
 ardour which the intensely human art of this incomparable 
 actress poured into his veins. After the performance I rushed 
 to a friend's house and wrote a short note to the singer, in 
 which I briefly told her that from that moment my life had 
 acquired its true significance, and that if in days to come she 
 should ever hear my name praised in the world of Art, she 
 must remember that she had that evening made me what I 
 then swore it was my destiny to become. This note I left at 
 her hotel, and ran out into the night as if I were mad. In the 
 year 1842, when I went to Dresden to make my debut with 
 Rienzi, I paid several visits to the kind-hearted singer, who 
 , startled me on one occasion by repeating this letter word for 
 word. It seemed to have made an impression on her too, as 
 she had actually kept it. 
 
 At this point I feel myself obliged to acknowledge that the 
 great confusion which now began to prevail in my life, and 
 particularly in my studies, was due to the inordinate effect 

 
 EFFECT OF SCHRODEK-DEVKIENT'S AET 45 
 
 this artistic interpretation had upon me. I did not know 
 where to turn, or how to set about producing something my- 
 self which might place me in direct contact with the impres- 
 sion I had received, while everything that could not be 
 brought into touch with it seemed to me so shallow and mean- 
 ingless that I could not possibly trouble myself with it. I 
 should have liked to compose a work worthy of a Schroder- 
 Devrient ; but as this was quite beyond my power, in my head- 
 long despair I let all artistic endeavour slide, and as my work 
 was also utterly insufficient to absorb me, I flung myself 
 recklessly into the life of the moment in the company of / 
 strangely chosen associates, and indulged in all kinds of youth- ' 
 ful excesses. 
 
 I now entered into all the dissipations of raw manhood, the, 
 outward ugliness and inward emptiness of which make me 
 marvel to this day. My intercourse with those of my own age \ 
 had always been the result of pure chance. I cannot remember 
 that any special inclination or attraction determined me in 
 the choice of my young friends. While I can honestly say 
 that I was never in a position to stand aloof out of envy from 
 any one who was specially gifted, I can only explain my indiffer- 
 ence in the choice of my associates by the fact that through 
 inexperience regarding the sort of companionship that would 
 be of advantage to me, I cared only to have some one who 
 would accompany me in my excursions, and to whom I could 
 pour out my feelings to my heart's content without caring what 
 effect it might have upon him. The result of this was that 
 after a stream of confidences to which my own excitement 
 was the only response, I at length reached the point when I 
 turned and looked at my friend; to my astonishment I gener- 
 ally found that there was no question of response at all, and 
 as soon as I set my heart on drawing something from him in 
 return, and urged him to confide in me, when he really had 
 nothing to tell, the connection usually came to an end and left 
 no trace on my life. In a certain sense my strange relation- 
 ship with Flachs was typical of the great majority of my ties 
 in after-life. Consequently, as no lasting personal bond of 
 friendship ever found its way into my life, it is easy to under- 
 stand how delight in the dissipations of student life could become
 
 46 MY LIFE 
 
 a passion of some duration, because in it individual intercourse 
 is entirely replaced by a common circle of acquaintances. In 
 the midst of rowdyism and ragging of the most foolish de- 
 scription I remained quite alone, and it is quite possible that 
 these frivolities formed a protecting hedge round my inmost 
 soul, which needed time to grow to its natural strength and not 
 be weakened by reaching maturity too soon. 
 
 My life seemed to break up in all directions ; I had to leave 
 St Nicholas's School at Easter 1830, as I was too deeply in dis- 
 grace with the staff of masters ever to hope for any promotion 
 in the University from that quarter. It was now determined 
 that I should study privately for six months and then go to 
 St. Thomas's School, where I should be in fresh surroundings 
 and be able to work up and qualify in a short time for the 
 University. My uncle Adolph, with whom I was constantly 
 renewing my friendship, and who also encouraged me about 
 my music and exercised a good influence over me in that re- 
 spect, in spite of the utter degradation of my life at that time, 
 kept arousing in me an ever fresh desire for scientific studies. 
 I took private lessons in Greek from a scholar, and read 
 Sophocles with him. For a time I hoped this noble poet would 
 again inspire me to get a real hold on the language, but the 
 hope was vain. I had not chosen the right teacher, and, 
 moreover, his sitting-room in which we pursued our studies 
 looked out on a tanyard, the repulsive odour of which affected 
 my nerves so strongly that I became thoroughly disgusted 
 both with Sophocles and Greek. My brother-in-law, Brock- 
 haus, who wanted to put me in the way of earning some pocket- 
 money, gave me the correcting of the proof-sheets of a new 
 edition he was bringing out of Becker's Universal History, 
 revised by Lobell. This gave me a reason for improving by 
 private study the superficial general instruction on every sub- 
 ject which is given at school, and I thus acquired the valuable 
 knowledge which I was destined to have in later life of most 
 of the branches of learning so uninterestingly taught in class. 
 I must not forget to mention that, to a certain extent, the at- 
 traction exercised over me by this first closer study of history 
 was due to the fact that it brought me in eightpence a sheet, 
 and I thus found myself in one of the rarest positions in my life,
 
 JULY REVOLUTION IN PARIS 47 
 
 actually earning money; yet I should be doing myself an 
 injustice if I did not bear in mind the vivid impressions I now 
 for the first time received upon turning my serious attention 
 to those periods of history with which I had hitherto had a 
 very superficial acquaintance."^ All I recollect about my school 
 days in this connection is that I was attracted by the classical 
 period of Greek history ; Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae 
 composed the canon of all that interested me in the subject, 
 Now for the first time I made an intimate acquaintance with 
 the Middle Ages and the French Revolution, as my work in' 
 correcting dealt precisely with the two volumes which con- 
 tained these two periods. I remember in particular that the 
 description of the Revolution filled me with sincere hatred 
 for its heroes; unfamiliar as I was with the previous history 
 of France, my human sympathy was horrified by the cruelty 
 of the men of that day, and this purely human impulse re- 
 mained so strong in me that I remember how even quite recently 
 it cost me a real struggle to give any weight to the true political 
 significance of those acts of violence. 
 
 How great, then, was my astonishment when one day the 
 current political events of the time enabled me, as it were, to 
 gain a personal experience of the sort of national upheavals 
 with which I had come into distant contact in the course of my 
 proof-correcting. The special editions of the Leipzig Gazette 
 brought us the news of the July Revolution in Paris. The King 
 of France had been driven from his throne; Lafayette, who a 
 moment before had seemed a myth to me, was again riding 
 through a cheering crowd in the streets of Paris; the Swiss 
 Guards had once more been butchered in the Tuileries, and a 
 new King knew no better way of commending himself to the 
 populace than by declaring himself the embodiment of the Re- 
 public. Suddenly to become conscious of living at a time in 
 which such things took place could not fail to have a startling 
 effect on a boy of seventeen. The world as a historic phenome- 
 non began from that day in my eyes, and naturally my sym- 
 pathies were wholly on the side of the Revolution, which I 
 regarded in the light of a heroic popular struggle crowned with 
 victory, and free from the blemish of the terrible excesses that 
 stained the first French Revolution. As the whole of Europe,
 
 48 MY LIFE 
 
 including some of the German states, was soon plunged more or 
 less violently into rebellion, I remained for some time in a 
 feverish state of suspense, and now first turned my attention to 
 the causes of these upheavals, which I regarded as struggles of 
 the young and hopeful against the old and effete portion of 
 mankind. Saxony also did not remain unscathed ; in Dresden 
 it came to actual fighting in the streets, which immediately pro- 
 duced a political change in the shape of the proclamation of the 
 regency of the future King Frederick, and the granting of a 
 constitution. This event filled me with such enthusiasm that 
 I composed a political overture, the prelude of which depicted 
 dark oppression in the midst of which a strain was at last 
 heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I wrote the 
 words Friedrich und Freiheit; this strain was intended to 
 develop gradually and majestically into the fullest triumph, 
 which I hoped shortly to see successfully performed at one of 
 the Leipzig Garden Concerts. 
 
 However, before I was able to develop my politico-musical 
 conceptions further, disorders broke out in Leipzig itself which 
 summoned me from the precincts of Art to take a direct share 
 in national life. National life in Leipzig at this time meant 
 nothing more than antagonism between the students and the 
 police, the latter being the arch-enemy upon whom the youthful 
 love of liberty vented itself. Some students had been arrested 
 in a street broil who were now to be rescued. The under- 
 graduates, who had been restless for some days, assembled 
 one evening in the Market Place and the Clubs, mustered 
 together, and made a ring round their leaders. The whole 
 proceeding was marked by a certain measured solemnity, which 
 impressed me deeply. They sang Oaudeamus igitur, formed 
 up into column, and picking up from the crowd any young 
 men who sympathised with them, marched gravely and reso- 
 lutely from the Market Place to the University buildings, 
 to open the cells and set free the students who had been 
 arrested. My heart beat fast as I marched with them to this 
 ' Taking of the Bastille,' but things did not turn out as we 
 expected, for in the courtyard of the Paulinum the solemn 
 procession was stopped by Rector Krug, who had come down 
 to meet it with his grey head bared; his assurance that the
 
 TWO HOUSES PLUNDERED IN ONE NIGHT 49 
 
 captives had already been released at his request was greeted 
 with a thundering cheer, and the matter seemed at an end. 
 
 But the tense expectation of a revolution had grown too 
 great not to demand some sacrifice. A summons was suddenly- 
 spread calling us to a notorious alley in order to exercise 
 popular justice upon a hated magistrate who, it was rumoured, 
 had unlawfully taken under his protection a certain house of 
 ill-fame in that quarter. When I reached the spot with the 
 tail-end of the crowd, I found the house had been broken 
 into and all sorts of violence had been committed. I recall 
 with horror the intoxicating effect this unreasoning fury had 
 upon me, and cannot deny that without the slightest personal 
 provocation I shared, like one possessed, in the frantic on- 
 slaught of the undergraduates, who madly shattered furniture 
 and crockery to bits. I do not believe that the ostensible motive 
 for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be found in a fact 
 that was a grave menace to public morality, had any weight 
 with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish 
 fury of these popular outbursts that drew me, too, like a 
 madman into their vortex. 
 
 The fact that such fits of fury are not quick to abate, but, 
 in accordance with certain natural laws, reach their proper 
 conclusion only after they have degenerated into frenzy, I 
 was to learn in my own person. Scarcely did the summons 
 ring out for us to march to another resort of the same kind 
 than I too found myself in the tide which set towards the 
 opposite end of the town. There the same exploits were re- 
 peated, and the most ludicrous outrages perpetrated. I can- 
 not remember that the enjoyment of alcoholic drinks con- 
 tributed to the intoxication of myself and my immediate fellows. 
 I only know that I finally got into the state that usually suc- 
 ceeds a debauch, and upon waking next morning, as if from a 
 hideous nightmare, had to convince myself that I had really 
 taken part in the events of the previous night by a trophy I 
 possessed in the shape of a tattered red curtain, which I had 
 brought home as a token of my prowess. The thought that 
 people generally, and my own family in particular, were wont 
 to put a lenient construction upon youthful escapades was a 
 great comfort to me; outbursts of this kind on the part of the
 
 50 MY LIFE 
 
 young were regarded as righteous indignation against really 
 serious scandals, and there was no need for me to be afraid of 
 owning up to having taken part in such excesses. 
 
 The dangerous example, however, which had been set by 
 the undergraduates incited the lower classes and the mob to 
 similar excesses on the following nights, against employers 
 nnd any who were obnoxious to them. The matter at once 
 assumed a more serious complexion; property was threatened, 
 and a conflict between rich and poor stood grinning at our 
 doors. As there were no soldiers in the town, and the police 
 were thoroughly disorganised, the students were called in as 
 a protection against the lower orders. An undergraduate's 
 hour of glory now began, such as I could only have thirsted 
 for in my schoolboy dreams. The student became the tutelar 
 deity of Leipzig, called on by the authorities to arm and band 
 together in defence of property, and the same young men who 
 two days before had yielded to a rage for destruction, now 
 mustered in the University courtyard. The proscribed names 
 of the students' clubs and unions were shouted by the mouths 
 of town councillors and chief constables in order to summon 
 curiously equipped undergraduates, who thereupon, in simple 
 mediaeval array of war, scattered throughout the town, 
 occupied the guard-rooms at the gates, provided sentinels for 
 the grounds of various wealthy merchants, and, as occasion 
 demanded, took places which seemed threatened, more especially 
 inns, under their permanent protection. 
 
 Though, unluckily, I was not yet a member of their body, I 
 anticipated the delights of academic citizenship by half-impu- 
 dent, half-obsequious solicitation of the leaders of the students 
 whom I honoured most. I had the good fortune to recommend 
 myself particularly to these ' cocks of the walk,' as they were 
 styled, on account of my relationship to Brockhaus, in whose 
 grounds the main body of these champions were encamped 
 for some time. My brother-in-law was among those who had 
 been seriously threatened, and it was only owing to really 
 great presence of mind and assurance that he succeeded in 
 saving his printing works, and especially his steam presses, 
 which were the chief object of attack, from destruction. To 
 protect his property against further assault, detachments of
 
 students were told off to his grounds as well; the excellent 
 entertainment which the generous master of the house offered 
 his jovial guardians in his pleasant summer-house enticed the 
 pick of the students to him. My brother-in-law was for sev- 
 eral weeks guarded day and night against possible attacks 
 by the populace, and on this occasion, as the mediator of a 
 flowing hospitality, I celebrated among the most famous 
 1 bloods ' of the University the true saturnalia of my scholarly 
 ambition. 
 
 For a still longer period the guarding of the gates was 
 entrusted to the students; the unheard-of splendour which 
 accordingly became associated with this post drew fresh as- 
 pirants to the spot from far and near. Every day huge char- 
 tered vehicles discharged at the Halle Gate whole bands of 
 the boldest sons of learning from Halle, Jena, Gottingen, and 
 the remotest regions. They got down close to the guards at 
 the gate, and for several weeks never set foot in an inn or any 
 other dwelling; they lived at the expense of the Council, drew 
 vouchers on the police for food and drink, and knew but one 
 care, that the possibility of a general quieting of men's minds 
 would make their opportune guardianship superfluous. I never 
 missed a day on guard or a night either, alas! trying to im- 
 press on my family the urgent need for my personal endur- 
 ance. Of course, the quieter and really studious spirits among 
 us soon resigned these duties, and only the flower of the flock 
 of undergraduates remained so staunch that it became difficult 
 for the authorities to relieve them of their task. I held out 
 to the very last, and succeeded in making most astonishing 
 friends for my age. Many of the most audacious remained 
 in Leipzig even when there was no guard duty to fulfil, and 
 peopled the place for some time with champions of an extra- 
 ordinarily desperate and dissipated type, who had been re- 
 peatedly sent down from various universities for rowdyism 
 or debt, and who now, thanks to the exceptional circumstances 
 of the day, found a refuge in Leipzig, where at first they had 
 been received with open arms by the general enthusiasm of 
 their comrades. 
 
 In the presence of all these phenomena I felt as if I were 
 surrounded by the results of an earthquake which had upset
 
 52 MY LIFE 
 
 the usual order of things. My brother-in-J iw, Friedrich Brock- 
 haus, who could justly taunt the form ;r authorities of the 
 place with their inability to maintain peace and order, was 
 carried away by the current of a formidable movement of op- 
 position. He made a daring speech at the Guildhall before 
 their worships the Town Council, whi,ch brought him popu- 
 larity, and he was appointed second-in -command of the newly 
 constituted Leipzig Municipal Guard. This body at length 
 ousted my adored students from the guard-rooms of the town 
 gates, and we no longer had the right of stopping travellers 
 and inspecting their passes. On the other hand, I flattered 
 myself that I might regard my r ;w position as a boy citizen 
 as equivalent to that of the Freich National Guard, and my 
 brother-in-law, Brockhaus, as a Saxon Lafayette, which, at 
 all events, succeeded in furnishing my soaring excitement with 
 a healthy stimulant. I now began to read the papers and 
 cultivate politics enthusiasiically ; however, the social inter- 
 course of the civic world did not attract me sufficiently to 
 make me false to my beloved academic associates. I followed 
 them faithfully from the guard-rooms to the ordinary bars, 
 where their splendour as men of the literary world now sought 
 retirement. 
 
 My chief ambition was to become one of them as soon as 
 possible. This, however, could only be accomplished by being 
 again entered at a grammar school. St. Thomas's, whose head- 
 master was a feeble old man, was the place where my wishes 
 could be most speedily attained. 
 
 I joined the school in the autumn of 1830 simply with the 
 intention of qualifying myself for the Leaving Examination 
 by merely nominal attendance there. The chief thing in con- 
 nection with it was that I and friends of the same bent suc- 
 : ceeded in establishing a sham students' association called the 
 'Freshman's Club. It was formed with all possible pedantry, 
 the institution of the ' Comment ' was introduced, fencing- 
 practice and sword-bouts were held, and an inaugural meeting 
 to which several prominent students were invited, and at which 
 [ presided as ' Vice ' in white buckskin trousers and great 
 jack-boots, gave me a foretaste of the delights awaiting me as 
 a full-blown son of the Muses.
 
 ST. THOMAS'S SCHOOL 53 
 
 The masters of St. Thomas's, however, were not quite so 
 ready to fall in with my aspirations to studentship ; at the end 
 of the half-year they were of the opinion that I had not given 
 a thought to their institution, and nothing could persuade them 
 that I had earned a title to academic citizenship by any acqui-^ 
 sition of knowledge. Some sort of decision was necessary, so 
 I accordingly informed my family that I had made up my 
 mind not to study for a profession at the University, but to 
 become a musician. There was nothing to prevent me matricu- 
 lating as ' Studiosus Musicae,' and, without therefore troubling 
 myself about the pedantries of the authorities at St. Thomas's, 
 I defiantly quitted that seat af learning from which I had_ 
 derived small profit, and presented myself forthwith to the 
 rector of the University, whose acquaintance I had made on 
 the evening of the riot, to be enrolled as a student of music. 
 This was accordingly done without further ado, on the payment 
 of the usual fees. 
 
 I was in a great hurry about it, for in a week the Easter 
 vacation would begin, and the * men ' would go down from 
 Leipzig, when it would be impossible to be elected member of 
 a club until the vacation was over, and to stay all those weeks 
 at home in Leipzig without having the right to wear the coveted 
 colours seemed to me unendurable torture. Straight from the 
 rector's presence I ran like a wounded animal to the fencing 
 school, to present myself for admission to the Saxon Club, 
 showing my card of matriculation. I attained my object, I 
 could wear the colours of the Saxonia, which was in the 
 fashion at that time, and in great request because it numbered 
 so many delightful members in its ranks. 
 
 The strangest fate was to befall me in this Easter vacation, 
 during which I was really the only remaining representative 
 of the Saxon Club in Leipzig. In the beginning this club 
 consisted .chiefly of men of good family as well as the better 
 class elements of the student world ; all of them were members 
 of highly placed and well-to-do families in Saxony in general, 
 and in particular from the capital, Dresden, and spent their 
 vacation at their respective homes. There remained in Leipzig 
 during the vacations only those wandering students who had 
 no homes, and for whom in reality it was always or never
 
 54 MY LIFE 
 
 holiday time. Among these a separate club had arisen of 
 daring and desperate young reprobates who had found a last 
 refuge, as I said, at Leipzig in the glorious period I have 
 recorded. I had already made the personal acquaintance of 
 these swashbucklers, who pleased my fancy greatly, when 
 they were guarding the Brockhaus grounds. Although the 
 regular duration of a university course did not exceed three 
 years, most of these men had never left their universities for 
 six or seven years. 
 
 I was particularly fascinated by a man called Gebhardt, 
 who was endowed with extraordinary physical beauty and 
 strength, and whose slim heroic figure towered head and 
 shoulders above all his companions. When he walked down 
 the street arm-in-arm with two of the strongest of his com- 
 rades, he used suddenly to take it into his head, by an easy 
 movement of his arm, to lift his friends high in the air and 
 flutter along in this way as though he had a pair of human 
 wings. When a cab was going along the streets at a sharp trot, 
 he would seize a spoke of the wheel with one hand and force 
 it to pull up. Nobody ever told him that he was stupid 
 because they were afraid of his strength, hence his limitations 
 were scarcely noticed. His redoubtable strength, combined 
 with a temperate disposition, lent him a majestic dignity 
 which placed him above the level of an ordinary mortal. He 
 had come to Leipzig from Mecklenburg in the company of a 
 certain Degelow, who was as powerful and adroit, though by 
 no means of such gigantic proportions, as his friend, and whose 
 chief attraction lay in his great vivacity and animated features. 
 He had led a wild and dissipated life in which play, drink, 
 passionate love affairs, and constant and prompt duelling had 
 rung the changes. Ceremonious politeness, an ironic and 
 pedantic coldness, which testified to bold self-confidence, 
 combined with a very hot temper, formed the chief character- 
 istics of this personage and natures akin to his. Degelow's 
 wildness and passion were lent a curious diabolical charm by 
 the possession of a malicious humour which he often turned 
 against himself, whereas towards others he exercised a certain 
 chivalrous tenderness. 
 
 These two extraordinary men were joined by others who
 
 TKOUBLE AHEAD 55 
 
 possessed all the qualities essential to a reckless life, together 
 with real and headstrong valour. One of them, named Stelzer, 
 a regular Berserker out of the Nibelungenlied, who was nick- 
 named Lope, was in his twentieth term. While these men 
 openly and consciously belonged to a world doomed to destruc- 
 tion, and all their actions and escapades could only be explained 
 by the hypothesis that they all believed that inevitable ruin 
 was imminent, I made in their company the acquaintance of 
 a certain Schroter, who particularly attracted me by his cor- 
 dial disposition, pleasant Hanoverian accent, and refined wit. 
 He was not one of the regular young dare-devils, towards 
 whom he adopted a calm observant attitude, while they were 
 all fond of him and glad to see him. I made a real friend of 
 this Schroter, although he was much older than I was. Through 
 him I became acquainted with the works ,and poems of H. 
 Heine, and from him I acquired a certain neat and saucy wit, 
 and I was quite ready to surrender myself to his agreeable 
 influence in the hope of improving my outward bearing. It 
 was his company in particular th]at I sought every day; in the 
 afternoon I generally met him in the Rosenthal or Kintschy's 
 Chalet, though always in the presence of those wonderful Goths 
 who excited at once my alarm and admiration. 
 
 They all belonged to university clubs which were on hostile 
 terms with the one of which I was a member. What this hos- 
 tility between the various clubs meant only those can judge 
 who are familiar with the tone prevalent among them in those 
 days. The mere sight of hostile colours sufficed to infuriate 
 these men, who otherwise were kind and gentle, provided they 
 had taken the slightest drop too much. At all events, as long 
 as the old stagers were sober they would look with good- 
 natured complacency at a slight young fellow like me in the 
 hostile colours moving among them so amicably. Those colours 
 I wore in my own peculiar fashion. I had made use of the 
 brief week during which my club was still in Leipzig to become 
 the possessor of a splendid c Saxon ' cap, richly embroidered 
 with silver, and worn by a man called Miiller, who was after- 
 wards a prominent constable at Dresden. I had been seized 
 with such a violent craving for this cap that I managed to buy 
 it from him, as he wanted money to go home. In spite of this
 
 56 MY LIFE 
 
 C remarkable cap I was, as I have said, welcome in the den of 
 this band of rowdies : my friend Schroter saw to that. It was 
 only when the grog, which was the principal beverage of these 
 wild spirits, began to work that I used to notice curious glances 
 and overhear doubtful speeches, the significance of which was 
 for some time hidden from me by the dizziness in which my 
 own senses were plunged by this baneful drink. 
 
 As I was inevitably bound on this account to be mixed up 
 in quarrels for some time to come, it afforded me a great satis- 
 faction that my first fight, as a matter of fact, arose from an 
 incident more creditable to me than those provocations which 
 I had left half unnoticed. One day Degelow came up to 
 Schroter and me in a wine-bar that we often frequented, and 
 in quite a friendly manner confessed to us confidentially his 
 liking for a young and very pretty actress whose talent Schroter 
 disputed. Degelow rejoined that this was as it might be, but 
 that, for his part, he regarded the young lady as the most 
 respectable woman in the theatre. I at once asked him if he 
 considered my sister's reputation was not as good. Accord- 
 ing to students' notions it was impossible for Degelow, who 
 doubtless had not the remotest intention of being insulting, to 
 give me any assurance further than to say that he certainly 
 did not think my sister had an inferior reputation, but that, 
 nevertheless, he meant to abide by his assertion concerning 
 the young lady he had mentioned. Hereupon followed without 
 delay the usual challenge, opening with the words, * You 're 
 an ass,' which sounded almost ridiculous to my own ears when 
 I said them to this seasoned swashbuckler. 
 
 I remember that Degelow too gasped with astonishment, 
 and lightning seemed to flash from his eyes ; but he controlled 
 himself in the presence of my friend, and proceeded to observe 
 the usual formalities of a challenge, .. and chose broadswords 
 (Tcrumme Sabel) as the weapons for the fight. The event made 
 a great stir among our companions, but I saw less reason than 
 before to abstain from my usual intercourse with them. Only I 
 became more strict about the behaviour of the swashbucklers, 
 and for several days no evening passed without producing a 
 challenge between me and some formidable bully, until at last 
 Count Solms, the only member of my club who had returned
 
 PREPARATIONS FOR A DUEL 57 
 
 to Leipzig as yet, visited me as though he were an intimate 
 friend and inquired into what had occurred. He applauded 
 my conduct, but advised me not to wear my colours until the 
 return of our comrades from the vacation, and to keep away 
 from the bad company into which I had ventured. Fortunately 
 I had not long to wait; university life soon began again, and 
 the fencing ground was filled. The unenviable position, in , 
 which, in student phrase, I was suspended with a half-dozen 
 of the most terrible swordsmen, earned me a glorious repu- 
 tion among the ' freshmen ' and ' juniors,' and even among 
 the older ( champions ' of the Saxonia. 
 
 My seconds were duly arranged, the dates for the various 
 duels on hand settled, and by the care of my seniors the needful 
 time was secured for me to acquire some sort of skill in fencing. 
 The light heart with which I awaited the fate which threatened 
 me in at least one of the impending encounters I myself could 
 not understand at the time; on the other hand, the way in 
 which that fate preserved me from the consequences of my 
 rashness seems truly miraculous in my eyes to this day, and 
 worthy of further description. 
 
 The preparations for a duel included obtaining some ex- 
 perience of these encounters by being present at several of 
 them. We freshmen attained this object by what is called 
 ' carrying duty,' that is to say, we were entrusted with the 
 rapiers of the corps (precious weapons of honour belonging 
 to the association), and had to take them first to the grinder 
 and thence to the scene of encounter, a proceeding which was 
 attended with some danger, as it had to be done surrepti- 
 tiously, since duelling was forbidden by law; in return we 
 acquired the right of assisting as spectators at the impending 
 engagements. 
 
 When I had earned this honour, the meeting-place chosen 
 for the duel I was to watch was the billiard-room of an inn in 
 the Burgstrasse; the table had been moved to one side, and 
 on it the authorised spectators took their places. Among 
 them I stood up with a beating heart to watch the dangerous 
 encounters between those doughty champions. I was told on 
 this occasion of the story of one of my friends (a Jew named 
 Levy, but known as Lippert), who on this very floor had given
 
 58 MY LIFE 
 
 so much ground before his antagonist that the door had to 
 be opened for him, and he fell back through it down the steps 
 into the street, still believing he was engaged in the duel. 
 When several bouts had been finished, two men came on to 
 the ' pitch,' Tempel, the president of the Markomanen, and a 
 certain Wohlfart, an old stager, already in his fourteenth half- 
 year of study, with whom I also was booked for an encounter 
 later on. When this was the case, a man was not allowed to 
 watch, in order that the weak points of the duellist might not 
 be betrayed to his future opponent. Wohlfart was accordingly 
 asked by my chiefs whether he wanted me removed; where- 
 upon he replied with calm contempt, ' Let them leave the 
 little freshman there, in God's name ! ' Thus I became an eye- 
 witness of the disablement of a swordsman who nevertheless 
 showed himself so experienced and skilful on the occasion that 
 I might well have become alarmed for the issue of my future 
 encounter with him. His gigantic opponent cut the artery 
 of his right arm, which at once ended the fight; the surgeon 
 declared that Wohlfart would not be able to hold a sword 
 again for years, under which circumstances my proposed meet- 
 ing with him was at once cancelled. I do not deny that this 
 incident cheered my soul. 
 
 Shortly afterwards the first general reunion of our club was 
 held at the Green Tap. These gatherings are regular hot- 
 beds for the production of duels. Here I brought upon myself 
 a new encounter with one Tischer, but learned at the same time 
 that I had been relieved of two of my most formidable previous 
 engagements of the kind by the disappearance of my opponents, 
 both of whom had escaped on account of debt and left no trace 
 behind them. The only one of whom I could hear anything 
 was the terrible Stelzer, surnamed Lope. This fellow had 
 taken advantage of the passing of Polish refugees, who had 
 at that time already been driven over the frontier and were 
 making their way through Germany to France, to disguise 
 himself as an ill-starred champion of freedom, and he subse- 
 quently found his way to the Foreign Legion in Algeria. On 
 the way home from the gathering, Degelow, whom I was to 
 meet in a few weeks, proposed a ' truce.' This was a device 
 which, if it was accepted, as it was in this case, enabled the
 
 DEGELOW AND TISCHER 59 
 
 future combatants to entertain and talk to one another, which 
 was otherwise most strictly forbidden. We wandered back 
 to the town arm-in-arm; with chivalrous tenderness my in- 
 teresting and formidable opponent declared that he was de- 
 lighted at the prospect of crossing swords with me in a few 
 weeks' time; that he regarded it as an honour and a pleasure, 
 as he was fond of me and respected me for my valorous con- 
 duct. Seldom has any personal success flattered me more. 
 We embraced, and amid protestations which, owing to a certain 
 dignity about them, acquired a significance I can never forget, 
 we parted. He informed me that he must first pay a visit to 
 Jena, where he had an appointment to fight a duel. A week 
 later the news of his death reached Leipzig; he had been mor- 
 tally wounded in the duel at Jena. 
 
 I felt as if I were living in a dream, out of which I was 
 aroused by the announcement of my encounter with Tischer. 
 Though he was a first-rate and vigorous fighter, he had been 
 chosen by our chiefs for my first passage of arms because he was 
 fairly short. In spite of being unable to feel any great confi- 
 dence in my hastily acquired and little practised skill in fencing, 
 I looked forward to this my first duel with a light heart. Al- 
 though it was against the rules, I never dreamed of telling 
 the authorities that I was suffering from a slight rash which 
 I had caught at that time, and which I was informed made 
 wounds so dangerous that if it were reported it would postpone 
 the meeting, in spite of the fact that I was modest enough to 
 be prepared for wounds. I was sent for at ten in the morning, 
 and left home smiling to think what my mother and sisters 
 would say if in a few hours I were brought back in the alarming 
 state I anticipated. My chief, Herr v. Schonfeld, was a pleasant, 
 quiet sort of man, who lived on the marsh. When I reached 
 his house, he leant out of the window with his pipe iff his 
 mouth, and greeted me with the words : ' You can go home, 
 my lad, it is all off; Tischer is in hospital.' When I got up- 
 stairs I found several ' leading men ' assembled, from whom 
 I learned that Tischer had got very drunk the night before, 
 and had in consequence laid himself open to the most outrageous 
 treatment by the inhabitants of a house of ill-fame. He was 
 terribly hurt, and had been taken by the police in the first
 
 60 MY LIFE 
 
 instance to the hospital. This inevitably meant rustication, 
 and, above all, expulsion from the academic association to 
 which he belonged. 
 
 I cannot clearly recall the incidents that removed from Leip- 
 zig the few remaining fire-eaters to whom I had pledged myself 
 since that fatal vacation-time; I only know that this side of 
 my fame as a student yielded to another. We celebrated the 
 ' freshmen's gathering/ to which all those who could manage 
 it drove a four-in-hand in a long procession through the town. 
 After the president of the club had profoundly moved me 
 with his sudden and yet prolonged solemnity, I conceived the 
 desire to be among the very last to return home from the out- 
 ing. Accordingly I stayed away three days and three nights, 
 and spent the time chiefly in gambling, a pastime which from 
 the first night of our festivity cast its devilish snares around 
 me. Some half-dozen of the smartest club members chanced 
 to be together at early dawn in the Jolly Peasant, and forth- 
 with formed the nucleus of a gambling club, which was rein- 
 forced during the day by recruits coming back from the town. 
 Members came to see whether we were still at it, members 
 also went away, but I with the original six held out for days 
 and nights without faltering. 
 
 The desire that first prompted me to take part in the play 
 was the wish to win enough for my score (two thalers) : this 
 I succeeded in doing, and thereupon I was inspired with the 
 hope of being able to settle all the debts I had made at that 
 time by my winnings at play. Just as I had hoped to learn 
 composition most quickly by Logier's method, but had found 
 myself hampered in my object for a long period by unexpected 
 difficulties, so my plan for speedily improving my financial 
 position was likewise doomed to disappointment. To win 
 was not such an easy matter, and for some three months I was 
 such a victim to the rage for gambling that no other pas- 
 sion was able to exercise the slightest influence over my 
 mind. 
 
 Neither the Fechiboden (where the students' fights were 
 practised), nor the beer-house, nor the actual scene of the 
 fights, ever saw my face again. In my lamentable position 
 I racked my brains all day to devise ways and means of getting
 
 PASSION FOR GAMBLING 61 
 
 the money wherewith to gamble at night. In vain did my poor 
 mother try everything in her power to induce me not to come 
 home so late at night, although she had no idea of the real 
 nature of my debauches: after I had left the house in the 
 afternoon I never returned till dawn the next day, and I 
 reached my room (which was at some distance from the others) 
 by climbing over the gate, for my mother had refused to give 
 me a latch-key. 
 
 In despair over my ill-luck, my passion for gambling grew 
 into a veritable mania, and I no longer felt any inclination for 
 those things which at one time had lured me to student life. 
 I became absolutely indifferent to the opinion of my former 
 companions and avoided them entirely; I now lost myself 
 in the smaller gambling dens of Leipzig, where only the very 
 scum of the students congregated. Insensible to any feeling 
 of self-respect, I bore even the contempt of my sister Rosalie; 
 both she and my mother hardly ever deigning to cast a glance 
 at the young libertine whom they only saw at rare intervals, 
 looking deadly pale and worn out: my ever-growing despair 
 made me at last resort to foolhardiness as the only means of 
 forcing hostile fate to my side. It suddenly struck me that 
 only by dint of big stakes could I make big profits. To this end 
 I decided to make use of my mother's pension, of which I was 
 trustee of a fairly large sum. That night I lost everything 
 I had with me except one thaler: the excitement with which 
 I staked that last coin on a card was an experience hitherto 
 quite strange to my young life. As I had had nothing to eat, 
 I was obliged repeatedly to leave the gambling table owing to 
 sickness. With this last thaler I staked my life, for my return 
 to my home was, of course, out of the question. Already I 
 saw myself in the grey dawn, a prodigal son, fleeing from all 
 I held dear, through forest and field towards the unknown. 
 My mood of despair had gained so strong a hold upon me that, 
 when my card won, I immediately placed all the money on a 
 fresh stake, and repeated this experiment until I had won 
 quite a considerable amount. From that moment my luck 
 grew continuously. I gained such confidence that I risked 
 the most hazardous stakes: for suddenly it dawned upon me 
 that this was destined to be my last day with the cards. My
 
 62 MY LIFE 
 
 good fortune now became so obvious that the bank thought 
 it wise to close. Not only had I won back all the money I had 
 lost, but I had won enough to pay off all my debts as well. 
 My sensations during the whole of this process were of the 
 most sacred nature: I felt as if God and His angels were 
 standing by my side and were whispering words of warning 
 and of consolation into my ears. 
 
 Once more I climbed over the gate of my home in the early 
 hours of the morning, this time to sleep peacefully and soundly 
 and to awake very late, strengthened and as though born 
 again. 
 
 No sense of shame deterred me from telling my mother, to 
 whom I presented her money, the whole truth about this 
 decisive night I voluntarily confessed my sin in having 
 utilised her pension, sparing no detail. She folded her hands 
 and thanked God for His mercy, and forthwith regarded me 
 as saved, believing it impossible for me ever to commit such a 
 crime again. 
 
 And, truth to tell, gambling had lost all fascination for me 
 from that moment. The world, in which I had moved like one 
 demented, suddenly seemed stripped of all interest or attrac- 
 tion. My rage for gambling had already made me quite 
 indifferent to the usual student's vanities, and when I was 
 freed from this passion also, I suddenly found myself face to 
 face with an entirely new world. 
 
 - To this world I belonged henceforth: it was the world of 
 -J real and serious musical study, to which I now devoted myself 
 heart and soul. 
 
 Even during this wild period of my life, my musical develop- 
 ment had not been entirely at a standstill; on the contrary, 
 it daily became plainer that music was the only direction 
 towards which my mental tendencies had a marked bent. 
 Only I had got quite out of the habit of musical study. Even 
 now it seems incredible that I managed to find time in those 
 days to finish quite a substantial amount of composition. I 
 have but the faintest recollection of an Overture in C major 
 ( % time), and of a Sonata in B flat major arranged as a duet; 
 the latter pleased my sister Ottilie, who played it with me, so 
 much that I arranged it for orchestra. But another work of
 
 PKODUCTION OF THE ' NEW OVERTURE > 63 
 
 this period, an Overture in B flat major, left an indelible im- 
 pression on my mind on account of an incident connected with 
 it. This composition, in fact, was the outcome of my study of 
 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in about the same degree as Leu- 
 bald und Adelaide was the result of my study of Shakespeare. 
 I had made a special point of bringing out the mystic meaning 
 in the orchestra, which I divided into three distinctly different 
 and opposite elements. I wanted to make the characteristic 
 nature of these elements clear to the score reader the moment 
 he looked at it by a striking display of colour, and only the 
 fact that I could not get any green ink made this picturesque 
 idea impossible. I employed black ink for the brass instru- 
 ments alone, the strings were to have red and the wind green 
 ink. This extraordinary score I gave for perusal to Heinrich 
 Dorn, who was at that time musical director of the Leipzig 
 theatre. He was very young, and impressed me as being a 
 very clever musician and a witty man of the world, whom the 
 Leipzig public made much of. 
 
 Nevertheless, I have never been able to understand how he 
 could have granted my request to produce this overture. 
 
 Some time afterwards I was rather inclined to believe with 
 others, who knew how much he enjoyed a good joke, that he 
 intended to treat himself to a little fun. At the time, however, 
 he vowed that he thought the work interesting, and maintained 
 that if it were only brought out as a hitherto unknown work 
 by Beethoven, the public would receive it with respect, though 
 without understanding. 
 
 It was the Christmas of the fateful year 1830; as usual, 
 there would be no performance at the theatre on Christmas 
 Eve, but instead a concert for the poor had been organised, 
 which received but scant support. The first item on the pro- 
 gramme was called by the exciting title ( New Overture ' > 
 nothing more! I had surreptitiously listened to the rehearsal 
 with some misgiving. I was very much impressed by the cool- 
 ness with which Dorn fenced with the apparent confusion 
 which the members of the orchestra showed with regard to 
 this mysterious composition. The principal theme of the Al- 
 legro was contained in four bars; after every fourth bar, 
 however, a fifth bar had been inserted, which had nothing to
 
 64 MY LIFE 
 
 do with the melody, and which was announced by a loud bang 
 on the kettle-drum on the second beat. As this drum-beat 
 stood out alone, the drummer, who continually thought he 
 was making a mistake, got confused, and did not give the right 
 sharpness to the accent as prescribed by the score. Listening 
 from my hidden corner, and frightened at my original intention, 
 this accidentally different rendering did not displease me. To 
 my genuine annoyance, however, Dorn called the drummer 
 to the front and insisted on his playing the accents with the 
 prescribed sharpness. When, after the rehearsal, I told the 
 musical director of my misgivings about this important fact, 
 I could not get him to promise a milder interpretation of the 
 fatal drum-beat; he stuck to it that the thing would sound 
 very well as it was. In spite of this assurance my restlessness 
 grew, and I had not the courage to introduce myself to my 
 friends in advance as the author of the l New Overture.' 
 
 My sister Ottilie, who had already been forced to survive 
 the secret readings of Leubald und Adelaide, was the only 
 person willing to come with me to hear my work. It was 
 Christmas Eve, and there was to be the usual Christmas tree, 
 presents, etc., at my brother-in-law's, Friedrich Brockhaiis, 
 and both of us naturally wanted to be there. My sister, in 
 particular, who lived there, had a good deal to do with the 
 arrangements, and could only get away for a short while, and 
 that with great difficulty; our amiable relation accordingly 
 had the carriage ready for her so that she might get back more 
 quickly. I made use of this opportunity to inaugurate, as it 
 were, my entree into the musical world in a festive manner. 
 The carriage drew up in front of the theatre. Ottilie went into 
 my brother-in-law's box, which forced me to try and find a 
 seat in the pit. I had forgotten to buy a ticket, and was re- 
 fused admission by the man at the door. Suddenly the tuning 
 up of the orchestra grew louder and louder, and I thought I 
 should have to miss the beginning of my work. In my anxiety 
 I revealed myself to the man at the door as the composer of 
 the ' New Overture,' and in this way succeeded in passing 
 without a ticket. I pushed my way through to one of the first 
 rows of the pit, and sat down in terrible anxiety. 
 
 The Overture began : after the theme of the ' black ' brass
 
 NEW COMPOSITIONS 65 
 
 instruments had made itself heard with great emphasis, the 
 ' red ' Allegro theme started, in which, as I have already 
 mentioned, every fifth bar was interrupted by the drum-beat 
 from the * black ' world. What kind of effect the * green ' 
 theme of the wind instruments, which joined in afterwards, 
 produced upon the listeners, and what they must have thought 
 when ' black/ ' red/ and ' green ' themes became intermingled, 
 has always remained a mystery to me, for the fatal drum-beat, 
 brutally hammered out, entirely deprived me of my senses, 
 especially as this prolonged and continually recurring effect 
 now began to rouse, not only the attention, but the merriment 
 of the audience. I heard my neighbours calculating the return 
 of this effect; knowing the absolute correctness of their 
 calculation, I suffered ten thousand torments, and became 
 almost unconscious. At last I awoke from my nightmare 
 when the Overture, to which I had disdained to give what 
 I considered a trite ending, came to a standstill most 
 unexpectedly. 
 
 No phantoms like those in Hoffmann's Tales could have 
 succeeded in producing the extraordinary state in which I came 
 to my senses on noticing the astonishment of the audience at 
 the end of the performance. I heard no exclamations of dis- 
 approval, no hissing, no remarks, not even laughter; all I saw 
 was intense astonishment at such a strange occurrence, which 
 impressed them, as it did me, like a horrible nightmare. The 
 worst moment, however, came when I had to leave the pit 
 and take my sister home. To get up and pass through the 
 people in the pit was horrible indeed. Nothing, however, 
 equalled the pain of coming face to face with the man at the 
 door; the strange look he gave me haunted me ever after- 
 wards, and for a considerable time I avoided the pit of the 
 Leipzig theatre. 
 
 My next step was to find my sister, who had gone through 
 the whole sad experience with infinite pity; in silence we 
 drove home to be present at a brilliant family festivity, which 
 contrasted with grim irony with the gloom of my bewilderment. 
 
 In spite of it all I tried to believe in myself, and thought I 
 could find comfort in my overture to the Braut von Messina, 
 which I believed to be a better work than the fatal one I had 

 
 66 MY LIFE 
 
 just heard. A reinstatement, however, was out of the question, 
 
 for the directors of the Leipzig theatre regarded me for a long 
 
 time as a very doubtful person, in spite of Dora's friendship. 
 
 , It is true that I still tried my hand at sketching out composi- 
 
 'tions to Goethe's Faust, some of which have been preserved 
 
 to this day: but soon my wild student's life resumed its sway 
 
 ,and drowned the last remnant of serious musical study in me. 
 
 I now began to imagine that because I had become a student 
 I ought to attend the University lectures. From Traugott 
 Krug, who was well known to me on account of his having 
 suppressed the student's revolt, I tried to learn the first prin- 
 ciples of philosophy; a single lesson sufficed to make me give 
 this up. Two or three times, however, I attended the lectures 
 on aesthetics given by one of the younger professors, a man 
 called Weiss. This perseverance was due to the interest which 
 Weiss immediately aroused in me. When I made his acquaint- 
 ance at my uncle Adolph's house, Weiss had just translated the 
 metaphysics of Aristotle, and, if I am not mistaken, dedicated 
 them in a controversial spirit to Hegel. 
 
 On this occasion I had listened to the conversation of these 
 two men on philosophy and philosophers, which made a tre- 
 mendous impression on me. I remember that Weiss was an 
 absent-minded man, with a hasty and abrupt manner of speak- 
 ing; he had an interesting and pensive expression which 
 impressed me immensely. I recollect how, on being accused 
 of a want of clearness in his writing and style, he justified 
 himself by saying that the deep problems of the human mind 
 could not in any case be solved by the mob. This maxim, 
 which struck me as being very plausible, I at once accepted 
 as the principle for all my future writing. I remember that 
 my eldest brother Albert, to whom I once had to write for my 
 mother, grew so disgusted with my letter and style that he 
 said he thought I must be going mad. 
 
 In spite of my hopes that Weiss's lectures would do me much 
 good, I was not capable of continuing to attend them, as my 
 desires in those days drove me to anything but the study of 
 aesthetics. Nevertheless, my mother's anxiety at this time 
 on my behalf made me try to take up music again. As Miiller, 
 the teacher under whom I had studied till that time, had not
 
 THEODOR WEINLICH 67 
 
 been able to inspire me with a permanent love of study, it 
 was necessary to discover whether another teacher might not 
 be better able to induce me to do serious work. 
 
 Theodor Weinlich, who was choirmaster and musical director 
 at St. Thomas's Church, held at that time this important and 
 ancient post which was afterwards occupied by Schicht, and 
 before him by no less a person than Sebastian Bach. By 
 education he belonged to the old Italian school of music, and 
 had studied in Bologna under Pater Martini. He had made 
 a name for himself in this art by his vocal compositions, in 
 which his fine manner of treating the parts was much praised. 
 He himself told me one day that a Leipzig publisher had offered 
 him a very substantial fee if he would write for his firm another 
 book of vocal exercises similar to the one which had proved 
 so profitable to his first publisher. Weinlich told him that he 
 had not got any exercises of the kind ready at the moment, 
 but offered him instead a new Mass, which the publisher re- 
 fused with the words : ' Let him who got the meat gnaw the 
 bones.' The modesty with which Weinlich told me this little 
 story showed how excellent a man he was. As he was in a very 
 bad and weak state of health when my mother introduced me 
 to him, he at first refused to take me as a pupil. But, after 
 having resisted all persuasions, he at last took pity on my 
 musical education, which, as he soon discovered from a fugue 
 which I had brought with me, was exceedingly faulty. He 
 accordingly promised to teach me, on condition that I should 
 give up all attempts at composing for six months, and follow 
 his instructions implicitly. To the first part of my promise 
 I remained faithful, thanks to the vast vortex of dissipation 
 into which my life as a student had drawn me. 
 
 When, however, I had to occupy myself for any length of 
 time with nothing but four-part harmony exercises in strictly 
 rigorous style, it was not only the student in me, but also 
 the composer of so many overtures and sonatas, that was thor- 
 oughly disgusted. Weinlich, too, had his grievances against 
 me, and decided to give me up. 
 
 During this period I came to the crisis of my life, which led 
 to the catastrophe of that terrible evening at the gambling den. 
 But an even greater blow than this fearful experience awaited
 
 68 MY LIFE 
 
 me when Weinlich decided not to have anything more to do 
 with me. Deeply humiliated and miserable, I besought the 
 gentle old man, whom I loved dearly, to forgive me, and I 
 promised him from that moment to work with unflagging 
 energy. One morning at seven o'clock Weinlich sent for me 
 to begin the rough sketch for a fugue; he devoted the whole 
 morning to me, following my work bar by bar with the greatest 
 attention, and giving me his valuable advice. At twelve o'clock 
 he dismissed me with the instruction to perfect and finish the 
 sketch by filling in the remaining parts at home. 
 
 When I brought him the fugue finished, he handed me his 
 own treatment of the same theme for comparison. This com- 
 mon task of fugue writing established between me and my 
 good-natured teacher the tenderest of ties, for, from that mo- 
 ment, we both enjoyed the lessons. I was astonished how 
 quickly the time flew. In eight weeks I had not only gone 
 through a number of the most intricate fugues, but had also 
 waded through all kinds of difficult evolutions in counterpoint, 
 when one day, on bringing him an extremely elaborate double 
 fugue, he took my breath away by telling me that after this 
 there was nothing left for him to teach me. 
 
 As I was not aware of any great effort on my part, I often 
 wondered whether I had really become a well-equipped musi- 
 cian. Weinlich himself did not seem to attach much impor- 
 tance to what he had taught me : he said, ' Probably you 
 will never write fugues or canons; but what you have mas- 
 tered is Independence: you can now stand alone and rely 
 upon having a fine technique at your fingers' ends if you 
 should want it. 9 
 
 The principal result of his influence over me was certainly 
 the growing love of clearness and fluency to which he had 
 trained me. I had already had to write the above-mentioned 
 fugue for ordinary voices; my feeling for the melodious and 
 vocal had in this way been awakened. In order to keep me 
 strictly under his calming and friendly influence, he had at the 
 same time given me a sonata to write which, as a proof of my 
 friendship for him, I had to build up on strictly harmonic and 
 thematic lines, for which he recommended me a very early 
 and childlike sonata by Pleyel as a model.
 
 GEWANDHAUS CONCEKTS 69 
 
 Those who had only recently heard my Overture must, 
 indeed, have wondered how I ever wrote this sonata, which 
 has been published through the indiscretion of Messrs. Breit- 
 kopf and Hartel (to reward me for my abstemiousness Weinlich 
 induced them to publish this poor composition). From that 
 moment he gave me a free hand. To begin with I was allowed 
 to compose a Fantasia for the pianoforte (in F sharp minor) 
 which I wrote in a quite informal style by treating the melody 
 in recitative form; this gave me intense satisfaction because 
 it won me praise from Weinlich. 
 
 Soon afterwards I wrote three overtures which all met with 
 his entire approval. In the following winter (18311832) I 
 succeeded in getting the first of them, in D minor, performed 
 at one of the Gewandhaus concerts. 
 
 At that time a very simple and homely tone reigned supreme 
 in this institution. The instrumental works were not conducted 
 by what we call ' a conductor of the orchestra/ but were simply 
 played to the audience by the leader of the orchestra. As 
 soon as the singing began, Pohlenz took his place at the con- 
 ductor's desk; he belonged to the type of fat and pleasant 
 musical directors, and was a great favourite with the Leipzig 
 public. He used to come on the platform with a very impor- 
 tant-looking blue baton in his hand. 
 
 One of the strangest events which occurred at that time was 
 the yearly production of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven; 
 after the first three movements had been played straight 
 through like a Haydn symphony, as well as the orchestra could 
 manage it, Pohlenz, instead of having to conduct a vocal quar- 
 tette, a cantata, or an Italian aria, took his place at the desk 
 .to undertake this highly complicated instrumental work, with 
 its particularly enigmatical and incoherent opening, one of 
 the most difficult tasks that could possibly be found for a 
 musical conductor. I shall never forget the impression pro- 
 duced upon me at the first rehearsal by the anxiously and 
 carefully played ^4 time, and the way in which the wild shrieks 
 of the trumpet (with which this movement begins) resulted in 
 the most extraordinary confusion of sound. 
 
 He had evidently chosen this tempo in order, in some way, 
 to manage the recitative of the double basses; but it was
 
 70 MY LIFE 
 
 utterly hopeless. Pohlenz was in a bath of perspiration, the 
 recitative did not come off, and I really began to think that 
 Beethoven must have written nonsense ; the double bass player, 
 Temmler, a faithful veteran of the orchestra, prevailed upon 
 Pohlenz at last, in rather coarse and energetic language, to 
 put down the baton, and in this way the recitative really pro- 
 ceeded properly. All the same, I felt at this time that I had 
 come to the humble conclusion, in a way I can hardly explain, 
 that this extraordinary work was still beyond my comprehen- 
 sion. For a long time I gave up brooding over this composi- 
 tion, and I turned my thoughts with simple longing towards a 
 clearer and calmer musical form. 
 
 My study of counterpoint had taught me to appreciate, above 
 all, Mozart's light and flowing treatment of the most difficult 
 technical problems, and the last movement of his great Sym- 
 phony in C major in particular served me as example for 
 my own work. My D minor Overture, which clearly showed 
 the influence of Beethoven's Coriolanus Overture, had been 
 favourably received by the public; my mother began to have 
 faith in me again, and I started at once on a second overture 
 (in C major), which really ended with a ' Fugato ' that did more 
 credit to my new model than I had ever hoped to accomplish. 
 
 This overture, also, was soon afterwards performed at a 
 recital given by the favourite singer, Mile. Palazzesi (of the 
 Dresden Italian Opera). Before this I had already introduced 
 it at a concert given by a private musical society called l Eu- 
 terpe', when I had conducted it myself. 
 
 I remember the strange impression I received from a remark 
 that my mother made on that occasion; as a matter of fact 
 this work, which was written in a counterpoint style, without 
 any real passion or emotion, had produced a strange effect 
 upon her. She gave vent to her astonishment by warmly 
 praising the Egmont Overture, which was played at the same 
 concert, maintaining that ' this kind of music was after all 
 more fascinating than any stupid fugue.' 
 
 At this time I also wrote (as my third opus) an overture to 
 Raupach's drama, Konig Enzio, in which again Beethoven's 
 influence made itself even more strongly felt. My sister 
 Rosalie succeeded in getting it performed at the theatre before
 
 FUKTHEK COMPOSITIONS ?1 
 
 the play; for the sake of prudence they did not announce it 
 on the programme the first time. Dorn conducted it, and 
 as the performance went off all right, and the public showed 
 no dissatisfaction, my overture was played with my full name 
 on the programme several times during the run of the above- 
 mentioned drama. 
 
 After this I tried my hand at a big Symphony (in C major) ; 
 in this work I showed what I had learnt by using the influence 
 of my study of Beethoven and Mozart towards the achieve- 
 ment of a really pleasant and intelligible work, in which the 
 fugue was again present at the end, while the themes of the 
 various movements were so constructed that they could be 
 played consecutively. 
 
 Nevertheless, the passionate and bold element of the Sin- 
 fonia Eroica was distinctly discernible, especially in the first 
 movement. The slow movement, on the contrary, contained 
 reminiscences of my former musical mysticism. A kind of 
 repeated interrogative exclamation of the minor third merg- 
 ing into the fifth connected in my mind this work (which I 
 had finished with the utmost effort at clearness) with my very 
 earliest period of boyish sentimentality. 
 
 When, in the following year, I called on Friedrich Rochlitz, 
 at that time the ' Nestor ' of the musical aesthetes in Leipzig, 
 and president of the Gewandhaus, I prevailed upon him to 
 promise me a performance of my work. As he had been given 
 my score for perusal before seeing me, he was quite astonished 
 to find that I was a very young man, for the character of my 
 music had prepared him to see a much older and more experi- 
 enced musician. Before this performance took place many 
 things happened which I must first mention, as they were of 
 great importance to my life. 
 
 My short and stormy career as a student had drowned in, 
 me not only all longing for further development, but also all 
 interest in intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Although, as 
 I have pointed out, I had never alienated myself entirely from 
 music, my revived interest in politics aroused my first real 
 disgust for my senseless student's life, which soon left no 
 deeper traces on my mind than the remembrance of a terrible 
 nightmare. 

 
 72 MY LIFE 
 
 The Polish War of Independence against Russian supremacy 
 filled me with growing enthusiasm. The victories which the 
 Poles obtained for a short period during May, 1831, aroused my 
 enthusiastic admiration : it seemed to me as though the world 
 had, by some miracle, been created anew. As a contrast to 
 this, the news of the battle of Ostrolenka made it appear as if 
 the end of the world had come. To my astonishment, my 
 boon companions scoffed at me when I commented upon some 
 of these events; the terrible lack of all fellow-feeling and 
 comradeship amongst the students struck me very forcibly. 
 Any kind of enthusiasm had to be smothered or turned into 
 pedantic bravado, which showed itself in the form of affecta- 
 tion and indifference. To get drunk with deliberate cold- 
 bloodedness, without even a glimpse of humour, was reckoned 
 almost as brave a feat as duelling. Not until much later did 
 I understand the far nobler spirit which animated the lower 
 classes in Germany in comparison with the sadly degenerate 
 state of the University students. In those days I felt terribly 
 indignant at the insulting remarks which I brought upon myself 
 when I deplored the battle of Ostrolenka. 
 
 To my honour be it said, that these and similar impressions 
 helped to make me give up my low associates. During my 
 studies with Weinlich the only little dissipation I allowed myself 
 was my daily evening visit to Kintschy, the confectioner in the 
 Klostergasse, where I passionately devoured the latest news- 
 papers. Here I found many men who held the same political 
 views as myself, and I specially loved to listen to the eager 
 political discussions of some of the old men who frequented the 
 place. The literary journals, too, began to interest me; I 
 read a great deal, but was not very particular in my choice. 
 Nevertheless, I now began to appreciate intelligence and wit, 
 whereas before only the grotesque and the fantastic had had 
 any attraction for me. 
 
 My interest in the issue of the Polish war, however, remained 
 paramount. I felt the siege and capture of Warsaw as a 
 personal calamity. My excitement when the remains of the 
 Polish army began to pass through Leipzig on their way to 
 France was indescribable, and I shall never forget the impres- 
 sion produced upon me by the first batch of these unfortunate
 
 POLISH EMIGRANTS 73 
 
 soldiers on the occasion of their being quartered at the Green 
 Shield, a public-house in the Meat Market. Much as this 
 depressed me, I was soon roused to a high pitch of enthusiasm, 
 for in the lounge of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, where that night 
 Beethoven's C minor Symphony was being played, a group 
 of heroic figures, the principal leaders of the Polish revolution, 
 excited my admiration. I felt more particularly attracted by 
 Count Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, a man of exceptionally powerful 
 physique and noble appearance, who impressed me by his 
 dignified and aristocratic manner and his quiet self-reliance 
 qualities with which I had not met before. When I saw a 
 man of such kingly bearing in a tight-fitting coat and red 
 velvet cap, I at once realised my foolishness in ever having 
 worshipped the ludicrously dressed up little heroes of our 
 students' world. I was delighted to meet this gentleman again 
 at the house of my brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, where 
 I saw him frequently. 
 
 My brother-in-law had the greatest pity and sympathy for 
 the Polish rebels, and was the president of a committee whose 
 task it was to look after their interests, and for a long time he 
 made many personal sacrifices for their cause. 
 
 The Brockhaus establishment now became tremendously at- 
 tractive to me. Around Count Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, who re- 
 mained the lodestar of this small Polish world, gathered a 
 great many other wealthy exiles, amongst whom I chiefly re- 
 member a cavalry captain of the name of Bansemer, a man 
 of unlimited kindness, but of a rather frivolous nature; he 
 possessed a marvellous team of four horses which he drove at 
 such breakneck speed as to cause great annoyance to the people 
 of Leipzig. Another man of importance with whom I remem- 
 ber dining was General Bern, whose artillery had made such 
 a gallant stand at Ostrolenka. 
 
 Many other exiles passed through this hospitable house, 
 some of whom impressed us by their melancholy, warlike bear- 
 ing, others by their refined behaviour. Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, 
 however, remained my ideal of a true man, and I loved him 
 with a profound adoration. He, too, began to be interested 
 in me; I used to call upon him nearly every day, and was 
 sometimes present at a sort of martial feast, from which he
 
 Y4 MY LIFE 
 
 often withdrew in order to be able to open his heart to me 
 about the anxieties which oppressed him. He had, in fact, 
 received absolutely no news of the whereabouts of his wife 
 and little son since they separated at Volhynien. Besides this, 
 he was under the shadow of a great sorrow which drew all 
 sympathetic natures to him. To my sister Louise he had con- 
 fided the terrible calamity that had once befallen him. He 
 had been married before, and while staying with his wife in 
 one of his lonely castles, in the dead of night he had seen a 
 ghostly apparition at the window of his bedroom. Hearing his 
 name called several times, he had taken up a revolver to protect 
 himself from possible danger, and had shot his own wife, who 
 had had the eccentric idea of teasing him by pretending to be a 
 ghost. I had the pleasure of sharing his joy on hearing that 
 his family was safe. His wife joined him in Leipzig with their 
 beautiful boy, Janusz. I felt sorry not to be able to feel the 
 same sympathy for this lady as I did for her husband ; perhaps 
 one of the reasons of my antipathy was the obvious and con- 
 spicuous way in which she made herself up, by means of which 
 the poor woman probably tried to hide how much her beauty 
 had suffered through the terrible strain of the past events. 
 She soon went back to Galicia to try and save what she could 
 of their property, and also to provide her husband with a pass 
 from the Austrian Government, by means of which he could 
 follow her. 
 
 Then came the third of May. Eighteen of the Poles who 
 were still in Leipzig met together at a festive dinner in a hotel 
 outside the town; on this day was to be celebrated the first 
 anniversary of the third of May, so dear to the memory of the 
 Poles. Only the chiefs of the Leipzig Polish Committee re- 
 ceived invitations, and as a special favour I also was asked. 
 I shall never forget that occasion. The dinner became an orgy ; 
 throughout the evening a brass band from the town played 
 Polish folksongs, and these were sung by the whole company, 
 led by a Lithuanian called Zan, in a manner now triumphant 
 and now mournful. The beautiful ' Third of May ' song more 
 particularly drew forth a positive uproar of enthusiasm. Tears 
 and shouts of joy grew into a terrible tumult; the excited 
 men grouped themselves on the grass swearing eternal friend-
 
 CHOLERA IN BRUNN 75 
 
 ship in the most extravagant terms, for which the word 
 ' Oiczisna ' ( Fatherland ) provided the principal theme, until at 
 last night threw her veil over this wild debauch. 
 
 That evening afterwards served me as the theme for an 
 orchestral composition (in the form of an overture) named 
 Polonia; I shall recount the fate of this work later on. My 
 friend Tyszkiewitcz's passport now arrived, and he made up 
 his mind to go back to Galicia via Briinn, although his friends 
 considered it was very rash of him to do so. I very much 
 wanted to see something of the world, and Tyszkiewitcz's offer 
 to take me with him, induced my mother to consent to my 
 going to Vienna, a place that I had long wished to visit. 
 I took with me the scores of my three overtures which had 
 already been performed, and also that of my great symphony 
 as yet unproduced, and had a grand time with my Polish 
 patron, who took me in his luxurious travelling-coach as far 
 as the capital of Moravia. During a short stop at Dresden 
 the exiles of all classes gave our beloved Count a friendly 
 farewell dinner in Pirna, at which the champagne flowed freely, 
 while the health was drunk of the future ' Dictator of Poland/ 
 
 At last we separated at Brunn, from which place I continued 
 my journey to Vienna by coach. During the afternoon and 
 night, which I was obliged to spend in Brunn by myself, I went 
 through terrible agonies from fear of the cholera which, as I 
 unexpectedly heard, had broken out in this place. There I was 
 all alone in a strange place, my faithful friend just departed, 
 and on hearing of the epidemic I felt as if a malicious demon 
 had caught me in his snare in order to annihilate me. I did 
 not betray my terror to the people in the hotel, but when I 
 was shown into a very lonely wing of the house and left by 
 myself in this wilderness, I hid myself in bed with my clothes 
 on, and lived once again through all the horrors of ghost 
 stories as I had done in my boyhood. The cholera stood before 
 me like a living thing; I could see and touch it; it lay in my 
 bed and embraced me. My limbs turned to ice, I felt frozen 
 to the very marrow. Whether I was awake or asleep I never 
 knew; I only remember how astonished I was when, on 
 awakening, I felt thoroughly well and healthy. 
 
 At last I arrived in Vienna, where I escaped the epidemic
 
 76 MY LIFE 
 
 which had penetrated as far as that town. It was midsummer 
 of the year 1832. Owing to the introductions I had with me, 
 I found myself very much at home in this lively city, in which 
 I made a pleasant stay of six weeks. As my sojourn, however, 
 had no really practical purpose, my mother looked upon the 
 cost of this holiday, short as it seemed, as an unnecessary 
 extravagance on my part. I visited the theatres, heard Strauss, 
 made excursions, and altogether had a very good time. I am 
 afraid I contracted a few debts as well, which I paid off later 
 on when I was conductor of the Dresden orchestra. I had 
 received very pleasant impressions of musical and theatrical 
 life, and for a long time Vienna lived in my memory as the 
 acme of that extraordinarily productive spirit peculiar to its 
 people. I enjoyed most of all the performances at the Theater 
 an der Wien, at which they were acting a grotesque fairy play 
 called Die Abenteuer Fortunafs zu Wasser und zu Land, in, 
 which a cab was called on the shores of the Black Sea and which 
 made a tremendous impression on me. About the music I was 
 more doubtful. A young friend of mine took me with immense 
 pride to a performance of Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris, which 
 was made doubly attractive by a first-rate cast including 
 Wild, Staudigl and Binder: I must confess that on the whole 
 I was bored by this work, but I did not dare say so. My ideas 
 of Gluck had attained gigantic proportions from my reading of 
 Hoffmann's well-known Phantasies; my anticipation of this work 
 therefore, which I had not studied yet, had led me to expect a 
 treatment full of overpowering dramatic force. It is possible 
 that Schroder-Devrient's acting in Fidelio had taught me to 
 judge everything by her exalted standard. 
 
 With the greatest trouble I worked myself up to some kind 
 of enthusiasm for the great scene between Orestes and the 
 Furies. I hoped against hope that I should be able to admire 
 the remainder of the opera. I began to understand the 
 Viennese taste, however, when I saw how great a favourite 
 the opera Zampa became with the public, both at the 
 Karnthner Thor and at the Josephstadt. Both theatres com- 
 peted vigorously in the production of this popular work, and 
 although the public had seemed mad about Iphigenia, nothing 
 equalled their enthusiasm for Zampa. No sooner had they
 
 STKAUSS. THE CONSEKVATOIRE ff 
 
 left the Josephstadt Theatre in the greatest ecstasies about 
 Zampa than they proceeded to the public-house called the 
 Strausslein. Here they were immediately greeted by the 
 strains of selections from Zampa which drove the audience to 
 feverish excitement. I shall never forget the extraordinary 
 playing of Johann Strauss, who put equal enthusiasm into 
 everything he played, and very often made the audience almost 
 frantic with delight. 
 
 At the beginning of a new waltz this demon of the Viennese 
 musical spirit shook like a Pythian priestess on the tripod, 
 and veritable groans of ecstasy (which, without doubt, were 
 more due to his music than to the drinks in which the audience 
 had indulged) raised their worship for the magic violinist to 
 almost bewildering heights of frenzy. 
 
 The hot summer air of Vienna was absolutely impregnated 
 with Zampa and Strauss. A very poor students' rehearsal 
 at the Conservatoire, at which they performed a Mass by 
 Cherubini, seemed to me like an alms paid begrudgingly to 
 the study of classical music. At the same rehearsal one of 
 the professors, to whom I was introduced, tried to make the 
 students play my Overture in D minor (the one already per- 
 formed in Leipzig). I do not know what his opinion was, nor 
 that of the students, with regard to this attempt; I only know 
 they soon gave it up. 
 
 On the whole I had wandered into doubtful musical bypaths ; 
 and I now withdrew from this first educational visit to a great 
 European art centre in order to start on a cheap, but long 
 and monotonous return journey to Bohemia, by stage-coach. 
 My next move was a visit to the house of Count Pachta, of 
 whom I had pleasant recollections from my boyhood days. 
 His estate, Pravonin, was about eight miles from Prague. Re- 
 ceived in the kindest possible way by the old gentleman and 
 his beautiful daughters, I enjoyed his delightful hospitality 
 until late into the autumn. A youth of nineteen, as I then was, ^ J 
 with a fast-growing beard (for which my sisters had already 
 prepared the young ladies by letter), the continual and close 
 intimacy with such kind and pretty girls could hardly fail to 
 make a strong impression on my imagination. Jenny, the 
 elder of the two, was slim, with black hair, blue eyes, and
 
 78 MY LIFE 
 
 wonderfully noble features; the younger one, Auguste, was a 
 little smaller, and stouter, with a magnificent complexion, 
 fair hair, and brown eyes. The natural and sisterly manner 
 with which both girls treated me and conversed with me did 
 not blind me to the fact that I was expected to fall in love 
 with one or the other of them. It amused them to see how 
 embarrassed I got in my efforts to choose between them, and 
 consequently they teased me tremendously. 
 
 Unfortunately, I did not act judiciously with regard to the 
 daughters of my host: in spite of their homely education, 
 they belonged to a very aristocratic house, and consequently 
 hesitated between the hope of marrying men of eminent 
 position in their own sphere, and the necessity of choosing 
 husbands amongst the higher middle classes, who could afford 
 to keep them in comfort. The shockingly poor, almost 
 mediaeval, education of the Austrian so-called cavalier, made 
 me rather despise the latter; the girls, too, had suffered from 
 the same lack of proper training. I soon noticed with disgust 
 how little they knew about things artistic, and how much value 
 they attached to superficial things. However much I might 
 try to interest them in those higher pursuits which had become 
 necessary to me, they were incapable of appreciating them. 
 I advocated a complete change from the bad library novels, 
 which represented their only reading, from the Italian operatic 
 arias, sung by Auguste, and, last but^not least, from the horsy, 
 insipid cavaliers, who paid their court to both Jenny and her 
 sister in the most coarse and offensive manner. My zeal 
 in this latter respect soon gave rise to great unpleasantness. 
 I became hard and insulting, harangued them about the 
 French Revolution, and begged them with fatherly admoni- 
 tions ( for the love of heaven ' to be content with well-educated 
 middle-class men, and give up those impertinent suitors who 
 could only harm their reputation. The indignation provoked 
 by my friendly advice I often had to ward off with the harshest 
 retorts. I never apologised, but tried by dint of real or feigned 
 jealousy to get our friendship back on the old footing. In 
 this way, undecided, half in love and half angry, one cold 
 November day I said good-bye to these pretty children. I 
 soon met the whole family again at Prague, where I made
 
 PRAGUE. DIONTS WEBER 79 
 
 a long sojourn, without, however, staying at the Count's 
 residence. 
 
 My stay at Prague was to be of great musical importance to 
 me. I knew the director of the Conservatoire, Dionys Weber, 
 who promised to bring my symphony before the public; I also 
 spent much of my time with an actor called Moritz, to whom, 
 as an old friend of our family, I had been recommended, and 
 there I made the acquaintance of the young musician Kittl. 
 
 Moritz, who noticed that not a day passed but what I went 
 to the much-feared chief of the Conservatoire upon some 
 pressing musical business, once despatched me with an impro- 
 vised parody on Schiller's Burgschaft: 
 
 Zu Dionys dem Direktor schlich 
 
 Wagner, die Partitur im Gewande; 
 
 Ihn schlugen die Schuler im Bande: 
 
 1 Was wolltest du mil den Noten sprichf ' 
 
 Entgegnet ihm finster der Wutherich: 
 
 ' Die Stadt vom schlechten Geschmacke befreien! 
 
 Das sollst du in den Rezensionen bereuen.' * 
 
 Truly I had to deal with a kind of ' Dionysius the Tyrant.' 
 A man who did not acknowledge Beethoven's genius beyond 
 his Second Symphony, a man who looked upon the Eroica as 
 the acme of bad taste on the master's part ; who praised Mozart 
 alone, and next to him tolerated only Lindpaintner : such a 
 man was not easy to approach, and I had to learn the art of 
 making use of tyrants for one's own purposes. I dissimu- 
 lated; I pretended to be struck by the novelty of his ideas, 
 never contradicted him, and, to point out the similarity of 
 our standpoints, I referred him to the end fugue in my Over- 
 ture and in my Symphony (both in C major), which I had only 
 succeeded in making what they were through having studied 
 Mozart. My reward soon followed: Dionys set to work to 
 study my orchestral creations with almost youthful energy. 
 
 1 To .Dionys, the Director, crept 
 Wagner, the score in his pocket; 
 The students arrested him forthwith : 
 ' What do'st thou with that music, say? ' 
 Thus asked him the angry tyrant : 
 ' To free the town from taste too vile! 
 For this the critics will make thee suffer.'
 
 80 MY LIFE 
 
 The students of the Conservatoire were compelled to practise 
 with the greatest exactitude my new symphony under his 
 dry and terribly noisy baton. In the presence of several of 
 my friends, amongst whom was also the dear old Count 
 Pachta in his capacity of President of the Conservatoire 
 Committee, we actually held a first performance of the greatest 
 work that I had written up to that date. 
 
 During these musical successes I went on with my love- 
 making in the attractive house of Count Pachta, under the 
 most curious circumstances. A confectioner of the name of 
 Hascha was my rival. He was a tall, lanky young man who, 
 like most Bohemians, had taken up music as a hobby; he 
 played the accompaniments to Auguste's songs, and naturally 
 fell in love with her. Like myself, he hated the frequent 
 visits of the cavaliers, which seemed to be quite the custom in 
 this city; but while my displeasure expressed itself in humour, 
 his showed itself in gloomy melancholy. This mood made 
 him behave boorishly in public : for instance, one evening, when 
 the chandelier was to be lighted for the reception of one of 
 these gentlemen, he ran his head purposely against this orna- 
 ment and broke it. The festive illumination was thus rendered 
 impossible; the Countess was furious, and Hascha had to 
 leave the house never to return. 
 
 I well remember that the first time I was conscious of any 
 feelings of love, these manifested themselves as pangs of jealousy, 
 which had, however, nothing to do with real love : this happened 
 one evening when I called at the house. The Countess kept 
 me by her side in an ante-room, while the girls, beautifully 
 dressed and gay, flirted in the reception-room with those 
 hateful young noblemen. All I had ever read in Hoffmann's 
 Tales of certain demoniacal intrigues, which until that moment 
 had been obscure to me, now became really tangible facts, 
 and I left Prague with an obviously unjust and exagger- 
 ated opinion of those things and those people, through whom 
 I had suddenly been dragged into an unknown world of 
 elementary passions. 
 
 On the other hand I had gained by my stay at Pravonin: 
 I had written poetry as well as musical compositions. My 
 musical work was a setting of Glockentone, a poem by the
 
 IDEA FOR A NOVEL 81 
 
 friend of my youth, Theodor Apel. I had already written an 
 aria for soprano which had been performed the winter before 
 at one of the theatre concerts. But my new work was decidedly 
 the first vocal piece I had written with real inspiration; gener- 
 ally speaking, I suppose it owed its' characteristics to the 
 influence of Beethoven's Liederkreis : all the same, the impres- 
 sion that it has left on my mind is that it was absolutely part 
 of myself, and pervaded by a delicate sentimentality which was 
 brought into relief by the dreaminess of the accompaniment. 
 My poetical efforts lay in the direction of a sketch of a tragi- 
 operatic subject, which I finished in its entirety in Prague under 
 the title of Die Hochzeit ( l The Wedding'). I wrote it with- 
 out anybody's knowledge, and this was no easy matter, seeing 
 that I could not write in my chilly little hotel-room, and had 
 therefore to go to the house of Moritz, where I generally spent 
 my mornings. I remember how I used quickly to hide my 
 manuscript behind the sofa as soon as I heard my host's 
 footsteps. 
 
 An extraordinary episode was connected with the plot of 
 this work. 
 
 Already years ago I had come across a tragic story, whilst 
 perusing Biisching's book on chivalry, the like of which I have 
 never since read. A lady of noble birth. had been assaulted one 
 night by a man who secretly cherished a passionate love for her, 
 and in the struggle to defend her honour superhuman strength 
 was given her to fling him into the courtyard below. The 
 mystery of his death remained unexplained until the day of his 
 solemn obsequies, when the lady herself, who attended them 
 and was kneeling in solemn prayer, suddenly fell forward 
 and expired. The mysterious strength of this profound and 
 passionate story made an indelible impression upon my mind. 
 Fascinated, moreover, by the peculiar treatment of similar 
 phenomena in Hoffmann's Tales, I sketched a novel in which 
 musical mysticism, which I still loved so deeply, played an 
 "impoFfanT "part. The action was supposed to take place on 
 the estate of a rich patron of the fine arts: a young couple 
 was going to be married, and had invited the friend of the bride- 
 groom, an interesting but melancholy and mysterious young 
 man, to their wedding. Intimately connected with the whole
 
 82 MY LIFE 
 
 affair was a strange old organist. The mystic relations which 
 gradually developed between the old musician, the melancholy 
 young man and the bride, were to grow out of the unravelment 
 of certain intricate events, in a somewhat similar manner to 
 that of the mediaeval story above related. Here was the 
 same idea: the young man mysteriously killed, the equally 
 strange sudden death of his friend's bride, and the old organist 
 found dead on his bench after the playing of an impressive 
 requiem, the last chord of which was inordinately prolonged 
 as if it never would end. 
 
 I never finished this novel: but as I wanted to write the 
 libretto for an opera, I took up the theme again in its original 
 shape, and built on this (as far as the principal features went) 
 the following dramatic plot : 
 
 Two great houses had lived in enmity, and had at last decided 
 to end the family feud. The aged head of one of these houses 
 invited the son of his former enemy to the wedding of his 
 daughter with one of his faithful partisans. The wedding feast 
 is thus used as an opportunity for reconciling the two families. 
 Whilst the guests are full of the suspicion and fear of treachery, 
 their young leader falls violently in love with the bride of his 
 newly found ally. His tragic glance deeply affects her; the 
 festive escort accompanies her to the bridal chamber, where 
 she is to await her beloved; leaning against her tower-window 
 she sees the same passionate eyes fixed on her, and realises 
 that she is face to face with a tragedy. 
 
 When he penetrates into her chamber, and embraces her 
 with frantic passion, she pushes him backwards towards the 
 balcony, and throws him over the parapet into the abyss, 
 from whence his mutilated remains are dragged by his com- 
 panions. They at once arm themselves against the presumed 
 treachery, and call for vengeance; tumult and confusion fill 
 the courtyard: the interrupted wedding feast threatens to 
 end in a night of slaughter. The venerable head of the house 
 at last succeeds in averting the catastrophe. Messengers are 
 sent to bear the tidings of the mysterious calamity to the rela- 
 tives of the victim: the corpse itself shall be the medium of 
 reconciliation, for, in the presence of the different generations 
 of the suspected family, Providenoc itself shall decide which
 
 'DIE HOCHZEIT' 83 
 
 of its members has been guilty of treason. During the prepara- 
 tions for the obsequies the bride shows signs of approaching 
 madness; she flies from her bridegroom, refuses to be united 
 to him, and locks herself up in her tower-chamber. Only when, 
 at night, the gloomy though gorgeous ceremony commences, 
 does she appear at the head of her women to be present at the 
 burial service, the gruesome solemnity of which is interrupted 
 by the news of the approach of hostile forces and then by the 
 armed attack of the kinsmen of the murdered man. When the 
 avengers of the presumed treachery penetrate into the chapel 
 and call upon the murderer to declare himself, the horrified 
 lord of the manor points towards his daughter who, turning 
 away from her bridegroom, falls lifeless by the coffin of her 
 victim. This nocturnal drama, through which ran reminiscences 
 of Leubald und Adelaide (the work of my far-off boyhood), 
 I wrote in the darkest vein, but in a more polished and more 
 noble style, disdaining all light-effects, and especially all operatic^, 
 embellishments. Tender passages occurred here and there all 
 the same, and Weinlich, to whom I had already shown the 
 beginning of my work on my return to Leipzig, praised me for / 
 the clearness and good vocal quality of the introduction I had / 
 composed to the first act ; this was an Adagio for a vocal septette/' 
 in which I had tried to express the reconciliation of the hostile 
 families, together with the emotions of the wedded couple and 
 the sinister passion of the secret lover. My principal object 
 was, all the same, to win my sister Rosalie's approval. My 
 poem, however, did not find favour in her eyes: she missed 
 all that which I had purposely avoided, insisted on the orna- 
 mentation and development of the simple situation, and 
 desired more brightness generally. I made up my mind in an 
 instant: I took the manuscript, and without a suggestion 
 of ill-temper, destroyed it there and then. This action had " 
 nothing whatever to do with wounded vanity. It was prompted < 
 merely by my desire honestly to prove to my sister how little , 
 I thought of my own work and how much I cared for her ; 
 opinion. She was held in great and loving esteem by my 
 mother and by the rest of our family, for she was their principal 
 breadwinner: the important salary she earned as an actress 
 constituted nearly the whole income out of which my mother
 
 84 MY LIFE 
 
 had to defray the household expenses. For the sake of her 
 profession she enjoyed many advantages at home. Her part 
 of the house had been specially arranged so that she should have 
 all the necessary comfort and peace for her studies ; on market- 
 ing days, when the others had to put up with the simplest fare, 
 she had to have the same dainty food as usual. But more 
 than any of these things did her charming gravity and her 
 refined way of speaking place her above the younger children. 
 She was thoughtful and gentle and never joined us in our rather 
 loud conversation. Of course, I had been the one member of 
 the family who had caused the greatest anxieties both to my 
 mother and to my motherly sister, and during my life as a 
 student the strained relations between us had made a terrible 
 impression on me. When therefore they tried to believe in 
 me again, and once more showed some interest in my work, 
 I was full of gratitude and happiness. The thought of getting [ 
 this sister to look kindly upon my aspirations, and even to 
 expect great things of me, had become a special stimulus to 
 my ambition. Under these circumstances a tender and 
 almost sentimental relationship grew up between Rosalie and 
 myself, which in its purity and sincerity could vie with the/ 
 noblest form of friendship between man and woman. This wag 
 principally due to her exceptional individuality. She had not 
 any real talent, at least not for acting, which had often been) 
 considered stagey and unnatural. Nevertheless she was much) 
 appreciated owing to her charming appearance as well as to her/ 
 pure and dignified womanliness, and I remember many tokens, 
 of esteem which she received in those days. All the same, 
 none of these advances ever seemed to lead to the prospect of 
 a marriage, and year by year went by without bringing her 
 hopes of a suitable match a fact which to me appeared quite 
 unaccountable. From time to time I thought I noticed that 
 Rosalie suffered from this state of affairs. I remember one even- 
 ing when, believing herself to be alone, I heard her sobbing and 
 moaning; I stole away unnoticed, but her grief made such an 
 impression upon me that from that moment I vowed to bring 
 some joy into her life, principally by making a name for myself. 
 Not without reason had our stepfather Geyer given my gentle 
 sister the nickname of ' Geistchen ' (little spirit), for if her
 
 HEINRICH LAUBE 85 
 
 talent as an actress was not great, her imagination and her love of 
 art and of all high and noble things were perhaps, on that ac- 
 count alone, all the greater. From her lips I had first heard 
 expressions of admiration and delight concerning those subjects 
 which became dear to me later on, and she moved amongst a 
 circle of serious and interesting people who loved the higher 
 things of life without this attitude ever degenerating into 
 affectation. 
 
 On my return from my long journey I was introduced to 
 Heinrich Laube, whom my sister had added to her list of inti- 
 mate friends. It was at the time when the after-effects of the 
 July revolution were beginning to make themselves felt amongst 
 the younger men of intellect in Germany, and of these Laube 
 was one of the most conspicuous. As a young man he came 
 from Silesia to Leipzig, his principal object being to try and 
 form connections in this publishing centre which might be of 
 use to him in Paris, whither he was going, and from which place 
 Borne also made a sensation amongst us by his letters. On 
 this occasion Laube was present at a representation of a play 
 by Ludwig Robert, Die Macht der Verhaltnisse (' The Power of 
 Circumstances'). This induced him to write a criticism for 
 the Leipzig Tageblatt, which made such a sensation through 
 its terse and lively style that he was at once offered, in addition 
 to other literary work, the post of editor of Die elegante Welt. 
 In our house he was looked upon as a genius ; his curt and often 
 biting manner of speaking, which seemed to exclude all attempt 
 at poetic expression, made him appear both original and daring : 
 his sense of justice, his sincerity and fearless bluntness made 
 one respect his character, hardened as it had been in youth by 
 great adversity. On me he had a very inspiring effect, and I 
 was very much astonished to find that he thought so much 
 of me as to write a flattering notice about my talent in his 
 paper after hearing the first performance of my symphony. 
 
 This performance took place in the beginning of the year 
 1833 at the Leipzig Schneider-Herberge. It was, by the bye, 
 in this dignified old hall that the society ' Euterpe ' held its 
 concerts! The place was dirty, narrow, and poorly lighted, 
 and it was here that my work was introduced to the Leipzig 
 public for the first time, and by means of an orchestra that
 
 86 MY LIFE 
 
 interpreted it simply disgracefully. I can only think of that 
 evening as a gruesome nightmare; and my astonishment was 
 therefore all the greater at seeing the important notice which 
 Laube wrote about the performance. Full of hope, I therefore 
 looked forward to a performance of the same work at the 
 Gewandhaus concert, which followed soon after, and which 
 came off brilliantly in every way. It was well received and 
 well spoken of in all the papers; of real malice there was not 
 a trace on the contrary, several notices were encouraging, 
 and Laube, who had quickly become celebrated, confided to 
 me that he was going to offer me a libretto for an opera, which 
 he had first written for Meyerbeer. This staggered me some- 
 what, for I was not in the least prepared to pose as a poet, and 
 my only idea was to write a real plot for an opera. As to the 
 precise manner, however, in which such a book had to be 
 written, I already had a very definite and instinctive notion, 
 and I was strengthened in the certainty of my own feelings i 
 the matter when Laube now explained the nature of his plot 
 to me. He fold me that he wanted to arrange nothing less 
 than Kosziusko into a libretto for grand opera ! Once again 
 I had qualms, for I felt at once that Laube had a mistaken idea 
 about the character of a dramatic subject. When I inquired 
 into the real action of the play, Laube was astonished that I 
 should expect more than the story of the Polish hero, whose 
 life was crowded with incident; in any case, he thought there 
 was quite sufficient action in it to describe the unhappy fate 
 of a whole nation. Of course the usual heroine was not missing ; 
 she was a Polish girl who had a love affair with a Russian; 
 and in this way some sentimental situations were also to Ipe 
 found in the plot. Without a moment's delay I assured my 
 sister Rosalie that I would not set this story to music: she 
 agreed with me, and begged me only to postpone my answer 
 to Laube. My journey to Wiirzburg was of great help to me 
 in this respect, for it was easier to write my decision to Laube 
 than to announce it to him personally. He accepted the slight 
 rebuff with good grace, but he never forgave me, either then 
 or afterwards, for writing my own words ! 
 
 When he heard what subject I had preferred to his brilliant 
 political poem, he made no effort to conceal his contempt for
 
 'DIE FEEN' 87 
 
 my choice. I had borrowed the plot from a dramatic fairy-"" 
 tale by Gozzi, La Donna Serpente, and called it Die Feen 
 ('The Fairies'). The names of my heroes I chose from different. 
 Ossian and similar poems: my prince was called Arindal; 
 he was loved by a fairy called Ada, who held him under her 
 spell and kept him in fairyland, away from his realm, until 
 his faithful friends at last found him and induced him to return, 
 for his country was going to rack and ruin, and even its capital 
 had fallen into the enemy's hands. The loving fairy herself 
 sends the prince back to his country ; for the oracle has decreed 
 that she shall lay upon her lover the severest of tasks. Only 
 by performing this task triumphantly can he make it possible 
 for her to leave the immortal world of fairies in order to share 
 the fate of her earthly lover, as his wife. In a moment of 
 deepest despair about the state of his country, the fairy queen 
 appears to him and purposely destroys his faith in her by deeds 
 of the most cruel and inexplicable nature. Driven mad by a 
 thousand fears, Arindal begins to imagine that all the time 
 he has been dealing with a wicked sorceress, and tries to escape 
 the fatal spell by pronouncing a curse upon Ada. Wild with 
 sorrow, the unhappy fairy sinks down, and reveals their mutual 
 fate to the lover, now lost to her for ever, and tells him that, 
 as a punishment for having disobeyed the decree of Fate, she is 
 doomed to be turned into stone (in Gozzi's version she becomes 
 a serpent). Immediately afterwards it appears that all the 
 catastrophes which the fairy had prophesied were but decep- 
 tions : victory over the enemy as well as the growing prosperity 
 and welfare of the kingdom now follow in quick succession: 
 Ada is taken away by the Fates, and Arindal, a raving madman, 
 remains behind alone. The terrible sufferings of his madness 
 do not, however, satisfy the Fates : to bring about his utter 
 ruin they appear before the repentant man and invite him to 
 follow them to the nether world, on the pretext of enabling him 
 to free Ada from the spell. Through the treacherous promises 
 of the wicked fairies Arindal's madness grows into sublime 
 exaltation; and one of his household magicians, a faithful 
 friend, having in the meantime equipped him with magic 
 weapons and charms, he now follows the traitresses. The 
 latter cannot get over their astonishment when they see how 

 
 88 MY LIFE 
 
 Arindal overcomes one after the other of the monsters of the 
 infernal regions : only when they arrive at the vault in which 
 they show him the stone in human shape do they recover their 
 hope of vanquishing the valiant prince, for, unless he can 
 break the charm which binds Ada, he must share her fate and 
 be doomed to remain a stone for ever. Arindal, who until 
 then has been using the dagger and the shield given him by 
 the friendly magician, now makes use of an instrument a 
 ly re which he has brought with him, and the meaning of 
 which he had not yet understood. To the sounds of this 
 instrument he now expresses his plaintive moans, his remorse, 
 and his overpowering longing for his enchanted queen. The 
 stone is moved by the magic of his love: the beloved one is 
 released. Fairyland with all its marvels opens its portals, and 
 the mortal learns that, owing to his former inconstancy, Ada 
 has lost the right to become his wife on earth, but that her 
 beloved, through his great and magic power, has earned the 
 right to live for ever by her side in fairyland. 
 
 Although I had written Die Hochzeit in the darkest vein, 
 without operatic embellishments, I painted this subject with 
 the utmost colour and variety. In contrast to the lovers out 
 of fairyland I depicted a more ordinary couple, and I even 
 introduced a third pair that belonged to the coarser and more 
 comical servant world. I purposely went to no pains in the 
 matter of the poetic diction and the verse. My idea was not 
 
 encourage my former hopes of making a name as a poet; 
 
 was now really a ' musician ' and a ' composer,' and wished 
 to write a decent opera libretto simply because I was sure 
 that nobody else could write one for me; the reason being that 
 such a book is something quite unique and cannot be written 
 either by a poet or by a mere man of letters. With the intention 
 
 setting this libretto to music, I left Leipzig in January, 1833, 
 stay in Wiirzburg with my eldest brother Albert, who at 
 the time held an appointment at the theatre. It now seemed 
 sssary for me to begin to apply my musical knowledge to 
 a practical purpose, and to this end my brother had promised 
 '1 to help me in getting some kind of post at the small Wiirzburg 
 \ theatre. I travelled by post to Bamberg via Hof, and in Bam- 
 ""txfrg I stayed a few days in the company of a young man
 
 BROTHER ALBERT 89 
 
 called Schunke, who from a player on the horn had become an 
 actor. With the greatest interest I learned the story of Caspar 
 Hauser, who at that time was very well known, and who (if 
 I am not mistaken) was pointed ont to me. In addition to 
 this, I admired the peculiar costumes of the market-women, 
 thought with much interest of Hoffmann's stay at this place, 
 and of how it had led to the writing of his Tales, and resumed 
 my journey (to Wiirzburg) with a man called Hauderer, and 
 suffered miserably from the cold all the way. 
 
 My brother Albert, who was almost a new acquaintance to 
 me, did his best to make me feel- at home in his not over 
 luxurious establishment. He was pleased to find me less mad 
 than he had expected me to be from a certain letter with which 
 I had succeeded in frightening him some time previously, and 
 he really managed to procure me an exceptional occupation 
 as choir-master at the theatre, for which I received the monthly 
 fee of ten guilders. The remainder of the winter was devoted 
 to the serious study of the duties required of a musical director : 
 in a very short time I had to tackle two new grand operas, 
 namely, Marschner's Vampir and Meyerbeer's Robert der 
 Teufel, in both of which the chorus played a considerable part. 
 At first I felt absolutely like a beginner, and had to start on 
 Camilla von Paer, the score of which was utterly unknown to 
 me. I still remember that I felt I was doing a thing which I 
 had no right to undertake : I felt quite an amateur at the 
 work. Soon, however, Marschner's score interested me suffi- 
 ciently to make the labour seem worth my while. The score 
 of Robert was a great disappointment to me: from the news- 
 papers I had expected plenty of originality and novelty; I 
 could find no trace of either in this transparent work, and an 
 opera with a finale like that of the second act could not be 
 named in the same breath with any of my favourite works. 
 The only thing that impressed me was the unearthly keyed 
 trumpet which, in the last act, represented the voice of the 
 mother's ghost. 
 
 It was remarkable to observe the aesthetic demoralisation 
 into which I now fell through having daily to deal with such a 
 work. I gradually lost my dislike for this shallow and exceed- 
 ingly uninteresting composition (a dislike I shared with many
 
 90 MY LIFE 
 
 German musicians) in the growing interest which I was com- 
 pelled to take in its interpretation ; and thus it happened that 
 the insipidness and affectation of the commonplace melodies 
 ceased to concern me save from the standpoint of their capa- 
 bility of eliciting applause or the reverse. As, moreover, my 
 future career as musical conductor was at stake, my brother, 
 who was very anxious on my behalf, looked favourably on this 
 lack of classical obstinacy on my part, and thus the ground 
 was gradually prepared for that decline in my classical taste 
 which was destined to last some considerable time. 
 
 All the same, this did not occur before I had given some 
 proof of my great inexperience in the lighter style of writing. 
 My brother wanted to introduce a ' Cavatine ' from the Piraten, 
 by Bellini, into the same composer's opera, Siraniera; the 
 score was not to be had, and he entrusted me with the instru- 
 mentation of this work. From the piano score alone I could 
 not possibly detect the heavy and noisy instrumentation of 
 the ritornelles and intermezzi which, musically, were so very 
 thin ; the composer of a great C major Symphony with an end 
 fugue could only help himself out of the difficulty by the use 
 of a few flutes and clarinets playing in thirds. At the 
 rehearsal the ' Cavatine ' sounded so frightfully thin and 
 shallow that my brother made me serious reproaches about 
 the waste of copying expenses. But I had my revenge: to 
 the tenor aria of ' Aubry ' in Marschner's Vampir I added an 
 Allegro, for which I also wrote the words. 
 
 My work succeeded splendidly, and earned the praise of 
 both the public and my brother. In a similar German style 
 I wrote the music to my Feen in the course of the year 1833. 
 My brother and his wife left Wiirzburg after Easter in order 
 to avail themselves of several invitations at friends' houses; 
 I stayed behind with the children three little girls of tender 
 years which placed me in the extraordinary position of a 
 responsible guardian, a post for which I was not in the least 
 suited at that time of my life. My time was divided between 
 my work and pleasure, and in consequence I neglected my 
 charges. Amongst the friends I made there, Alexander 
 Miiller had much influence over me; he was a good musician 
 and pianist, and I used to listen for hours to his improvisations
 
 91 
 
 on given themes an accomplishment in which he so greatly 
 excelled, that I could not fail to be impressed. With him and 
 some other friends, amongst whom was also Valentin Hamm, 
 I often made excursions in the neighbourhood, on which 
 occasions the Bavarian beer and the Frankish wine were wont 
 to fly. Valentin Hamm was a grotesque individual, who 
 entertained us often with his excellent violin playing; he had 
 an enormous stretch on the piano, for he could reach an interval 
 of a twelfth. Der Letzte Hieb, a public beer-garden situated on 
 a pleasant height, was a daily witness of my fits of wild and 
 often enthusiastic boisterousness ; never once during those 
 mild summer nights did I return to my charges without having 
 waxed enthusiastic over art and the world in general. I also 
 remember a wicked trick which has always remained a blot 
 in my memory. Amongst my friends was a fair and very 
 enthusiastic Swabian called Frohlich, with whom I had ex- 
 changed my score of the C minor Symphony for his, which 
 he had copied out with his own hand. This very gentle, but 
 rather irritable young man had taken such a violent dislike 
 to one Andre, whose malicious face I also detested, that he 
 declared that this person spoilt his evenings for him, merely 
 by being in the same room with him. The unfortunate object 
 of his hatred tried all the same to meet us whenever he could: 
 friction ensued, but Andre would insist upon aggravating us. 
 One evening Frohlich lost patience. After some insulting 
 retort, he tried to chase him from our table by striking him 
 with a stick: the result was a fight in which Frolich's friends 
 felt they must take part, though they all seemed to do so with 
 some reluctance. A mad longing to join the fray also took 
 possession of me. With the others I helped, in knocking our 
 poor victim about, and I even heard the sound of one terrible 
 blow which I struck Andre on the head, whilst he fixed his 
 eyes on me in bewilderment. 
 
 I relate this incident to atone for a sin which has weighed 
 very heavily on my conscience ever since. I can compare" 
 this sad experience only with one out of my earliest boyhood 
 days, namely the drowning of some puppies in a shallow pool 
 behind my uncle's house in Eisleben. Even to this day I 
 cannot think of the slow death of these poor little creatures
 
 92 MY LIFE 
 
 without horror. I have never quite forgotten some of my 
 thoughtless and reckless actions; for the sorrows of others, 
 and in particular those of animals, have always affected me 
 deeply to the extent of filling me with a disgust of life. 
 
 My first love affair stands out in strong contrast against 
 these recollections. It was only natural that one of the young 
 chorus ladies with whom I had to practise daily should know 
 how to attract my attentions. Therese Ringelmann, the 
 daughter of a grave-digger, thanks to her beautiful soprano 
 voice, led me to believe that I could make a great singer of her. 
 After I told her of this ambitious scheme, she paid much 
 attention to her appearance, and dressed elegantly for the 
 rehearsals, and a row of white pearls which she wound through 
 her hair specially fascinated me. During the summer holidays 
 I gave Therese regular lessons in singing, according to a method 
 which has always remained a mystery to me ever since. I 
 also called on her very often at her house, where, fortunately, 
 I never met her unpleasant father, but always her mother and 
 her sisters. We also met in the public gardens, but false 
 vanity always kept me from telling my friends of our relations. 
 I do not know whether the fault lay with her lowly birth, her 
 lack of education, or my own doubt about the sincerity of my 
 affections; but in any case when, in addition to the fact that 
 I had my reasons for being jealous, they also tried to urge me 
 to a formal engagement, this love affair came quietly to an end. 
 
 An infinitely more genuine affair was my love for Friederike 
 Galvani, the daughter of a mechanic, who was undoubtedly of 
 Italian origin. She was very musical, and had a lovely voice ; 
 my brother had patronised her and helped her to a debut at 
 his theatre, which test she stood brilliantly. She was rather 
 small, but had large dark eyes and a sweet disposition. The 
 first oboist of the orchestra, a good fellow as well as a 
 clever musician, was thoroughly devoted to her. He was 
 looked upon as her fiance, but, owing to some incident in his 
 past, he was not allowed to visit at her parents' house, and the 
 marriage was not to take place for a long time yet. When the 
 autumn of my year in Wiirzburg drew near, I received an 
 invitation from friends to be present at a country wedding 
 at a little distance from Wiirzburg; the oboist and his fiancee
 
 had also been invited. It was a jolly, though primitive 
 affair; we drank and danced, and I even tried my hand at 
 violin playing, but I must have forgotten it badly, for even 
 with the second violin I could not manage to satisfy the other 
 musicians. But my success with Friederike was all the greater ; 
 we danced like mad through the many couples of peasants 
 until at one moment we got so excited that, losing all self- 
 control, we embraced each other while her real lover was 
 playing the dance music. For the first time in my life I began 
 to feel a flattering sensation of self-respect when Friederike's 
 fiance, on seeing how we two flirted, accepted the situation 
 with good grace, if not without some sadness. I had never 
 had the chance of thinking that I could make a favourable 
 impression on any young girl. I never imagined myself good- 
 looking, neither had I ever thought it possible that I could 
 attract the attention of pretty girls. 
 
 On the other hand, I had gradually acquired a certain self- 
 reliance in mixing with men of my own age. Owing to the 
 exceptional vivacity and innate susceptibility of my nature 
 qualities which were brought home to me in my relations 
 with members of my circle I gradually became conscious of 
 a certain power of transporting or bewildering my more indolent 
 companions. 
 
 From my poor oboist's silent self-control on becoming aware 
 of the ardent advances of his betrothed towards me, I 
 acquired, as I have said, the first suggestion of the fact that 
 I might count for something, not only among men, but also 
 among women. The Frankish wine helped to bring about a 
 state of ever greater confusion, and under the cover of its 
 influence I at length declared myself, quite openly, to be 
 Friederike's lover. Ever so far into the night, in fact, when 
 day was already breaking, we set off home together to Wiirz- 
 burg in an open wagon. This was the crowning triumph of 
 my delightful adventure; for while all the others, including, 
 in the end, the jealous oboist, slept off their debauch in the 
 face of the dawning day, I, with my cheek against Friederike's, 
 and listening to the warbling of the larks, watched the coming 
 of the rising sun. 
 
 On the following day we had scarcely any idea of what had
 
 94: MY LIFE 
 
 happened. A certain sense of shame, which was not unbecom- 
 ing, held us aloof from one another: and yet I easily won 
 access to Friederike's family, and from that time forward was 
 daily a welcome guest, when for some hours I would linger 
 in unconcealed intimate intercourse with the same domestic 
 circle from which the unhappy betrothed remained excluded. 
 No word was ever mentioned of this last connection; never 
 once did it even dawn upon Friederike to effect any change in 
 the state of affairs, and it seemed to strike no one that I ought, 
 so to speak, to take the fiance's place. The confiding manner 
 in which I was received by all, and especially by the girl herself, 
 was exactly similar to one of Nature's great processes, as, for 
 instance, when spring steps in and winter passes silently away. 
 Not one of them ever considered the material consequences of 
 the change, and this is precisely the most charming and 
 flattering feature of this first youthful love affair, which was 
 never to degenerate into an attitude which might give rise 
 to suspicion or concern. These relations ended only with my 
 departure from Wiirzburg, which was marked by the most 
 touching and most tearful leavetaking. 
 
 For some time, although I kept up no correspondence, the 
 memory of this episode remained firmly imprinted on my 
 mind. Two years later, while making a rapid journey through 
 the old district, I once more visited Friederike: the poor child 
 approached me utterly shamefaced. Her oboist was still her 
 lover, and though his position rendered marriage impossible, 
 the unfortunate young woman had become a mother. I have 
 heard nothing more of her since. 
 
 Amid all this traffic of love I worked hard at my opera, and, 
 thanks to the loving sympathy of my sister Rosalie, I was 
 able to find the necessary good spirits for the task. When 
 at the commencement of the summer my earnings as a con- 
 ductor came to an end, this same sister again made it her 
 business loyally to provide me with ample pocket-money, so 
 that I might devote myself solely to the completion of my 
 work, without troubling about anything or being a burden to 
 any one. At a much later date I came across a letter of mine 
 written to Rosalie in those days, which were full of a tender., 
 almost adoring love for that noble creature.
 
 OVERTURE IN C MAJOR 95 
 
 When the winter was at hand my brother returned, and the 
 theatre reopened. Truth to tell, I did not again become 
 connected with it, but acquired a position, which was even 
 more prominent, in the concerts of the Musical Society in which 
 I produced my great overture in C major, my symphony, and 
 eventually portions of my new opera as well. An amateur 
 with a splendid voice, Mademoiselle Friedel, sang the great 
 aria from Ada. In addition to this, a trio was given which, in 
 one of its passages, had such a moving effect upon my brother, 
 who took part in it, that, to his astonishment, as he himself 
 admitted, he completely lost his cue on account of it. 
 
 By Christmas my work had come to an end, my score was, 
 written out complete with the most laudable neatness, and now 
 I was to return to Leipzig for the New Year, in order to get my/ 
 opera accepted by the theatre there. On the way home l[ 
 visited Nuremberg, where I stayed a week with my sister Clara 
 and with her husband, who were engaged at the theatre there. 
 I well remember how happy and comfortable I felt during this 
 pleasant visit to the very same relatives who a few years pre- 
 viously, when I had stayed with them at Magdeburg, had 
 been upset by my resolve to adopt music as a calling. Now 
 I had become a real musician, had written a grand opera, and 
 had already brought out many things without coming to grief. 
 The sense of all this was a great joy to me, while it was no less 
 flattering to my relatives, who could not fail to see that the 
 supposed misfortune had in the end proved to my advantage. 
 I was in a jolly mood and quite unrestrained a state of mind 
 which was very largely the result not only of my brother-in- 
 law's cheerful and sociable household, but also of the pleasant 
 tavern life of the place. In a much more confident and elated 
 spirit I returned to Leipzig, where I was able to lay the three 
 huge volumes of my score before my highly delighted mother 
 and sister. 
 
 Just then my family was the richer for the return of my 
 brother Julius from his long wanderings. He had worked a 
 good while in Paris as a goldsmith, and had now set up for 
 himself in that capacity in Leipzig. He too, like the rest, was 
 eager to hear something out of my opera, which, to be sure, 
 was not so easy, as I entirely lacked the gift of playing anything
 
 96 MY LIFE 
 
 of the sort in an easy and intelligible way. Only when I was 
 able to work myself into a state of absolute ecstasy was it pos- 
 sible for me to render something with any effect. Rosalie knew 
 that I meant it to draw a sort of declaration of love from her ; 
 but I have never felt certain whether the embrace and the sis- 
 terly kiss which were awarded me after I had sung my great 
 aria from Ada, were bestowed on me from real emotion or rather 
 out of affectionate regard. On the other hand, the zeal with 
 which she urged my opera on the director of the theatre, Ringel- 
 hardt, the conductor and the manager was unmistakable, and she 
 did it so effectually that she obtained their consent for its per- 
 formance, and that very speedily. I was particularly interested 
 to learn that the management immediately showed themselves 
 eager to try to settle the matter of the costumes for my drama : 
 but I was astonished to hear that the choice was in favour of 
 oriental attire, whereas I had intended, by the names I had 
 selected, to suggest a northern character for the setting. But 
 it was precisely these names which they found unsuitable, as 
 fairy personages are not seen in the North, but only in the East ; 
 while apart from this, the original by Gozzi, which formed the 
 basis of the work, undoubtedly bore an oriental character. It 
 was with the utmost indignation that I opposed the insuffer- 
 able turban and caftan style of dress, and vehemently advo- 
 cated the knightly garb worn in the early years of the Middle 
 Ages. I then had to come to a thorough understanding with 
 the conductor, Stegmayer, on the subject of my score. He was 
 a remarkable, short, fat man, with fair curly hair, and an 
 exceptionally jovial disposition; he was, however, very hard 
 to bring to a point. When over our wine we always arrived 
 at an understanding very quickly, but as soon as we sat at the 
 piano, I had to listen to the most extraordinary objections con- 
 cerning the trend of which I was for some time extremely 
 puzzled. As the matter was much delayed by this vacillation, 
 I put myself into closer communication with the stage manager 
 of the opera, Ilauser, who at that time was much appreciated as 
 a singer and patron of art by the people of Leipzig. 
 
 With this man, too, I had the strangest experiences: he 
 who had captivated the audiences of Leipzig, more especially 
 with his impersonation of the barber and the Englishman in
 
 HAUSER AtfD BIEREY 97 
 
 Fra Diavolo, suddenly revealed himself in his own house as 
 the most fanatical adherent of the most old-fashioned music. 
 I listened with astonishment to the scarcely veiled contempt 
 with which he treated even Mozart, and the only thing he 
 seemed to regret was that we had no operas by Sebastian Bach. 
 After he had explained to me that dramatic music had not 
 actually been written yet, and that properly speaking Gluck 
 alone had shown any ability for it, he proceeded to what 
 seemed an exhaustive examination of my own opera, concerning 
 which all I had wished to hear from him was whether it was fit 
 to be performed. Instead of this, however, his object seemed 
 to be to point out the failure of my purpose in every number. 
 I sweated blood under the unparalleled torture of going through 
 niy work with this man; and I told my mother and sister of 
 my grave depression. All these delays had already succeeded 
 in making it impossible to perform my opera at the date 
 originally fixed, and now it was postponed until August of the 
 current year (1834). 
 
 An incident which I shall never forget inspired me with 
 fresh courage. Old Bierey, an experienced and excellent 
 musician, and in his day a successful composer, who, thanks 
 more particularly to his long practice as a conductor at the 
 Breslau theatre, had acquired a perfectly practical knowledge 
 of such things, was then living at Leipzig, and was a good friend 
 of my people. My mother and sister begged him to give his 
 opinion about the fitness of my opera for the stage, and I duly 
 submitted the score to him. I cannot say how deeply affected 
 and impressed I was to see this old gentleman appear one day 
 among my relatives, and to hear him declare with genuine 
 enthusiasm that he simply could not understand how so young 
 a man could have composed such a score. His remarks con- 
 cerning the greatness which he had recognised in my talent 
 were really irresistible, and positively amazed me. When asked 
 whether he considered the work presentable and calculated ' 
 to produce an effect, he declared his only regret was that he 
 was no longer at the head of a theatre, because, had he been, 
 he would have thought himself extremely lucky to secure such 
 a man as myself permanently for his enterprise. At this 
 announcement my family was overcome with joy, and their
 
 98 MY LIFE 
 
 feelings were all the more justified seeing that, as they all 
 knew, Bierey was by no means an amiable romancer, but a 
 practical musician well seasoned by a life full of experience. 
 
 The delay was now borne with better spirits, and for a long 
 time I was able to wait hopefully for what the future might 
 bring. Among other things, I now began to enjoy the company 
 of a new friend in the person of Laube, who at that time, 
 although I had not set his Kosziusko to music, was at the zenith 
 of his fame. The first portion of his novel, Young Europe, the 
 form of which was epistolary, had appeared, and had a most 
 stimulating effect on me, more particularly in conjunction with 
 all the youthful hopefulness which at that time pulsated in my 
 veins. Though his teaching was essentially only a repetition 
 of that in Heinse's Ardinghello, the forces that then surged in 
 young breasts were given full and eloquent expression. The 
 guiding spirit of this tendency was followed in literary criti- 
 cism, which was aimed mainly at the supposed or actual in- 
 capacity of the semi-classical occupants of our various literary 
 thrones. Without the slightest mercy the pedants, 1 among whom 
 Tieck for one was numbered, were treated as sheer encum- 
 brances and hindrances to the rise of a new literature. That 
 which led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard 
 to those German composers who hitherto had been admired and 
 respected, was partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, 
 and the luring sprightliness of their tone; but mainly the 
 impression made by a fresh visit of Schroder-Devrient to 
 Leipzig, when her rendering of Romeo in Bellini's Romeo 
 and Juliet carried every one by storm. The effect of it was 
 not to be compared with anything that had been witnessed 
 theretofore. To see the daring, romantic figure of the youth- 
 ful lover against a background of such obviously shallow and 
 empty music prompted one, at all events, to meditate doubt- 
 fully upon the cause of the great lack of effect in solid German 
 music as it had been applied hitherto to the drama. Without 
 for the moment plunging too deeply into this meditation, I 
 allowed myself to be borne along with the current of my 
 youthful feelings, then roused to ardour, and turned involun- 
 tarily to the task of working off all that brooding seriousness 
 
 1 Zdpfe in the German text. TRANSLATOR.
 
 ROMEO BY SCHRODER-DEVRIENT 99 
 
 which iii my earlier years had driven me to such pathetic 
 mysticism. 
 
 What Pohlenz had not done by his conducting of the Ninth 
 Symphony, what the Vienna Conservatoire, Dionys Weber, and 
 many other clumsy performances (which had led me to regard 
 classical music as absolutely colourless) had not fully accom- 
 plished, was achieved by the inconceivable charm of the most 
 unclassical Italian music, thanks to the wonderful, thrilling, 
 and entrancing impersonation of Romeo by Schroder-DevrientJ 
 What effect such powerful, and as regards their causes, incom-1 
 prehensible, effects had upon my opinion was shown in the) 
 frivolous way in which I was able to contrive a short criticism 
 of Weber's Euryanthe for the Elegante Zeitung. This opera 
 had been performed by the Leipzig company shortly before the 
 appearance of Schroder-Devrient : cold and colourless per- 
 formers, among whom the singer in the title-role, appearing in 
 the wilderness with the full sleeves which were then the pink 
 of fashion, is still a disagreeable memory. Very laboriously, 
 and without verve, but simply with the object of satisfying the 
 demands of classical rules, this company did its utmost to dispel 
 even the enthusiastic impressions of Weber's music which I 
 had formed in my youth. I did not know what answer to 
 make to a brother critic of Laube's, when he pointed out to me 
 the laboured character of this operatic performance, as soon as 
 he was able to contrast it with the entrancing effect of that 
 Romeo evening. Here I found myself confronted with a 
 problem, the solving of which I was just at that time disposed 
 to take as easily as possible, and displayed my courage by 
 discarding all prejudice, and that daringly, in the short criti- 
 cism just mentioned in which I simply scoffed at Euryanthe. 
 Just as I had had my season of wild oat sowing as a student, so 
 now I boldly rushed into the same courses in the development 
 of my artistic taste. 
 
 It was May, and beautiful spring weather, and a pleasure 
 trip that I now undertook with a friend into the promised land 
 of my youthful romance, Bohemia, was destined to bring the 
 unrestrained ' Young-European ' mood in me to full maturity, i 
 This friend was Theodor Apel. I had known him a long while, 
 and had always felt particularly flattered by the fact that I i
 
 100 MY LIFE 
 
 had won his hearty affection; for, as the son of the gifted 
 master of metre and imitator of Greek forms of poetry, August 
 Apel, I felt that admiring deference for him which I had never 
 yet been able to bestow upon the descendant of a famous man. 
 Being well-to-do and of a good family, his friendship gave 
 me such opportunities of coming into touch with the easy 
 circumstances of the upper classes as were not of frequent 
 occurrence in my station of life. While my mother, for in- 
 stance, regarded my association with this highly respectable 
 family with great satisfaction, I for my part was extremely 
 gratified at the thought of the cordiality with which I was 
 received in such circles. 
 
 Apel's earnest wish was to become a poet, and I took it for 
 granted that he had all that was needed for such a calling; 
 above all, what seemed to me so important, the complete free- 
 dom that his considerable fortune assured him by liberating 
 him from all need of earning his living or of adopting a pro- 
 fession for a livelihood. Strange to say, his mother, who on 
 the death of his distinguished father had married a Leipzig 
 lawyer, was very anxious about the vocation he should choose, 
 and wished her son to make a fine career in the law, as she was 
 not at all disposed to favour his poetical gifts. And it was to 
 her attempts to convert me to her view, in order that by my 
 influence I might avert the calamity of a second poet in the 
 family, in the person of the son, that I owed the specially 
 friendly relations that obtained between herself and me. All 
 her suggestions succeeded in doing, however, was to stimulate 
 me, even more than my own favourable opinion of his talent 
 could, to confirm my friend in his desire to be a poet, and thus 
 to support him in his rebellious attitude towards his family. 
 
 He was not displeased at this. As he was also studying music 
 and composed quite nicely, I succeeded in being on terms of 
 the greatest intimacy with him. The fact that he had spent 
 the very year in which I had sunk into the lowest depths 
 of undergraduate madness, studying at Heidelberg and not at 
 Leipzig, had kept him unsullied by any share in my strange 
 excesses, and when we now met again at Leipzig, in the spring 
 of 1834, the only thing that we still had in common was the 
 aesthetic aspiration of our lives, which we now strove by way
 
 WITH APEL IN BOHEMIA 101 
 
 of experiment to divert into the direction of the enjoyment 
 of life. Gladly would we have flung ourselves into lively ad- 
 ventures if only the conditions of our environment and of 
 the whole middle-class world in which we lived had in any way 
 admitted of such things. Despite all the promptings of our in- 
 stincts, however, we got no further than planning this excursion 
 to Bohemia. At all events, it was something that we made the 
 journey not by the post, but in our own carriage, and our 
 genuine pleasure continued to lie in the fact that at Teplitz, 
 for instance, we daily took long drives in a fine carriage. When 
 in the evening we had supped off trout at the Wilhelmsburg, 
 drunk good Czernosek wine with Bilin water, and duly excited 
 ourselves over Hoffmann, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Heinse's 
 Ardinghello, and other matters, and then, with our limbs com- 
 fortably outstretched in our elegant carriage, drove back in 
 the summer twilight to the ' King of Prussia,' where we oc- 
 cupied the large balcony-room on the first floor, we felt that 
 we had spent the day like young gods, and for sheer exuberance 
 could think of nothing better to do than to indulge in the most 
 frightful quarrels which, especially when the windows were 
 open, would collect numbers of alarmed listeners in the square 
 before the inn. 
 
 One fine morning I stole away from my friend in order to 
 take my breakfast alone at the ' Schlackenburg,' and also to 
 seize an opportunity of jotting down the plan of a new operatic 
 composition in my note-book. With this end in view, I had 
 mastered the subject of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure,'* 
 which, in accordance with my present mood, I soon trans- 
 formed pretty freely into a libretto entitled Liebesverbot. Young 
 Europe and Ardinghello, and the strange frame of mind into 
 which I had fallen with regard to classical operatic music, 
 furnished me with the keynote of my conception, which was 
 directed more particularly against puritanical hypocrisy, and 
 which thus tended boldly to exalt ' unrestrained sensuality.' 
 I took care to understand the grave Shakespearean theme only 
 in this sense. I could see only the gloomy strait-laced viceroy, 
 his heart aflame with the most passionate love for the beautiful 
 novice, who, while she beseeches him to pardon her brother 
 condemned to death for illicit love, at the same time kindles
 
 102 MY LIFE 
 
 the most dangerous fire in the stubborn Puritan's breast by 
 infecting him with the lovely warmth of her human emotion. 
 
 The fact that these powerful features are so richly developed 
 in Shakespeare's creation only in order that, in the end, they 
 may be weighed all the more gravely in the scales of justice, 
 was no concern of mine: all I cared about was to expose the 
 sinfulness of hypocrisy and the unnaturalness of such cruel 
 moral censure. Thus I completely dropped Measure for 
 Measure, and made the hypocrite be brought to justice only 
 by the avenging power of love. I transferred the theme from 
 the fabulous city of Vienna to the capital of sunny Sicily, in 
 which a German viceroy, indignant at the inconceivably loose 
 morals of the people, attempts to introduce a puritanical reform, 
 and comes miserably to grief over it. Die Stumme von Portici 
 probably contributed to some extent to this theme, as did also 
 certain memories of Die Sizilianische Vesper. When I remem- 
 ber that at last even the gentle Sicilian Bellini constituted a 
 factor in this composition, I cannot, to be sure, help smiling 
 at the strange medley in which the most extraordinary mis- 
 understandings here took shape. 
 
 This remained for the present a mere draft. Studies from 
 life destined for my work were first to be carried out on this 
 delightful excursion to Bohemia. I led my friend in triumph 
 to Prague, in the hope of securing the same impressions for 
 him which had stirred me so profoundly when I was there. 
 We met my fair friends in the city itself; for, owing to the 
 death of old Count Pachta, material changes had taken place 
 in the family, and the surviving daughters no longer went to 
 Pravonin. My behaviour was full of arrogance, and by means 
 of it I doubtless wished to vent a certain capricious lust of 
 revenge for the feelings of bitterness with which I had taken 
 leave of this circle some years previously. My friend was well 
 received. The changed family circumstances forced the charm- 
 ing girls ever more and more imperatively to come to some de- 
 cision as to their future, and a wealthy bourgeois, though not 
 exactly in trade himself, but in possession of ample means, 
 seemed to the anxious mother, at all events, a good adviser. 
 Without either showing or feeling any malice in the matter, I 
 expressed my pleasure at the sight of the strange confusion
 
 COUNT PACHTA'S DAUGHTEES 103 
 
 caused by Theodor's introduction into the family by the mer- 
 riest and wildest jests: for my only intercourse with the ladies 
 consisted purely of jokes and friendly chaff. They could not 
 understand how it was that I had altered so strangely. There 
 was no longer any of that love of wrangling, that rage for 
 instructing, and that zeal in converting in me which formerly 
 they had found so irritating. But at the same time not a 
 sensible word could I be made to utter, and they who were now 
 wanting to talk over many things seriously could get nothing 
 out of me save the wildest tomfoolery. As on this occasion, 
 in my character of an uncaged bird, I boldly allowed myself 
 many a liberty against which they felt themselves powerless, 
 my exuberant spirits were excited all the more when my friend, 
 who was led away by my example, tried to imitate me a 
 thing they took in very bad part from him. 
 
 Only once was there any attempt at seriousness between us: 
 I was sitting at the piano, and was listening to my companion, 
 who was telling the ladies that in a conversation at the hotel I 
 had found occasion to express myself most warmly to some 
 one who appeared to be surprised on hearing of the domestic 
 and industrious qualities of my lady friends. I was deeply 
 moved when, as the outcome of my companion's remarks, I 
 gathered what unpleasant experiences the poor things had 
 already been through: for what seemed to me a very natural 
 action on my part, appeared to fill them with unexpected 
 pleasure. Jenny, for instance, came up to me and hugged me 
 with great warmth. By general consent I was now granted 
 the right of behaving with almost studied rudeness, and I 
 replied even to Jenny's warm outburst only with my usual 
 banter. 
 
 In our hotel, the ' Black Horse,' which was so famous in 
 those days, I found the playground in which I was able to 
 carry the mischievous spirit not exhausted at the Pachta's house 
 to the point of recklessness. Out of the most accidental ma- 
 terial in table and travelling guests we succeeded in gather- 
 ing a company around us which allowed us, until far into the 
 night, to lead it into the most inconceivable follies. To all 
 this I was incited more particularly by the personality of a 
 very timid and undersized business man from Frankfort on
 
 104 MY LIFE 
 
 the Oder, who longed to seem of a daring disposition; and 
 his presence stimulated me, if only owing to the remarkable 
 chance it gave me of coming into contact with some one who 
 was at home in Frankfort ' on the Oder.' Any one who knows 
 how things then stood in Austria can form some idea of my 
 recklessness when I say that I once went so far as to cause our 
 symposium in the public room to bellow the Marseillaise out 
 loud into the night. Therefore, when after this heroic ex- 
 ploit was over, and while I was undressing, I clambered on 
 the outer ledges of the windows from one room to the other on 
 the second floor, I naturally horrified those who did not know 
 of the love of acrobatic feats which I had cultivated in my 
 earliest boyhood. 
 
 Even if I had exposed myself without fear to such dangers, 
 I was soon sobered down next morning by a summons from the 
 police. When, in addition to this, I recalled the singing of 
 the Marseillaise, I was filled with the gravest fears. After 
 having been detained at the station a long time, owing to a 
 strange misunderstanding, the upshot of it was that the in- 
 spector who was told off to examine me found that there was 
 not sufficient time left for a serious hearing, and, to my great 
 relief, I was allowed to go after replying to a few harmless 
 questions concerning the intended length of my stay. Never- 
 theless, we thought it advisable not to yield to the temptation 
 of playing any more pranks beneath the spread wings of the 
 double eagle. 
 
 By means of a circuitous route into which we were led by 
 our insatiable longing for adventures adventures which, as 
 a matter of fact, occurred only in our imagination, and which 
 to all intents and purposes were but modest diversions on the 
 road we at length got back to Leipzig. And with this return 
 home the really cheerful period of my life as a youth definitely 
 closed. If, up to that time, I had not been free from serious 
 errors and moments of passion, it was only now that care cast 
 its first shadow across my path. 
 
 My family had anxiously awaited my return in order to 
 inform me that the post of conductor had been offered to me 
 by the Magdeburg Theatre Company. This company during 
 the current summer month was performing at a ^watering
 
 CONDUCTOR AT LAUCHSTADT 105 
 
 place called Lauchstadt. The manager could not get on with 
 an incompetent conductor that had been sent to him, and in 
 his extremity had applied to Leipzig in the hope of getting a 
 substitute forthwith. Stegmayer, the conductor, who had no 
 inclination to practise my score Feen during the hot summer 
 weather, as he had promised to do, promptly recommended 
 me for the post, and in that way really managed to shake off 
 a very troublesome tormentor. For although, on the one hand, 
 I really desired to be able to abandon myself freely and without 
 restraint to the torrent of adventures that constitute the artist's 
 life, yet a longing for independence, which could be won only 
 by my earning my own living, had been greatly strengthened 
 in me by the state of my affairs. Albeit, I had the feeling 
 that a solid basis for the gratification of this desire was not 
 to be laid in Lauchstadt; nor did I find it easy to assist the 
 plot concocted against the production of my Feen. I therefore 
 determined to make a preliminary visit to the place just to 
 see how things stood. 
 
 This little watering-place had, in the days of Goethe and 
 Schiller, acquired a very wide reputation. Its wooden theatre 
 had been built according to the design of the former, and the 
 first performance of the Braut von Messina had been given 
 there. But although I repeated all this to myself, the place 
 made me feel rather doubtful. I asked for the house of the 
 director of the theatre. lie proved to be out, but a small dirty 
 boy, his son, was told to take me to the theatre to find l Papa.' 
 Papa, however, met us on the way. He was an elderly man; 
 he wore a dressing-gown, and on his head a cap. His delight 
 at greeting me was interrupted by complaints about a serious 
 indisposition, for which his son was to fetch him a cordial from 
 a shop close by. Before despatching the boy on this errand 
 pressed a real silver penny into his hand with a certain 
 ostentation which was obviously for my benefit. This person 
 was Heinrich Bethmann, surviving husband of the famous 
 stress of that name, who, having lived in the heyday of the 
 German stage, had won the favour of the King of Prussia; 
 and won it so lastingly, that long after her death it had con- 
 tinued to be extended to her spouse. He always drew a nice 
 pension from the Prussian court, and permanently enjoyed
 
 106 MY LIFE 
 
 its support without ever being able to forfeit its protection 
 by his irregular and dissipated ways. 
 
 At the time of which I am speaking he had sunk to his 
 lowest, owing to continued theatre management. His speech 
 and manners revealed the sugary refinement of a bygone day, 
 while all that he did and everything about him testified to the 
 most shameful neglect. He took me back to his house, where 
 he presented me to his second wife, who, crippled in one foot, 
 lay on an extraordinary couch while an elderly bass, concern- 
 ing whose excessive devotion Bethmann had already complained 
 to me quite openly, smoked his pipe beside her. From there 
 the director took me to his stage manager, who lived in the 
 same house. 
 
 With the latter, who was just engaged in a consultation 
 about the repertory with the theatre attendant, a toothless old 
 skeleton, he left me to settle the necessary arrangements. As 
 soon as Bethmann had gone, Schmale, the stage manager, 
 shrugged his shoulders and smiled, assuring me that that was 
 just the way of the director, to put everything on his back 
 and trouble himself about nothing. There he had been sitting 
 for over an hour, discussing with Kroge what should be put on 
 next Sunday: it was all very well his starting Don Juan, but 
 how could he get a rehearsal carried out, when the Merseburg 
 town bandsmen, who formed the orchestra, would not come 
 over on Saturday to rehearse ? 
 
 All the time Schmale kept reaching out through the open 
 window to a cherry tree from which he picked and persistently 
 ate the fruit, ejecting the stones with a disagreeable noise. 
 Now it was this last circumstance in particular which decided 
 me; for, strange to say, I have an innate aversion from fruit. 
 I informed the stage manager that he need not trouble at all 
 about Don Juan for Sunday, since for my part, if they had 
 reckoned on my making my first appearance at this perform- 
 ance, I must anyhow disappoint the director, as I had no 
 choice but to return at once to Leipzig, where I had to put my 
 affairs in order. This polite manner of tendering my absolute 
 refusal to accept the appointment a conclusion I had quickly 
 arrived at in my own mind forced me to practise some dis- 
 simulation, and made it necessary for me to appear as if I
 
 MINNA 107 
 
 really had some other purpose in coming to Lauchstadt. This 
 pretence in itself was quite unnecessary, seeing that I was quite 
 determined never to return there again. 
 
 People offered to help me in finding a lodging, and a young 
 actor whom I had chanced to know at Wiirzburg undertook 
 to be my guide in the matter. While he was taking me to the ' 
 best lodging he knew, he told me that presently he would do 
 me the kindness of making me the housemate of the prettiest 
 and nicest girl to be found in the place at the time. She was 
 the junior lead of the company, Mademoiselle Minna Planer, 
 of whom doubtless I had already heard. 
 
 As luck would have it, the promised damsel met us at the 
 door of the house in question. Her appearance and bearing 
 formed the most striking contrast possible to all the unpleasant 
 impressions of the theatre which it had been my lot to receive 
 on this fateful morning. Looking very charming and fresh, 
 the young actress's general manner and movements were full 
 of a certain majesty and grave assurance which lent an agree- 
 able and captivating air of dignity to her otherwise pleasant 
 expression. Her scrupulously clean and tidy dress completed 
 the startling effect of the unexpected encounter. After I had 
 been introduced to her in the hall as the new conductor, and 
 after she had done regarding with astonishment the stranger 
 who seemed so young for such a title, she recommended me 
 kindly to the landlady of the house, and begged that I might 
 be well looked after; whereupon she walked proudly and se- 
 renely across the street to her rehearsal. 
 
 I engaged a room on the spot, agreed to Don Juan for Sunday, 
 regretted greatly that I had not brought my luggage with me 
 from Leipzig, and hastened to return thither as quickly as 
 possible in order to get back to Lauchstadt all the sooner. The 
 die was cast. The serious side of life at once confronted me 
 in the form of significant experiences. At Leipzig I had to 
 take a furtive leave of Laube. At the instance of Prussia he 
 had been warned off Saxon soil, and he half guessed at the 
 meaning which was to be attached to this move. The time of 
 undisguised reaction against the Liberal movement of the early 
 'thirties had set in: the fact that Laube was concerned in no 
 sort of political work, but had devoted himself merely to
 
 108 MY LIFE 
 
 literary activity, always aiming simply at aesthetic objects, 
 made the action of the police quite incomprehensible to us 
 for the time being. The disgusting ambiguity with which the 
 Leipzig authorities answered all his questions as to the cause 
 of his expulsion soon gave him the strongest suspicions as to 
 what their intentions towards him actually were. 
 
 Leipzig, as the scene of his literary labours, being inestim- 
 ably precious, it mattered greatly to him to keep within reach 
 of it. My friend Apel owned a fine estate on Prussian soil, 
 within but a few hours' distance of Leipzig, and we conceived 
 the wish of seeing Laube hospitably harboured there. My 
 friend, who without infringing the legal stipulations was in a 
 position to give the persecuted man a place of refuge, immedi- 
 ately assented, and with great readiness, to our desire, but 
 confessed to us next day, after having communicated with his 
 family, that he thought he might incur some unpleasantnesses 
 if he entertained Laube. At this the latter smiled, and in a 
 manner I shall never forget, though I have noticed in the 
 course of my life that the expression which I then saw in his 
 face was one which has often flitted over my own features. 
 He took his leave, and in a short time we heard that he had 
 been arrested, owing to having undertaken fresh proceedings 
 against former members of the Burschenschaft (Students' 
 League), and had been lodged in the municipal prison at 
 Berlin. I had thus had two experiences which weighed me 
 down like lead, so I packed my scanty portmanteau, took leave 
 of my mother and sister, and, with a stout heart, started on 
 my career as a conductor. 
 
 In order to be able to look upon the little room under Minna's 
 lodging as my new home, I was forced also to make the best 
 f of Bethmann's theatrical enterprise. As a matter of fact, a 
 performance of Don Juan was given at once, for the director, 
 who prided himself on being a connoisseur of things artistic, 
 suggested that opera to me as one with which it would be wise 
 for an aspiring young artist, of a good family, to make his 
 debut Despite the fact that, apart from some of my own 
 instrumental compositions, I had never yet conducted, and 
 least of all in opera, the rehearsal and the performance went 
 off fairly well. Only once or twice did discrepancies appear
 
 MINNA 109 
 
 in the recitative of Donna Anna; yet this did not involve me 
 in any kind of hostility, and when I took my place unabashed 
 and calm for the production of Lumpaci Vagabundus, which 
 I had practised very thoroughly, the people generally seemed 
 to have gained full confidence in the theatre's new acquisition. 
 
 The fact that I submitted without bitterness and even with 
 some cheerfulness to this unworthy use of my musical talent, 
 was due less to my taste being at this period, as I called it, 
 in its salad days, than to my intercourse with Minna Planer, 
 who was employed in that magic trifle as the Amorous Fairy. 
 Indeed, in the midst of this dust-cloud of frivolity and vul- 
 garity, she always seemed very much like a fairy, the reasons of 
 whose descent into this giddy whirl, which of a truth seemed 
 neither to carry her away nor even to affect her, remained an 
 absolute mystery. For while I could discover nothing in the 
 opera singers save the familiar stage caricatures and grimaces, 
 this fair actress differed wholly from those about her in her 
 unaffected soberness and dainty modesty, as also in the absence 
 of all theatrical pretence and stiltedness. There was only one 
 young man whom I could place beside Minna on the ground 
 of qualities like those I recognised in her. This fellow was 
 Friedrich Schmitt, who had only just adopted the stage as a 
 career in the hope of making a l hit ' in opera, to which, as the 
 possessor of an excellent tenor voice, he felt himself called. 
 He too differed from the rest of the company, especially in 
 the earnestness which he brought to bear upon his studies 
 and his work in general : the soulful manly pitch of his chest 
 voice, his clear, noble enunciation and intelligent rendering of 
 his words, have always remained as standards in my memory. 
 Owing to the fact that he was wholly devoid of theatrical 
 talent, and acted clumsily and awkwardly, a check was soon 
 put to his progress, but he always remained dear to me as a 
 clever and original man of trustworthy and upright character 
 my only associate. 
 
 But my dealings with my kind housemate soon became a 
 cherished habit, while she returned the ingenuously impetuous 
 advances of the conductor of one-and-twenty with a certain 
 tolerant astonishment which, remote as it was from all 
 coquetry and ulterior motives, soon made familiar and friendly
 
 110 MY LIFE 
 
 intercourse possible with her. When, one evening, I returned 
 late to my ground-floor room, by climbing through the window, 
 for I had no latch-key, the noise of my entry brought Minna 
 to her window just over mine. Standing on my window ledge 
 I begged her to allow me to bid her good-night once more. 
 She had not the slightest objection to this, but declared it 
 must be done from the window, as she always had her door 
 locked by the people of the house, and nobody could get in 
 that way. She kindly facilitated the handshake by leaning 
 far out of her window, so that I could take her hand as I stood 
 on my ledge. When later on I had an attack of erysipelas, 
 from which I often suffered, and with my face all swollen and 
 frightfully distorted concealed myself from the world in my 
 gloomy room, Minna visited me repeatedly, nursed me, and 
 assured me that my distorted features did not matter in the 
 least On recovering, I paid her a visit and complained of a 
 rash that had remained round my mouth, and which seemed 
 so unpleasant that I apologised for showing it to her. This 
 also she made light of. Then I inferred she would not give me 
 a kiss, whereupon she at once gave me practical proof that 
 she did not shrink from that either. 
 
 This was all done with a friendly serenity and composure 
 that had something almost motherly about it, and it was free 
 from all suggestion of frivolity or of heartlessness. In a few 
 weeks the company had to leave Lauchstadt to proceed to 
 Rudolstadt and fulfil a special engagement there. I was par- 
 ticularly anxious to make this journey, which in those days 
 was an arduous undertaking, in Minna's company, and if only 
 I had succeeded in getting my well-earned salary duly paid by 
 Bethmann, nothing would have hindered the fulfilment of my 
 wish. But in this matter I encountered exceptional difficulties, 
 which in the course of eventful years grew in chronic fashion 
 into the strangest of ailments. Even at Lauchstadt I had 
 discovered that there was only one man who drew his salary 
 in full, namely the bass Kneisel, whom I had seen smoking his 
 pipe beside the couch of the director's lame wife. I was 
 assured that if I cared greatly about getting some of my wages 
 from time to time, I could obtain this favour only by paying 
 court to Mme. Bethmann. This time I preferred once more
 
 SYMPHONY IN E MAJOR 111 
 
 to appeal to my family for help, and therefore travelled to 
 Rudolstadt through Leipzig, where, to the sad astonishment 
 of my mother, I had to replenish my coffer with the necessary 
 supplies. On the way to Leipzig I had travelled with Apel 
 through his estate, he having fetched me from Lauchstadt for 
 the purpose. His arrival was fixed in my memory by a noisy 
 banquet which my wealthy friend gave at the hotel in my 
 honour. It was on this occasion that I and one of the other 
 guests succeeded in completely destroying a huge, massively 
 built Dutch-tile stove, such as we had in our room at the inn. 
 Next morning none of us could understand how it had happened. 
 It was on this journey to Rudolstadt that I first passed 
 through Weimar, where on a rainy day I strolled with curiosity, 
 but without emotion, towards Goethe's house. I had pictured 
 something rather different, and thought I should experience 
 livelier impressions from the active theatre life of Rudolstadt, 
 to which I felt strongly attracted. In spite of the fact that I 
 was not to be conductor myself, this post having been entrusted 
 to the leader of the royal orchestra, who had been specially 
 engaged for our performances, yet I was so fully occupied with 
 rehearsals for the many operas and musical comedies required 
 to regale the frivolous public of the principality that I found 
 no leisure for excursions into the charming regions of this little 
 land. In addition to these severe and ill-paid labours, two 
 passions held me chained during the six weeks of my stay in 
 Rudolstadt. These were, first, a longing to write the libretto 
 of Liebesverbot ; and secondly, my growing attachment to 
 Minna. It is true, I sketched out a musical composition about 
 this time, a symphony in E major, whose first movement; 
 ( Y^ time) I completed as a separate piece. As regards style 
 and design, this work was suggested by Beethoven's Seventh 
 and Eighth Symphonies, and, so far as I can remember, 
 I should have had no need to be ashamed of it, had I been 
 able to complete it, or keep the part I had actually finished.. 
 But I had already begun at this time to form the opinion 
 that, to produce anything fresh and truly noteworthy in 
 the realm of symphony, and according to Beethoven's methods, 
 was an impossibility. Whereas opera, to which I felt in- 
 wardly drawn, though I had no real example I wished to
 
 112 MY LIFE 
 
 <F \ copy, presented itself to my mind in varied and alluring shapes 
 : as a most fascinating form of art. Thus, amid manifold and 
 1 passionate agitations, and in the few leisure hours which were 
 ' left to me, I completed the greater part of my operatic poem, 
 taking infinitely more pains, both as regards words and versifi- 
 cation, than with the text of my earlier Feen. Moreover, I 
 found myself possessed of incomparably greater assurance in 
 the arrangement and partial invention of situations than when 
 writing that earlier work. 
 
 On the other hand, I now began for the first time to experience 
 the cares and worries of a lover's jealousy. A change, to me 
 inexplicable, manifested itself in Minna's hitherto unaffected 
 and gentle manner towards me. It appears that my artless 
 solicitations for her favour, by which at that time I meant 
 nothing serious, and in which a man of the world would merely 
 have seen the exuberance of a youthful and easily satisfied 
 infatuation, had given rise to certain remarks and comments 
 upon the popular actress. I was astonished to learn, first from 
 her reserved manner, and later from her own lips, that she felt 
 compelled to inquire into the seriousness of my intentions, and 
 to consider their consequences. She was at that time, as I 
 had already discovered, on very intimate terms with a young 
 nobleman, whose acquaintance I first made in Lauchstadt, 
 where he used to visit her. I had already realised on that 
 occasion that he was unfeignedly and cordially attached to her ; 
 in fact, in the circle of her friends she was regarded as engaged 
 to Herr von O., although it was obvious that marriage was out 
 of the question, as the young lover was quite without means, 
 and owing to the high standing of his family it was essential 
 that he should sacrifice himself to a marriage of convenience, 
 both on account of his social position and of the career which 
 he would have to adopt. During this stay at Rudolstadt 
 Minna appears to have gathered certain information on this 
 point which troubled and depressed her, thus rendering her 
 more inclined to treat my impetuous attempts at courtship 
 with cool reserve. 
 
 After mature deliberation I recognised that, in any case, 
 Young Europe, ArdinglieUo , and Liebesverbot could not be pro- 
 duced at Rudolstadt; but it was a very different matter for
 
 SITTING IN COMMAND 113 
 
 the Fee Amorosa, with its merry theatrical mood, and an 
 Ehrlicher Burger Kind to seek a decent livelihood. Therefore, 
 greatly discouraged, I proceeded to accentuate the more ex- 
 travagant situations of my Liebesverbot by rioting with a few 
 comrades in the sausage-scented atmosphere of the Rudolstadt 
 Vogelwiese. At this time my troubles again brought me more 
 or less into contact with the vice of gambling, although on this 
 occasion it only cast temporary fetters about me in the very 
 harmless form of the dice and roulette-tables out on the open 
 market-place. 
 
 We were looking forward to the time when we should leave 
 Rudolstadt for the half-yearly winter season at the capital, 
 Magdeburg, mainly because I should there resume my place 
 at the head of the orchestra, and might in any case count on 
 a better reward for my musical efforts. But before returning 
 to Magdeburg I had to endure a trying interval at Bernburg, 
 where Bethmann, the director, in addition to his other under- 
 takings, had also promised sundry theatrical performances. 
 During our brief stay in the town I had to arrange for the 
 presentation, with a mere fraction of the company, of several 
 operas, which were again to be conducted by the royal con- 
 ductor of the place. But in addition to these professional 
 labours, I had to endure such a meagre, ill-provided and grie- 
 vously farcical existence as was enough to disgust me, if not 
 for ever, at any rate for the time being, with the wretched 
 profession of a theatrical conductor. Yet I survived even this, 
 and Magdeburg was destined to lead me eventually to the real, 
 glory of my adopted profession. 
 
 The sensation of sitting in command at the very conductor's 
 desk from which, not many years before, the great master Kiihn- 
 lein had so moved the perplexed young enthusiast by the weighty 
 wisdom of his musical directorship, was not without its charm 
 for me, and, indeed, I very quickly succeeded in obtaining per- 
 fect confidence in conducting an orchestra. I was soon a per- 
 sona grata with the excellent musicians of the orchestra. Their 
 splendid combination in spirited overtures, which, especially 
 towards the finale, I generally took at an unheard-of speed, often 
 earned for us all the intoxicating applause of the public. The! 
 achievements of my fiery and often exuberant zeal won me 1
 
 114 MY LIFE 
 
 recognition from the singers, and were greeted by the audience 
 with rapturous appreciation. As in Magdeburg, at least in 
 those days, the art of theatrical criticism was but slightly de- 
 veloped, this universal satisfaction was a great encouragement, 
 and at the end of the first three months of my Magdeburg 
 conductorship I felt sustained by the flattering and comfort- 
 ing assurance that I was one of the bigwigs of opera. Under 
 these circumstances, Schmale, the stage manager, who has 
 been my good friend ever since, proposed a special gala per- 
 formance for New Year's Day, which he felt sure would be 
 a triumph. I was to compose the necessary music. This was 
 very speedily done; a rousing overture, several melodramas 
 and choruses were all greeted with enthusiasm, and brought 
 us such ample applause that we repeated the performance with 
 great success, although such repetitions after the actual gala 
 day were quite contrary to usage. 
 
 With the new year (1835) there came a decisive turning- 
 point in my life. After the rupture between Minna and my- 
 self at Rudolstadt, we had been to some extent lost to one an- 
 other; but our friendship was resumed on our meeting again 
 in Magdeburg; this time, however, it remained cool and pur- 
 posely indifferent. When she first appeared in the town, a 
 year before, her beauty had attracted considerable notice, and 
 I now learned that she was the object of great attention from 
 several young noblemen, and had shown herself not unmoved 
 by the compliment implied by their visits. Although her repu- 
 tation, thanks to her absolute discretion and self-respect, re- 
 mained beyond reproach, my objection to her receiving such 
 attentions grew very strong, owing possibly, in some degree, 
 to the memory of the sorrows I had endured in Pachta's house 
 in Prague. Although Minna assured me that the conduct of 
 these gentlemen was much more discreet and decent than that 
 of theatre-goers of the bourgeois class, and especially than that 
 of certain young musical conductors, she never succeeded in 
 soothing the bitterness and insistence with which I protested 
 against her acceptance of such attentions. So we spent three 
 unhappy months in ever-increasing estrangement, and at the 
 same time, in half-frantic despair, I pretended to be fond of 
 the most undesirable associates, and acted in every way with
 
 RELATIONS WITH MINNA 115 
 
 such blatant levity that Minna, as she told me afterwards, 
 was filled with the deepest anxiety and solicitude concerning 
 me. Moreover, as the ladies of the opera company were not 
 slow to pay court to their youthful conductor, and especially 
 as one young woman, whose reputation was not spotless, openly 
 set her cap at me, this anxiety of Minna's seems at last to 
 have culminated in a definite decision. I hit upon the idea 
 of treating the elite of our opera company to oysters and punch 
 in my own room on New Year's Eve. The married couples 
 were invited, and then came the question whether Fraulein 
 Planer would consent to take part in such a festivity. She 
 accepted quite ingenuously, and presented herself, as neatly 
 and becomingly dressed as ever, in my bachelor apartments, 
 where things soon grew pretty lively. I had already warned 
 my landlord that we were not likely to be very quiet, and 
 reassured him as to any possible damage to his furniture. 
 What the champagne failed to accomplish, the punch event- 
 ually succeeded in doing; all the restraints of petty conven- 
 tionality, which the company usually endeavoured to observe, 
 were cast aside, giving place to an unreserved demeanour 
 all round, to which no one objected. And then it was that 
 Minna's queenly dignity distinguished her from all her com- 
 panions. She never lost her self-respect; and whilst no one 
 ventured to take the slightest liberty with her, every one very 
 clearly recognised the simple candour with which she responded 
 to my kindly and solicitous attentions. They could not fail 
 to see that the link existing between us was not to be compared 
 to any ordinary liaison, and we had the satisfaction of seeing 
 the flighty young lady who had so openly angled for me fall 
 into a fit over the discovery. 
 
 From that time onward I remained permanently on the best 
 of terms with Minna. I do not believe that she ever felt any 
 sort of passion or genuine love for me, or, indeed, that she 
 was capable of such a thing, and I can therefore only describe 
 her feeling for me as one of heartfelt goodwill, and the sin- 
 cerest desire for my success and prosperity, inspired as she was 
 with the kindest sympathy, and genuine delight at, and ad- 
 miration for, my talents. All this at last became part of her 
 nature. She obviously had a very favourable opinion of my
 
 116 MY LIFE 
 
 abilities, though she was surprised at the rapidity of my suc- 
 cess. My eccentric nature, which she knew so well how to 
 humour pleasantly by her gentleness, stimulated her to the 
 continual exercise of the power, so flattering to her own vanity, 
 and without ever betraying any desire or ardour herself, she 
 never met my impetuous advances with coldness. 
 
 At the Magdeburg theatre I had already made the acquaint- 
 ance of a very interesting woman called Mme. Haas. She 
 was an actress, no longer in her first youth, and played so- 
 called 'chaperone's parts.' This lady won my sympathy by 
 telling me she had been friendly ever since her youth with 
 Laube, in whose destiny she continued to take a heartfelt and 
 cordial interest. She was clever, but far from happy, and an 
 unprepossessing exterior, which with the lapse of years grew 
 more uninviting, did not tend to make her any happier. She 
 lived in meagre circumstances, with one child, and appeared 
 to remember her better days with a bitter grief. My first visit 
 to her was paid merely to inquire after Laube's fate, but I soon 
 became a frequent and familiar caller. As she and Minna 
 speedily became fast friends, we three often spent pleasant 
 evenings talking together. But when, later on, a certain jeal- 
 ousy manifested itself on the part of the elder woman towards 
 the younger, our confidential relations were more or less dis- 
 turbed, for it particularly grieved me to hear Minna's talents 
 and mental gifts criticised by the other. One evening I had 
 promised Minna to have tea with her and Mme. Haas, but I 
 had thoughtlessly promised to go to a whist party first. This 
 engagement I purposely prolonged, much as it wearied me, 
 in the deliberate hope that her companion who had already 
 grown irksome to me might have left before my arrival. 
 The only way in which I could do this was by drinking hard, 
 so that I had the very unusual experience of rising from a sober 
 whist party in a completely fuddled condition, into which I 
 had imperceptibly fallen, and in which I refused to believe. 
 This incredulity deluded me into keeping my engagement for 
 tea, although it was so late. To my intense disgust the elder 
 woman was still there when I arrived, and her presence at 
 once had the effect of rousing my tipsiness to a violent out- 
 break; for she seemed astonished at my rowdy and unseemly
 
 A TACIT BETROTHAL 117 
 
 behaviour, and made several remarks upon it intended for 
 jokes, whereupon I scoffed at her in the coarsest manner, so 
 that she immediately left the house in high dudgeon. I had 
 still sense enough to be conscious of Minna's astonished laughter 
 at my outrageous conduct. As soon as she realised, however, 
 that my condition was such as to render my removal impossible 
 without great commotion, she rapidly formed a resolution which 
 must indeed have cost her an effort, though it was carried out 
 with the utmost calmness and good-humour. She did all she 
 could for me, and procured me the necessary relief, and when 
 I sank into a heavy slumber, unhesitatingly resigned her own 
 bed to my use. There I slept until awakened by the wonderful 
 grey of dawn. On recognising where I was, I at once realised , 
 and grew ever more convinced of the fact that this morning's 
 sunrise marked the starting-point of an infinitely momentous 
 period of my life. The demon of care had at last entered into 
 my existence. 
 
 Without any light-hearted jests, without gaiety or joking of 
 any description, we breakfasted quietly and decorously together, 
 and at an hour when, in view of the compromising circumstances 
 of the previous evening, we could set out without attracting un- 
 due notice, I set off with Minna for a long walk beyond the city 
 gates. Then we parted, and from that day forward freely and ( 
 openly gratified our desires as an acknowledged pair of lovers. 
 
 The peculiar direction which my musical activities had grad- 
 ually taken continued to receive ever fresh impetus, not only 
 from the successes, but also from the disasters which about this 
 time befell my efforts. I produced the overture to my Feen 
 with very satisfactory results at a concert given by the Logen- 
 gesellschaft, and thereby earned considerable applause. On 
 the other hand, news came from Leipzig confirming the shabby 
 action of the directors of the theatre in that place with regard 
 to the promised presentation of this opera. But, happily 
 for me, I had begun the music for my Liebesverboi, an oc- 
 cupation which so absorbed my thoughts that I lost all inter- 
 est in the earlier work, and abstained with proud indifference 
 from all further effort to secure its performance in Leipzig. 
 The success of its overture alone amply repaid me for the com- 
 position of my first opera.
 
 118 MY LIFE 
 
 Meanwhile, in spite of numerous other distractions, I found 
 time, during the brief six months of this theatrical season in 
 Magdeburg, to complete a large portion of my new opera, be- 
 sides doing other work. I ventured to introduce two duets 
 from it at a concert given in the theatre, and their reception 
 encouraged me to proceed hopefully with the rest of the opera. 
 
 During the second half of this season my friend Apel came 
 to sun himself enthusiastically in the splendour of my musical 
 directorship. He had written a drama, Columbus, which I 
 recommended to our management for production. This was a 
 peculiarly easy favour to win, as Apel volunteered to have a 
 new scene, representing the Alhambra, painted at his own 
 expense. Besides this, he proposed to effect many welcome 
 improvements in the condition of the actors taking part in his 
 play; for, owing to the continued preference displayed by the 
 directress for Kneisel, the bass, they had all suffered very much 
 from uncertainty about their wages. The piece itself appeared 
 to me to contain much that was good. It described the diffi- 
 culties and struggles of the great navigator before he set sail 
 on his first voyage of discovery. The drama ended with the 
 momentous departure of his ships from the harbour of Palos, 
 an episode whose results are known to all the world. At my 
 desire Apel submitted his play to my uncle Adolph, and even 
 in his critical opinion it was remarkable for its lively and 
 characteristic popular scenes. On the other hand, a love ro- 
 mance, which he had woven into the plot, struck me as un- 
 necessary and dull. In addition to a brief chorus for some 
 Moors who were expelled from Granada, to be sung en their 
 departure from the familiar home country, and a short orchestral 
 piece by way of conclusion, I also dashed off an overture for 
 my friend's play. I sketched out the complete draft of this 
 one evening at Minna's house, while Apel was left free to talk 
 to her as much and as loudly as he liked. The effect this com- 
 position was calculated to produce rested on a fundamental 
 idea which was quite simple, yet startling in its development. 
 Unfortunately I worked it out rather hurriedly. In not very 
 carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the 
 ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, 
 pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only com-
 
 
 COLUMBUS OVERTURE 119 
 
 prehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When 
 the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a 
 different theme in extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the 
 swelling vibrations of the first violins, which was intended to 
 represent a Fata Morgana. I had secured three pairs of 
 trumpets in different keys, in order to produce this exquisite, 
 gradually dawning and seductive theme with the utmost 
 niceties of shade and variety of modulation. This was in- 
 tended to represent the land of desire towards which the hero's 
 eyes are turned, and whose shores seem continually to rise before 
 him only to sink elusively beneath the waves, until at last they 
 soar in very deed above the western horizon, the crown of all 
 his toil and search, and stand clearly and unmistakably revealed 
 to all the sailors, a vast continent of the future. My six 
 trumpets were now to combine in one key, in order that the 
 theme assigned to them might re-echo in glorious jubilation. 
 Familiar as I was with the excellence of the Prussian regi- 
 mental trumpeters, I could rely upon a startling effect, especi- 
 ally in this concluding passage. My overture astonished every 
 one, and was tumultuously applauded. The play itself, how- 
 ever, was acted without dignity. A conceited comedian, named 
 Ludwig Meyer, completely ruined the title part, for which he 
 excused himself on the ground that, having to act as stage 
 manager also, he had been unable to commit his lines to 
 memory. Nevertheless, he managed to enrich his wardrobe 
 with several splendid costumes at Apel's expense, wearing 
 them, as Columbus, one after the other. At all events, Apel 
 had lived to see a play of his own actually performed, and 
 although this was never repeated, yet it afforded me an oppor- 
 tunity of increasing my personal popularity with the people of 
 Magdeburg, as the overture was several times repeated at con- 
 certs by special request. 
 
 But the chief event of this theatrical season occurred towards 
 its close. I induced Mme. Schroder-Devrient, who was staying 
 in Leipzig, to come to us for a few special performances, when, 
 on two occasions, I had the great satisfaction and stimulating 
 experience of myself conducting the operas in which she sang, 
 and thus entering into immediate artistic collaboration with 
 her. She appeared as Desdemona and Romeo. In the latter
 
 120 MY LIFE 
 
 role particularly she surpassed herself, and kindled a fresh 
 flame in my breast. This visit brought us also into closer 
 personal contact. So kindly disposed and sympathetic did 
 she show herself towards me, that she even volunteered to 
 lend me her services at a concert which I proposed to give for 
 my own benefit, although this would necessitate her returning 
 after a brief absence. Under circumstances so auspicious I 
 could only expect the best possible results from my concert, 
 and in my situation at that time its proceeds were a matter of 
 vital importance to me. My scanty salary from the Magde- 
 burg opera company had become altogether illusory, being 
 paid only in small and irregular instalments, so that I could 
 see but one way of meeting my daily expenses. These included 
 frequent entertainment of a large circle of friends, con- 
 sisting of singers and players, and the situation had become 
 unpleasantly accentuated by no small number of debts. True, 
 I did not know their exact amount; but reckoned that I could 
 at least form an advantageous, if indefinite, estimate of the 
 sum to be realized by my concert, whereby the two unknown 
 quantities might balance each other. I therefore consoled 
 my creditors with the tale of these fabulous receipts, which 
 were to pay them all in full the day after the concert. I even 
 went so far as to invite them to come and be paid at the hotel 
 to which I had moved at the close of the season. 
 
 And, indeed, there was nothing unreasonable in my counting 
 on the highest imaginable receipts, when supported by so great 
 and popular a singer, who, moreover, was returning to Magde- 
 burg on purpose for the event. I consequently acted with 
 reckless prodigality as regards cost, launching out into all 
 manner of musical extravagance, such as engaging an excellent 
 and much larger orchestra, and arranging many rehearsals. 
 Unfortunately for me, however, nobody would believe that such 
 a famous actress, whose time was so precious, would really 
 return again to please a little Magdeburg conductor. My 
 pompous announcement of her appearance was almost uni- 
 versally regarded as a deceitful manosuvre, and people took 
 offence at the high prices charged for seats. The result was 
 that the hall was only very scantily filled, a fact which particu- 
 larly grieved me on account of my generous patroness. Her
 
 A STAMPEDE 121 
 
 promise I had never doubted. Punctually on the day appointed 
 she reappeared to support me, and now had the painful and un- 
 accustomed experience of performing before a small audience. 
 Fortunately, she treated the matter with great good-humour 
 (which, I learned later, was prompted by other motives, not 
 personally concerning me). Among several pieces she sang 
 Beethoven's Adelaide most exquisitely, wherein, to my own 
 astonishment, I accompanied her on the piano. But, alas ! an- 
 other and more unexpected mishap befell my concert, through 
 our unfortunate selection of pieces. Owing to the excessive 
 reverberation of the saloon in the Hotel ' The City of London/ 
 the noise was unbearable. My Columbus Overture, with its six 
 trumpets, had early in the evening filled the audience with ter- 
 ror; and now, at the end, came Beethoven's Schlacht bei Vit- 
 toria, for which, in enthusiastic expectation of limitless receipts, 
 I had provided every imaginable orchestral luxury. The firing 
 of cannon and musketry was organised with the utmost elabora- 
 tion, on both the French and English sides, by means of specially 
 constructed and costly apparatus; while trumpets and bugles 
 had been doubled and trebled. Then began a battle, such as 
 has seldom been more cruelly fought in a concert-room. The 
 orchestra flung itself, so to speak, upon the scanty audience 
 with such an overwhelming superiority of numbers that the 
 latter speedily gave up all thought of resistance and literally 
 took to flight. Mme. Schroder-Devrient had kindly taken a 
 front seat, that she might hear the concert to an end. Much 
 as she may have been inured to terrors of this kind, this was 
 more than she could stand, even out of friendship for me. 
 When, therefore, the English made a fresh desperate assault 
 upon the French position, she took to flight, almost wringing 
 her hands. Her action became the signal for a panic-stricken 
 stampede. Every one rushed out ; and Wellington's victory was 
 finally celebrated in a confidential outburst between myself and 
 the orchestra alone. Thus ended this wonderful musical festival. 
 Schroder-Devrient at once departed, deeply regretting the ill- 
 success of her well-meant effort, and kindly left me to my fate. 
 After seeking comfort in the arms of my sorrowing sweet- 
 
 I heart, and attempting to nerve myself for the morrow's battle, 
 which did not seem likely to end in a victorious symphony, I
 
 122 MY LIFE 
 
 returned next morning to the hotel. I found I could only reach 
 my rooms by running the gauntlet between long rows of men 
 and women in double file, who had all been specially invited 
 thither for the settlement of their respective affairs. Keserving 
 the right to select individuals from among my visitors for 
 separate interview, I first of all led in the second trumpeter 
 of the orchestra, whose duty it had been to look after the cash 
 and the music. From his account I learned that, owing to the 
 high fees which, in my generous enthusiasm, I had promised to 
 the orchestra, a few more shillings and sixpences would still 
 have to come out of my own pocket to meet these charges 
 alone. When this was settled, the position of affairs was plain. 
 The next person I invited to come in was Mme. Gottschalk, a 
 trustworthy Jewess, with whom I wanted to come to some ar- 
 rangement respecting the present crisis. She perceived at once 
 that more than ordinary help was required in this case, but 
 did not doubt that I should be able to obtain it from my 
 opulent connections in Leipzig. She undertook, therefore, to 
 appease the other creditors with tranquillising assurances, and 
 railed, or pretended to rail, against their indecent conduct with 
 great vigour. Thus at last we succeeded, though not without 
 some difficulty, in making the corridor outside my door once 
 more passable. 
 
 The theatrical season was now over, our company on the 
 point of dissolution, and I myself free from my appointment. 
 But meanwhile the unhappy director of our theatre had passed 
 from a state of chronic to one of acute bankruptcy. He paid 
 with paper money, that is to say, with whole sheets of box- 
 tickets for performances which he guaranteed should take place. 
 By dint of great craft Minna managed to extract some profit 
 even from these singular treasury-bonds. She was living at 
 this time most frugally and economically. Moreover, as the 
 dramatic company still continued its efforts on behalf of its 
 members only the opera troupe having been dissolved she 
 remained at the theatre. Thus, when I started out on my 
 compulsory return to Leipzig, she saw me off with hearty good- 
 wishes for our speedy reunion, promising to spend the next 
 holidays in visiting her parents in Dresden, on which occasion 
 she hoped also to look me up in Leipzig.
 
 RETURN TO LEIPZIG 123 
 
 Thus it came about that early in May I once more went 
 home to my own folk, in order that after this abortive first 
 attempt at civic independence, I might finally lift the load of 
 debt with which my efforts in Magdeburg had burdened me. 
 An intelligent brown poodle faithfully accompanied me, and 
 was entrusted to my family for food and entertainment as the 
 only visible property I had acquired. Nevertheless, my mother 
 and Rosalie succeeded in founding good hopes for my future 
 career upon the bare fact of my being able to conduct an 
 orchestra. To me, on the other hand, the thought of returning 
 once more to my former life with my family was very discomfit- 
 ing. My relation to Minna in particular spurred me on to re- 
 sume my interrupted career as speedily as possible. The great 
 change which had come over me in this respect was more ap- 
 parent than ever when Minna spent a few days with me in 
 Leipzig on her way home. Her familiar and genial presence 
 proclaimed that my days of parental dependence were past 
 and gone. We discussed the renewal of my Magdeburg engage- 
 ment, and I promised her an early visit in Dresden. I obtained 
 permission from my mother and sister to invite her one evening 
 to tea, and in this way I introduced her to my family. Rosalie 
 saw at once how matters stood with me, but made no further 
 use of the discovery than to tease me about being in love. To 
 her the affair did not appear dangerous; but to me things 
 wore a very different aspect, for this love-lorn attachment was 
 entirely in keeping with my independent spirit, and my ambi- 
 tion to win myself a place in the world of art. 
 
 My distaste for Leipzig itself was furthermore strengthened 
 by a change which occurred there at this time in the realm of 
 music. At the very time that I, in Magdeburg, was attempting 
 to make my reputation as a musical conductor by thoughtless 
 submission to the frivolous taste of the day, Mendelssohn- 
 Bartholdy was conducting the Gewandhaus concerts, and in- 
 augurating a momentous epoch for himself and the musical 
 taste of Leipzig. His influence had put an end to the simple 
 ingenuousness with which the Leipzig public had hitherto 
 judged the productions of its sociable subscription concerts. 
 Through the influence of my good old friend Pohlenz, who was 
 not yet altogether laid on the shelf, I managed to produce my
 
 124: MY LIFE 
 
 Columbus Overture at a benefit concert given by the favourite 
 young singer, Livia Gerhart But, to my amazement, I found 
 that the taste of the musical public in Leipzig had been given 
 a different bent, which not even my rapturously applauded 
 overture, with its brilliant combination of six trumpets, could 
 influence. This experience deepened my dislike of everything 
 approaching a classical tone, in which sentiment I found myself 
 in complete accord with honest Pohlenz, who sighed good- 
 naturedly over the downfall of the good old times. 
 
 Arrangements for a musical festival at Dessau, under Fried- 
 rich Schneider's conductorship, offered me a welcome 'chance 
 of quitting Leipzig. For this journey, which could be per- 
 formed on foot in seven hours, I had to procure a passport 
 for eight days. This document was destined to play an impor- 
 tant part in my life for many years to come; for on several 
 occasions and in various European countries it was the only 
 paper I possessed to prove my identity. In fact, owing to 
 my evasion of military duty in Saxony, I never again succeeded 
 in obtaining a regular pass until I was appointed musical 
 conductor in Dresden. I derived very little artistic pleasure 
 or benefit of any kind from this occasion; on the contrary, 
 it gave a fresh impetus to my hatred of the classical. I heard 
 Beethoven's Symphony in C minor conducted by a man whose 
 physiognomy, resembling that of a drunken satyr, filled me 
 with unconquerable disgust. In spite of an interminable row 
 of contrabassi, with which a conductor usually coquettes at 
 musical festivals, his performance was so expressionless and 
 inane that I turned away in disgust as from an alarming and 
 repulsive problem, and desisted from all attempts to explain the 
 impassable gulf which, as I again perceived, yawned between 
 my own vivid and imaginative conception of this work and 
 the only living presentations of it which I had ever heard. 
 But for the present my tormented spirits were cheered and 
 calmed by hearing the classical Schneider's oratorio Absalom 
 rendered as an absolute burlesque. 
 
 It was in Dessau that Minna had made her first debut on the 
 stage, and while there I heard her spoken of by frivolous young 
 men in the tone usual in such circles when discussing young 
 and beautiful actresses. My eagerness in contradicting this
 
 A JOURNEY WITH MINNA 125 
 
 chatter and confounding the scandalmongers revealed to me 
 more clearly than ever the strength of the passion which drew 
 me to her. 
 
 I therefore returned to Leipzig without calling on my rela- 
 tives, and there procured means for an immediate journey to 
 Dresden. On the way (the journey was still performed by 
 express coach) I met Minna, accompanied by one of her sisters, 
 already on the way back to Magdeburg. Promptly procuring 
 a posting ticket for the return journey to Leipzig, I actually 
 set off thither with my dear girl; but by the time we reached 
 the next station I had succeeded in persuading her to turn 
 back with me to Dresden. By this time the mail-coach was 
 far ahead of us, and we had to travel by special post-chaise. 
 This lively bustling to and fro seemed to astonish the two 
 girls, and put them into high spirits. The extravagance of 
 my conduct had evidently roused them to the expectation of 
 adventures, and it now behoved me to fulfil this expectation. 
 Procuring from a Dresden acquaintance the necessary cash, 
 I conducted my two lady friends through the Saxon Alps, 
 where we spent several right merry days of innocent and youth- 
 ful gaiety. Only once was this disturbed by a passing fit of 
 jealousy on my part, for which, indeed, there was no occasion, 
 but which fed itself in my heart on a nervous apprehension 
 of the future, and upon the experience I had already gained 
 of womenkind. Yet, despite this blot, our excursion still 
 lingers in my memory as the sweetest and almost sole remem- 
 brance of unalloyed happiness in the whole of my life as a young 
 man. One evening in particular stands out in bright relief, 
 during which we sat together almost all night at the watering- 
 place of Schandau in glorious summer weather. Indeed, my 
 subsequent long and anxious connection with Minna, inter- 
 woven as it was with the most painful and bitter vicissitudes, 
 has often appeared to me as a persistently prolonged expiation 
 of the brief and harmless enjoyment of those few days; 
 
 After accompanying Minna to Leipzig, whence she continued 
 her journey to Magdeburg, I presented myself to my family, but 
 told them nothing of my Dresden excursion. I now braced my 
 energies, as though under the stern compulsion of a strange and 
 deep sense of duty, to the task of making such arrangements
 
 126 MY LIFE 
 
 as would speedily restore me to my dear one's side. To this 
 end a fresh engagement had to be negotiated with Director 
 Bethmann for the coming winter season. Unable to await the 
 conclusion of our contract in Leipzig, I availed myself of Laube's 
 presence at the baths in Kosen, near Naumburg, to pay him 
 a visit Laube had only recently been discharged from the 
 Berlin municipal gaol, after a tormenting inquisition of nearly 
 a year's duration. On giving his parole not to leave the country 
 until the verdict had been given, he had been permitted to 
 retire to Kosen, from which place he, one evening, paid us a 
 secret visit in Leipzig. I can still call his woebegone appear- 
 ance to mind. He seemed hopelessly resigned, though he 
 spoke cheerfully with regard to all his earlier dreams of 
 better things; and owing to my own worries at that time 
 about the critical state of my affairs, this impression still 
 remains one of my saddest and most painful recollections. 
 While at Kosen I showed him a good many of the verses 
 for my Liebesverbot, and although he spoke coldly of my pre- 
 sumption in wishing to write my own libretto, I was slightly 
 encouraged by his appreciation of my work. 
 
 Meanwhile I impatiently awaited letters from Magdeburg. 
 Not that I had any doubt as to the renewal of my engage- 
 ment ; on the contrary, I had every reason to regard myself as 
 a good acquisition for Bethmann; but I felt as though nothing 
 which tended to bring me nearer to Minna could move fast 
 enough. As soon as I received the necessary tidings, I hurried 
 away to make all needful arrangements on the spot for ensuring 
 a magnificent success in the coming Magdeburg operatic season. 
 
 Through the tireless munificence of the King of Prussia fresh 
 and final assistance had been granted to our perennially bank- 
 rupt theatrical director. His Majesty had assigned a not incon- 
 siderable sum to a committee consisting of substantial Magde- 
 burg citizens, as a subsidy to be expended on the theatre under 
 Bethmann's management What this meant, and the respect 
 with which I thereupon regarded the artistic conditions of 
 Magdeburg, may be best imagined if one remembers the 
 neglected and forlorn surroundings amid which such provincial 
 theatres usually drag out their lives. I offered at once to under- 
 take a long journey in search of good operatic singers. I said
 
 BOHEMIA 127 
 
 I would find the means for this at my own risk, and the only 
 guarantee I demanded from the management for eventual reim- 
 bursement was that they should assign me the proceeds of a 
 future benefit performance. This offer was gladly accepted, 
 and in pompous tones the director furnished me with the 
 necessary powers, and moreover gave me his parting blessing. 
 During this brief interval I lived once more in intimate com- 
 munion with Minna who now had her mother with her and 
 then took fresh leave of her for my venturesome enterprise. 
 
 But when I got to Leipzig I found it by no means easy to 
 procure the funds, so confidently counted on when in Magde- 
 burg, for the expenses of my projected journey. The glamour 
 of the royal protection of Prussia for our theatrical under- 
 taking, which I portrayed in the liveliest colours to my good 
 brother-in-law Brockhaus, quite failed to dazzle him, and it was 
 at the cost of great pains and humiliation that I finally got 
 my ship of discovery under weigh. 
 
 I was naturally drawn first of all to my old wonderland of 
 Bohemia. There I merely touched at Prague and, without 
 visiting my lovely lady friends, I hurried forward so that I 
 might first sample the opera company then playing for the sea- 
 son at Karlsbad. Impatient to discover as many talents as I 
 could as soon as possible, so as not to exhaust my funds to no 
 purpose, I attended a performance of La Dame Blanche, sin- 
 cerely hoping to find the whole performance first class. But not 
 until much later did I fully realise how wretched was the 
 quality of all these singers. I selected one of them, a bass 
 named Graf, who was singing Gaveston. When in due course 
 he made his debut at Magdeburg, he provoked so much well- 
 founded dissatisfaction, that I could not find a word to say in 
 reply to the mockery which this acquisition brought upon me. 
 
 But the small success with which the real object of my tour 
 was attended was counterbalanced by the pleasantness of the 
 journey itself. The trip through Eger, over the Fichtel moun- 
 tains, and the entry into Bayreuth, gloriously illuminated by 
 the setting sun, have remained happy memories to this day. 
 
 My next goal was Nuremberg, where my sister Clara and her 
 husband were acting, and from whom I might reckon on sound 
 information as to the object of my search. It was particularly
 
 128 MY LIFE 
 
 nice to be hospitably received in my sister's house, where I 
 hoped to revive my somewhat exhausted means of travel. 
 In this hope I reckoned chiefly upon the sale of a snuff-box 
 presented to me by a friend, which I had secret reasons to 
 suppose was made of platinum. To this I could add a gold 
 signet-ring, given me by my friend Apel for composing the 
 overture to his Columbus. The value of the snuff-box un- 
 fortunately proved to be entirely imaginary; but by pawning 
 these two jewels, the only ones I had left, I hoped to provide 
 myself with the bare necessaries for continuing my journey 
 to Frankfort It was to this place and the Rhine district 
 that the information I had gathered led me to direct my steps. 
 Before leaving I persuaded my sister and brother-in-law to 
 accept engagements in Magdeburg; but I still lacked a first 
 tenor and a soprano, whom hitherto I had altogether failed 
 to discover. 
 
 My stay in Nuremberg was most agreeably prolonged 
 through a renewed meeting with Schroder-Devrient, who just 
 at that time was fulfilling a short engagement in that town. 
 Meeting her again was like seeing the clouds disperse, which, 
 since our last meeting, had darkened my artistic horizon. 
 
 The Nuremberg operatic company had a very limited reper- 
 toire. Besides Fidelio they could produce nothing save 
 Die Schweizerfamilie, a fact about which this great singer 
 complained, as this was one of her first parts sung in early 
 youth, for which she was hardly any longer suited, and which, 
 in addition, she had played ad nauseam. I also looked forward 
 to the performance of Die Schweizerfamilie with misgivings, 
 and even with anxiety, for I feared lest this tame opera and the 
 old-fashioned sentimental part of Emmeline would weaken 
 the great impression the public, as well as myself, had formed 
 up to that moment of the work of this sublime artist 
 Imagine, therefore, how deeply moved and astonished I was, 
 on the evening of the performance, to find that it was in this 
 very part that I first realised the truly transcendental genius 
 of this extraordinary woman. That anything so great as 
 her interpretation of the character of the Swiss maiden could 
 not be handed down to posterity as a monument for all time 
 can only be looked upon as one of the most sublime sacrifices
 
 EXTRAVAGANT GAIETY 129 
 
 demanded by dramatic art, and as one of its highest manifesta- 
 tions. When, therefore, such phenomena appear, we cannot 
 hold them in too great reverence, nor look upon them as too 
 sacred. 
 
 Apart from all these new experiences which were to become 
 of so much value to my whole life and to my artistic develop- 
 ment, the impressions I received at Nuremberg, though they 
 were apparently trivial in their origin, left such indelible traces 
 on my mind, that they revived within me later on, though 
 in quite a different and novel form. 
 
 My brother-in-law, Wolfram, was a great favourite with the 
 Nuremberg theatrical world; he was witty and sociable, and 
 as such made himself much liked in theatrical circles. On this 
 occasion I received singularly delightful proofs of the spirit 
 of extravagant gaiety manifested on these evenings at the inn, 
 in which I also took part. A master carpenter, named Lauer- 
 mann, a little thick-set man, no longer young, of comical 
 appearance and gifted only with the roughest dialect, was 
 pointed out to me in one of the inns visited by our friends as 
 one of those oddities who involuntarily contributed most to 
 the amusement of the local wags. Lauermann, it seems, im- 
 agined himself an excellent singer, and as a result of this pre- 
 sumption, evinced interest only in those in whom he thought 
 he recognised a like talent. In spite of the fact that, owing 
 to this singular peculiarity, he became the butt of constant 
 jest and scornful mockery, he never failed to appear every 
 evening among his laughter-loving persecutors. So often had 
 he been laughed at and hurt by their scorn, that it became 
 very difficult to persuade him to give a display of his artistic 
 skill, and this at last could only be effected by artfully de- 
 vised traps, so laid as to appeal to his vanity. My arrival 
 as an unknown stranger was utilised for a manoeuvre of this 
 kind. How poor was the opinion they held of the unfortunate 
 mastersinger's judgment was revealed when, to my great 
 amazement, my brother-in-law introduced me to him as the 
 great Italian singer, Lablache. To his credit I must confess 
 that Lauermann surveyed me for a long time with incredulous 
 distrust, and commented with cautious suspicion on my juvenile 
 appearance, but especially on the evidently tenor character
 
 130 MY LIFE 
 
 of my voice. But the whole art of these tavern associates and 
 their principal enjoyment consisted in leading this poor enthusi- 
 ast to believe the incredible, a task on which they spared neither 
 time nor pains. 
 
 My brother-in-law succeeded in making the carpenter be- 
 lieve that I, while receiving fabulous sums for my perform- 
 ances, wished by a singular act of dissimulation, and by 
 visiting public inns, to withdraw from the general public ; and 
 that, moreover, when it came to a meeting between ' Lauer- 
 mann ' and ' Lablache,' the only real interest could be to hear 
 Lauennann and not Lablache, seeing that the former had noth- 
 ing to learn from the latter, but only Lablache from him. So 
 singular was the conflict between incredulity, on the one hand, 
 and keenly excited vanity on the other, that finally the poor 
 carpenter became really attractive to me. I began to play the 
 role assigned me with all the skill I could command, and after 
 a couple of hours, which were relieved by the strangest antics, 
 we at last gained our end. The wondrous mortal, whose flash- 
 ing eyes had long been fixed on me in the greatest excitement, 
 worked his muscles in the peculiarly fantastic fashion which 
 we are accustomed to associate with a music-making automa- 
 ton, the mechanism of which has been duly wound up: his 
 lips quivered, his teeth gnashed, his eyes rolled convulsively, 
 until finally there broke forth, in a hoarse oily voice, an uncom- 
 monly trivial street-ballad. Its delivery, accompanied by a 
 regular movement of his outstretched thumbs behind the ears, 
 and during which his fat face glowed the brightest red, was un- 
 happily greeted with a wild burst of laughter from all present, 
 which excited the unlucky master to the most furious wrath. 
 With studied cruelty this wrath was greeted by those, who 
 until then had shamelessly flattered him, with the most extrava- 
 gant mockery, until the poor wretch at last absolutely foamed 
 with rage. 
 
 As he was leaving the inn amid a hail of curses from his 
 infamous friends, an impulse of genuine pity prompted me 
 to follow him, that I might beg his forgiveness and seek in 
 some way to pacify him, a task all the more difficult since he 
 was especially bitter against me as the latest of his enemies, 
 and the one who had so deeply deceived his eager hope of
 
 THE TROUBLED HOST 131 
 
 hearing the genuine Lablache. Nevertheless, I succeeded in 
 stopping him on the threshold; and now the riotous company 
 silently entered into an extraordinary conspiracy to induce 
 Lauermann to sing again that very evening. How they 
 managed this I can as little remember as I can call to mind 
 the effect of the spirituous liquors I imbibed. In any case, I__^ 
 suspect that drink must eventually have been the means of sub- 
 duing Lauermann, just as it also rendered my own recollections 
 of the wonderful events of that prolonged evening at the inn 
 extremely vague. After Lauermann had for the second time 
 suffered the same mockery, the whole company felt itself bound 
 to accompany the unhappy man to his home. They carried 
 him thither in a wheelbarrow, which they found outside the 
 house, and in this he arrived, in triumph, at his own door, 
 in one of those marvellous narrow alleys peculiar to the old 
 city. Erau Lauermann, who was aroused from slumber to 
 receive her husband, enabled us, by her torrent of curses, to 
 form some idea of the nature of their marital and domestic 
 relations. Mockery of her husband's vocal talents was with 
 her also a familiar theme; but to this she now added the most 
 dreadful reproaches for the worthless scamps who, by encour- 
 aging him in this delusion, kept him from profitably following 
 his trade, and even led him to such scenes as the present one. 
 Thereupon the pride of the suffering mastersinger reasserted 
 itself; for while his wife painfully assisted him to mount the 
 stairs, he harshly denied her right to sit in judgment upon his 
 vocal gifts, and sternly ordered her to be silent. But even 
 now this wonderful night-adventure was by no means over. 
 The entire swarm moved once more in the direction of the inn. 
 Before the house, however, we found a number of fellows con- 
 gregated, among them several workmen, against whom, owing 
 to police regulations as to closing hours, the doors were shut. 
 But the regular guests of the house, who were of our party, 
 and who were on terms of old friendship with the host, thought 
 that it was nevertheless permissible and possible to demand 
 entrance. The host was troubled at having to bar his door 
 against friends, whose voices he recognised; yet it was neces- 
 sary to prevent the new arrivals from forcing a way in with 
 them. Out of this situation a mighty confusion arose, which,
 
 132 MY LIFE 
 
 what with shouting and clamour and an inexplicable growth in 
 the number of the disputants, soon assumed a truly demoniacal 
 character. It seemed to me as though in a few moments the 
 whole town would break into a tumult, and I thought 1 should 
 once more have to witness a revolution, the real origin of which 
 no man could comprehend. Then suddenly I heard some one 
 fall, and, as though by magic, the whole mass scattered in 
 every direction. One of the regular guests, who was familiar 
 with an ancient Nuremberg boxing trick, desiring to put an 
 end to the interminable riot and to cut his way home through 
 the crowd, gave one of the noisiest shouters a blow with his 
 fist between the eyes, laying him senseless on the ground, 
 though without seriously injuring him. And this it was that 
 so speedily broke up the whole throng. Within little more 
 than a minute of the most violent uproar of hundreds of human 
 voices, my brother-in-law and I were able to stroll arm-in-arm 
 through the moonlit streets, quietly jesting and laughing, on 
 our way home; and then it was that, to my amazement and 
 relief, he informed me that he was accustomed to this sort of 
 life every evening. 
 
 At last, however, it became necessary seriously to attend 
 to the purpose of my journey. Only in passing did I touch at 
 Wiirzburg for a day. I remember nothing of the meeting 
 with my relations and acquaintance beyond the melancholy 
 visit to Friederike Galvani already mentioned. On reaching 
 Frankfort I was obliged to seek at once the shelter of a decent 
 hotel, in order to await there the result of my solicitations for 
 subsidies from the directorate of the Magdeburg theatre. My 
 hopes of securing the real stars of our operatic undertaking 
 were formed with a view to a season at Wiesbaden, where, I 
 was told, a good operatic company was on the point of dis- 
 solution. I found it extremely difficult to arrange the short 
 journey thither; yet I managed to be present at a rehearsal 
 of Robert der Teufel, in which the tenor Freimiiller distin- 
 guished himself. I interviewed him at once, and found him 
 willing to entertain my proposals for Magdeburg. We con- 
 cluded the necessary agreement, and I then returned with all 
 speed to my headquarters, the Weidenbusch Hotel in Frankfort. 
 There I had to spend another anxious week, during which I
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN FRANKFORT 133 
 
 waited in vain for the necessary travelling expenses to arrive 
 from Magdeburg. To kill time I had recourse, among other 
 things, to a large red pocket-book which I carried about with me 
 in my portmanteau, and in which I entered, with exact details 
 of dates, etc., notes^for my future biography the selfsame 
 book which now lies before me to freshen my memory, and 
 which I have ever since added to at various periods of my 
 life, without leaving any gaps. Through the neglect of the 
 Magdeburg managers my situation, which was already serious, 
 became literally desperate, when I made an acquisition in 
 Frankfort which gave me almost more pleasure than I was able 
 to bear. I had been present at a production of the Zauberflote 
 under the direction of Guhr, then wonderfully renowned as ' a 
 conductor of genius/ and was agreeably surprised at the truly 
 excellent quality of the company. It was, of course, useless to 
 think of luring one of the leading stars into my net; on the 
 other hand, I saw clearly enough that the youthful Fraulein. 
 Limbach, who sang the l first boy's ' part, possessed a desirable 
 talent. She accepted my offer of an engagement, and, indeed, 
 seemed so anxious to be rid of her Frankfort engagement that 
 she resolved to escape from it surreptitiously. She revealed 
 her plans to me, and begged me to assist her in carrying them 
 out ; for, inasmuch as the directors might get wind of the affair, 
 there was no time to lose. At all events, the young lady as- 
 sumed that I had abundant credit, supplied for my official 
 business journey by the Magdeburg theatre committee, whose 
 praises I had so diligently sung. But already I had been com- 
 pelled to pledge my scanty travelling gear in order to provide 
 for my own departure. To this point I had persuaded the host, 
 but now found him by no means inclined to advance me the 
 additional funds needed for carrying off a young singer. To 
 cloak the bad behaviour of my directors I was compelled to in- 
 vent some tale of misfortune, and to leave the astonished and 
 indignant young lady behind. Heartily ashamed of this ad- 
 venture, I travelled through rain and storm via Leipzig, where 
 I picked up my brown poodle, and reaching Magdeburg, 
 there resumed my work as musical director on the 1st of 
 September. 
 
 The result of my business labours gave me but little joy.
 
 13 4 MY LIFE 
 
 The director, it is true, proved triumphantly that he had sent 
 five whole golden louis to my address in Frankfort, and that 
 my tenor and the youthful lady-singer had also been provided 
 with proper contracts, but not with the fares and advances 
 demanded. Neither of them came; only the basso Graf ar- 
 rived with pedantic punctuality from Karlsbad, and immedi- 
 ately provoked the chaff of our theatrical wags. He sang at 
 a rehearsal of the Schweizerfamilie with such a schoolmasterly 
 drone that I completely lost my composure. The arrival of 
 my excellent brother-in-law Wolfram with my sister Clara was 
 of more advantage for musical comedy than for grand opera, 
 and caused me considerable trouble into the bargain; for, 
 being honest folk and used to decent living, they speedily per- 
 ceived that, in spite of royal protection, the condition of the 
 theatre was but very insecure, as was natural under so un- 
 scrupulous a management as that of Bethmann, and recog- 
 nised with alarm that they had seriously compromised their 
 family position. My courage had already begun to sink when 
 a happy chance brought us a young woman, Mme. Pollert 
 (nee Zeibig), who was passing through Magdeburg with her 
 husband, an actor, in order to fulfil a special engagement in 
 that town ; she was gifted with a beautiful voice, was a talented 
 singer, and well suited for the chief roles. Necessity had at 
 last driven the directors to action, and at the eleventh hour 
 they sent for the tenor Freimiiller. But I was particularly 
 gratified when the love which had arisen between him and 
 young Limbach in Frankfort enabled the enterprising tenor to 
 carry away this singer, to whom I had behaved so miserably. 
 Both arrived radiant with joy. Along with them we engaged 
 Mme. Pollert, who, in spite of her pretentiousness, met with 
 favour from the public. A well-trained and musically com- 
 petent baritone, Herr Krug, afterwards the conductor of a 
 choir in Karlsruhe, had also been discovered, so that all at once 
 I stood at the head of a really good operatic company, among 
 which the basso Graf could be fitted in only with great diffi- 
 culty, by being kept as much as possible in the background. 
 We succeeded quickly with a series of operatic performances 
 which were by no means ordinary, and our repertory included 
 everything of this nature that had ever been written for the
 
 BELLINI'S <NORMA 135 
 
 theatre. I was particularly pleased with the presentation of 
 Spohr's Jessonda, which was truly not without sublimity, and 
 raised us high in the esteem of all cultured lovers of music. I 
 was untiring in my endeavours to discover some means of ele- 
 vating our performances above the usual level of excellence 
 compatible with the meagre resources of provincial theatres. 
 I persistently fell foul of the director Bethmann by strengthen- 
 ing my orchestra, which he had to pay ; but, on the other hand, 
 I won his complete goodwill by strengthening the chorus and 
 the theatre music, which cost him nothing, and which lent such 
 splendour to our presentations that subscriptions and audiences 
 increased enormously. For instance, I secured the regimental 
 band, and also the military singers, who in the Prussian army 
 are admirably organised, and w T ho assisted in our performances 
 in return for free passes to the gallery granted to their relatives. 
 Thus I managed to furnish with the utmost completeness the 
 specially strong orchestral accompaniment demanded by the 
 score of Bellini's Norma, and was able to dispose of a body of 
 male voices for the impressive unison portion of the male chorus 
 in the introduction of that work such as even the greatest 
 theatres could rarely command. In later years I was able to 
 assure Auber, whom I often met over an ice in Tortoni's cafe 
 in Paris, that in his Lestocq I had been able to render the part 
 of the mutinous soldiery, when seduced into conspiracy, with an 
 absolutely full number of voices, a fact for which he thanked 
 me with astonishment and delight. 
 
 Amid such circumstances of encouragement the composition 
 of my Liebesverbot made rapid strides towards completion. 
 I intended the presentation of this piece for the benefit 
 performance which had been promised me as a means of 
 defraying my expenses, and I worked hard in the hope of 
 improving my reputation, and at the same time of accomplish- 
 ing something by no means less desirable, and that was the 
 betterment of my financial position. Even the few hours 
 which I could snatch from business to spend at Minna's side 
 were devoted with unexampled zeal to the completion of my r 
 score. My diligence moved even Minna's mother, who looked 
 with some uneasiness upon our love affair. She had remained 
 over the summer on a visit to her daughter, and managed
 
 136 MY LIFE 
 
 the house for her. Owing to her interference a new and 
 urgent anxiety had entered into our relations, which pressed for 
 serious settlement. It was natural that we should begin to 
 think of what it was all going to lead to. I must confess that 
 the idea of marriage, especially in view of my youth, filled me 
 with dismay, and without indeed reflecting on the matter, or 
 seriously weighing its pros and cons, a naive and instinctive 
 feeling prevented me even from considering the possibility of a 
 step which would have such serious consequences upon my whole 
 life. Moreover, our modest circumstances were in so alarming 
 and uncertain a state that even Minna declared that she was 
 more anxious to see these improved than to get me to marry her. 
 But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, 
 for trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magde- 
 burg theatre. There she had met with a rival in her own 
 speciality, and as this woman's husband became chief stage 
 manager, and consequently had supreme power, she grew to be 
 a source of great danger. Seeing, therefore, that at this very 
 moment Minna received advantageous offers from the man- 
 agers of the Konigstadt theatre in Berlin, then doing a splendid 
 business, she seized the opportunity to break off her connection 
 with the Magdeburg theatre, and thus plunged me, whom she 
 did not appear to consider in the matter, into the depths of 
 despair. I could not hinder Minna from going to Berlin to 
 fulfil a special engagement there, although this was not in 
 accordance with her agreement, and so she departed, leaving 
 me behind, overcome with grief and doubt as to the meaning 
 of her conduct. At last, mad with passion, I wrote to her 
 urging her to return, and the better to move her and not to 
 separate her fate from my own, I proposed to her in a strictly 
 formal manner, and hinted at the hope of early marriage. 
 About the same time my brother-in-law, Wolfram, having 
 quarrelled with the director Bethmann and cancelled his 
 contract with him, also went to the Konigstadt theatre to 
 fulfil a special engagement. My good sister Clara, who had 
 remained behind for a while amid the somewhat unpleasant 
 conditions of Magdeburg, soon perceived the anxious and 
 troubled temper in which her otherwise cheerful brother was 
 rapidly consuming himself. One day the thought it advisable
 
 MINNA IN BERLIN 137 
 
 to show me a letter from her husband, with news from Berlin, 
 and especially concerning Minna, in which he earnestly deplored 
 my passion for this girl, who was acting quite unworthily of me. 
 As she lodged at his hotel, he was able to observe that not only 
 the company she kept, but also her own conduct, were perfectly 
 scandalous. The extraordinary impression which this dreadful 
 communication made upon me decided me to abandon the re- 
 serve I had hitherto shown towards my relatives with regard 
 to my love affairs. I wrote to my brother-in-law in Berlin, 
 telling him how matters stood with me, and that my plans 
 greatly depended on Minna, and further, how extremely im- 
 portant it was for me to learn from him the indubitable truth 
 concerning her of whom he had sent so evil an account. From 
 my brother-in-law, usually so dry and given to joking, I re- 
 ceived a reply which filled my heart to overflowing again. He 
 confessed that he had accused Minna too hastily, and regretted 
 that he had allowed idle chatter to influence him in founding 
 a charge, which, on investigation, had proved to be altogether 
 groundless and unjust; he declared, moreover, that on nearer 
 acquaintance and conversation with her he had been so fully 
 convinced of the genuineness and uprightness of her char- 
 acter, that he hoped with all his heart that I might see my 
 way to marry her. And now a storm raged in my heart. I 
 implored Minna to return at once, and was glad to learn that, 
 for her part, she was not inclined to renew her engagement at 
 the Berlin theatre, as she had now acquired a more intimate 
 knowledge of the life there, and found it too frivolous. All 
 that remained, then, was for me to facilitate the resumption of 
 her Magdeburg engagement. To this end, therefore, at a meet- 
 ing of the theatre committee, I attacked the director and his 
 detested stage manager with such energy, and defended Minna 
 against the wrong done her by them both with such passion 
 and fervour, that the other members, astonished at the frank 
 confession of my affection, yielded to my wishes without any 
 further ado. And now I set off by extra post in the depth 
 of night and in dreadful winter weather to meet my returning 
 sweetheart. I greeted her with tears of deepest joy, and led 
 her back in triumph to her cosy Magdeburg home, already be- 
 come so dear to me.
 
 138 MY LIFE 
 
 Meanwhile, as our two lives, thus severed for a while, were 
 being drawn more and more closely together, I finished the 
 score of my Liebesverbot about New Year 1836. For the de- 
 velopment of my future plans I depended not a little upon 
 the success of this work; and Minna herself seemed not dis- 
 inclined to yield to my hopes in this respect. We had reason 
 to be concerned as to how matters would pan out for us at the 
 beginning of the spring, for this season is always a bad one 
 in which to start such precarious theatrical enterprises. In 
 spite of royal support and the participation of the theatre 
 committee in the general management of the theatre, our 
 worthy director's state of perennial bankruptcy suffered no 
 alteration, and it seemed as if his theatrical undertaking could 
 not possibly last much longer in any form. Nevertheless, with 
 the help of the really first-rate company of singers at my dis- 
 posal, the production of my opera was to mark a complete 
 change in my unsatisfactory circumstances. With the view 
 of recovering the travelling expenses I had incurred during 
 the previous summer, I was entitled to a benefit performance. 
 I naturally fixed this for the presentation of my own work, 
 and did my utmost so that this favour granted me by the 
 directors should prove as inexpensive to them as possible. As 
 they would nevertheless be compelled to incur some expense 
 in the production of the new opera, I agreed that the proceeds 
 of the first presentation should be left to them, while I should 
 claim only those of the second. I did not consider it alto- 
 gether unsatisfactory that the time for the rehearsals was post- 
 poned until the very end of the season, for it was reason- 
 able to suppose that our company, which was often greeted 
 with unusual applause, would receive special attention and 
 favour from the public during its concluding performances. 
 Unfortunately, however, contrary to our expectations, we never 
 reached the proper close of this season, which had been fixed 
 for the end of April; for already in March, owing to irregu- 
 larity in the payment of salaries, the most popular members 
 of the company, having found better employment elsewhere, 
 tendered their resignations to the management, and the direc- 
 tor, who was unable to raise the necessary cash, was com- 
 pelled to bow to the inevitable. Now, indeed, my spirits sank,
 
 ' LIEBESVERBOT ' 139 
 
 for it seemed more than doubtful whether my Liebesverbot 
 would ever be produced at all. I owed it entirely to the warm 
 affection felt for me personally by all members of the opera 
 company, that the singers consented not only to remain until 
 the end of March, but also to undertake the toil of study- 
 ing and rehearsing my opera, a task which, considering the 
 very limited time, promised to be extremely arduous. In 
 the event of our having to give two representations, the time 
 at our disposal was so very short that, for all the rehearsals, 
 we had but ten days before us. And since we were con- 
 cerned not with a light comedy or farce, but with a grand 
 opera, and one which, in spite of the trifling character of 
 its music, contained numerous and powerful concerted pas- 
 sages, the undertaking might have been regarded almost as 
 foolhardy. Nevertheless, I built my hopes upon the extra- 
 ordinary exertions which the singers so willingly made in 
 order to please me; for they studied continuously, morning, 
 noon, and night. But seeing that, in spite of all this, it was 
 quite impossible to attain to perfection, especially in the 
 matter of words, in the case of every one of these harassed 
 performers, I reckoned further on my own acquired skill as 
 conductor to achieve the final miracle of success. The pecu- 
 liar ability I possessed of helping the singers and of making 
 them, in spite of much uncertainty, seem to flow smoothly 
 onwards, was clearly demonstrated in our orchestral rehearsals, 
 in which, by dint of constant prompting, loud singing with the 
 performers and vigorous directions as to necessary action, I 
 got the whole thing to run so easily that it seemed quite pos- 
 sible that the performance might be a reasonable success after 
 all. Unfortunately, we did not consider that in front of the 
 public all these drastic methods of moving the dramatic and 
 musical machinery would be restricted to the movements of 
 my baton and to my facial expression. As a matter of fact 
 the singers, and especially the men, were so extraordinarily 
 uncertain that from beginning to end their embarrassment 
 crippled the effectiveness of every one of their parts. Frei- 
 muller, the tenor, whose memory was most defective, sought 
 to patch up the lively and emotional character of his badly 
 learned role of the madcap Luzio by means of routine work
 
 140 MY LIFE 
 
 learned in Fra Diavolo and Zampa, and especially by the aid 
 of an enormously thick, brightly coloured and fluttering plume 
 of feathers. Consequently, as the directors failed to have the 
 book of words printed in time, it was impossible to blame the 
 public for being in doubt as to the main outlines of the story, 
 seeing that they had only the sung words to guide them. With 
 the exception of a few portions played by the lady singers, 
 which were favourably received, the whole performance, which 
 I had made to depend largely upon bold, energetic action 
 and speech, remained but a musical shadow-play, to which 
 the orchestra contributed its own inexplicable effusions, some- 
 times with exaggerated noise. As characteristic of the treat*- 
 ment of my tone-colour, I may mention that the band-master 
 of a Prussian military band, who, by the bye, had been well 
 pleased with the performance, felt it incumbent upon him to 
 give me some well-meant hints for my future guidance, as to 
 the manipulation of the Turkish drum. Before I relate the 
 further history of this wonderful work of my youth, I will 
 pause a moment briefly to describe its character, and especially 
 its poetical elements. 
 
 Shakespeare's play, which I kept throughout in mind as the 
 foundation of my story, was worked out in the following 
 manner : 
 
 An unnamed king of Sicily leaves his country, as I suggest, 
 for a journey to Naples, and hands over to the Regent ap- 
 pointed whom I simply call Friedrich, with the view of 
 making him appear as German as possible full authority to 
 exercise all the royal power in order to effect a complete re- 
 form in the social habits of his capital, which had provoked 
 the indignation of the Council. At the opening of the play 
 we see the servants of the public authority busily employed 
 either in shutting up or in pulling down the houses of popular 
 amusement in a suburb of Palermo, and in carrying off the 
 inmates, including hosts and servants, as prisoners. The popu- 
 lace oppose this first step, and much scuffling ensues. In 
 the thickest of the throng the chief of the sbirri, Brighella 
 (basso-buffo), after a preliminary roll of drums for silence, 
 reads out the Regent's proclamation, according to which the acts 
 just performed are declared to be directed towards establishing
 
 ' LIEBESVEEBOT ' 141 
 
 a higher moral tone in the manners and customs of the people. 
 A general outburst of scorn and a mocking chorus meets this 
 announcement. Luzio, a young nobleman and juvenile scape- 
 grace (tenor), seems inclined to thrust himself forward as 
 leader of the mob, and at once finds an occasion for playing 
 a more active part in the cause of the oppressed people on 
 discovering his friend Claudio (also a tenor) being led away 
 to prison. From him he learns that, in pursuance of some 
 musty old law unearthed by Friedrich, he is to suffer the 
 penalty of death for a certain love escapade in which he is 
 involved. His sweetheart, union with whom had been pre- 
 vented by the enmity of their parents, has borne him a child. 
 Friedrich's puritanical zeal joins cause with the parents' 
 hatred; he fears the worst, and sees no way of escape save 
 through mercy, provided his sister Isabella may be able, by 
 her entreaties, to melt the Regent's hard heart. Claudio im- 
 plores his friend at once to seek out Isabella in the convent of 
 the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, which she has recently entered as 
 novice. There, between the quiet walls of the convent, we first 
 meet this sister, in confidential intercourse with her friend 
 Marianne, also a novice. Marianne reveals to her friend, from 
 whom she has long been parted, the unhappy fate which has 
 brought her to the place. Under vows of eternal fidelity she had 
 been persuaded to a secret liaison with a man of high rank. 
 But finally, when in extreme need she found herself not only 
 forsaken, but threatened by her betrayer, she discovered him 
 to be the mightiest man in the state, none other than the 
 King's Regent himself. Isabella's indignation finds vent in 
 impassioned words, and is only pacified by her determination 
 to forsake a world in which so vile a crime can go unpunished. 
 When now Luzio brings her tidings of her own brother's 
 fate, her disgust at her brother's misconduct is turned at once 
 to scorn for the villainy of the hypocritical Regent, who pre- 
 sumes so cruelly to punish the comparatively venial offence 
 of her brother, which, at least, was not stained by treachery. 
 Her violent outburst imprudently reveals her to Luzio in a 
 seductive aspect; smitten with sudden love, he urges her to 
 quit the convent for ever and to accept his hand. She con- 
 trives to check his boldness, but resolves at once to avail herself
 
 142 MY LIFE 
 
 of his escort to the Regent's court of justice. Here the trial 
 scene is prepared, and I introduce it by a burlesque hearing 
 of several persons charged by the sbirro captain with offences 
 against morality. The earnestness of the situation becomes 
 more marked when the gloomy form of Friedrich strides 
 through the inrushing and unruly crowd, commanding silence, 
 and he himself undertakes the hearing of Claudio's case in the 
 sternest manner possible. The implacable judge is already on 
 the point of pronouncing sentence when Isabella enters, and 
 requests, before them all, a private interview with the Regent. 
 In this interview she behaves with noble moderation towards 
 the dreaded, yet despised man before her, and appeals at first 
 only to his mildness and mercy. His interruptions merely 
 serve to stimulate her ardour: she speaks of her brother's 
 offence in melting accents, and implores forgiveness for so 
 human and by no means unpardonable a crime. Seeing the 
 effect of her moving appeal, she continues with increasing 
 ardour to plead with the judge's hard and unresponsive heart, 
 which can certainly not have remained untouched by senti- 
 ments such as those which had actuated her brother, and she 
 calls upon his memory of these to support her desperate plea 
 for pity. At last the ice of his heart is broken. Friedrich, 
 deeply stirred by Isabella's beauty, can no longer contain 
 himself, and promises to grant her petition at the price of her 
 own love. Scarcely has she become aware of the unexpected 
 effect of her words when, filled with indignation at such incred- 
 ible villainy, she cries to the people through doors and windows 
 to come in, that she may unmask the hypocrite before the world. 
 The crowd is already rushing tumultuously into the hall of 
 judgment, when, by a few significant hints, Friedrich, with 
 frantic energy, succeeds in making Isabella realise the impossi- 
 bility of her plan. He would simply deny her charge, boldly 
 pretend that his offer was merely made to test her, and would 
 doubtless be readily believed so soon as it became only a 
 question of rebutting a charge of lightly making love to her. 
 Isabella, ashamed and confounded, recognises the madness of 
 her first step, and gnashes her teeth in silent despair. While 
 then Friedrich once more announces his stern resolve to the 
 people, and pronounces sentence on the prisoner, it suddenly
 
 ' LIEBESVERBOT ' 143 
 
 occurs to Isabella, spurred by the painful recollection of 
 Marianne's fate, that what she has failed to procure by open 
 means she might possibly obtain by craft. This thought suf- 
 fices to dispel her sorrow, and to fill her with utmost gaiety. 
 Turning to her sorrowing brother, her agitated friends, and 
 the perplexed crowd, she assures them all that she is ready 
 to provide them with the most amusing of adventures. She 
 declares that the carnival festivities, which the Regent has just 
 strictly forbidden, are to be celebrated this year with unusual 
 licence; for this dreaded ruler only pretends to be so cruel, 
 in order the more pleasantly to astonish them by himself taking 
 a merry part in all that he has just forbidden. They all be- 
 lieve that she has gone mad, and Friedrich in particular re- 
 proves her incomprehensible folly with passionate severity. 
 But a few words on her part suffice to transport the Regent 
 himself with ecstasy; for in a whisper she promises to grant 
 his desire, and that on the following night she will send him 
 such a message as shall ensure his happiness. And so ends the 
 first act in a whirl of excitement. 
 
 We learn the nature of the heroine's hastily formed plan at 
 the beginning of the second act, in which she visits her brother 
 in his cell, with the object of discovering whether he is worthy 
 of rescue. She reveals Friedrich's shameful proposal to him, 
 and asks if he would wish to save his life at the price of his 
 sister's dishonour. Then follow Claudio's fury and fervent 
 declaration of his readiness to die ; whereupon, bidding farewell 
 to his sister, at least for this life, he makes her the bearer of 
 the most tender messages to the dear girl whom he leaves behind. 
 After this, sinking into a softer mood, the unhappy man declines 
 from a state of melancholy to one of weakness. Isabella, who 
 had already determined to inform him of his rescue, hesitates 
 in dismay when she sees him fall in this way from the heights 
 of noble enthusiasm to a muttered confession of a love of life 
 still as strong as ever, and even to a stammering query as 
 to whether the suggested price of his salvation is altogether 
 impossible. Disgusted, she springs to her feet, thrusts the 
 unworthy man from her, and declares that to the shame of his 
 death he has further added her most hearty contempt. After 
 having handed him over again to his gaoler, her mood once
 
 144 MY LIFE 
 
 more changes swiftly to one of wanton gaiety. True, she 
 resolves to punish the waverer by leaving him for a time in 
 uncertainty as to his fate; but stands firm by her resolve 
 to rid the world of the abominable seducer who dared to dic- 
 tate laws to his fellow-men. She tells Marianne that she 
 must take her place at the nocturnal rendezvous, at which 
 Friedrich so treacherously expected to meet her (Isabella), and 
 sends Friedrich an invitation to this meeting. In order to 
 entangle the latter even more deeply in ruin, she stipulates that 
 he must come disguised and masked, and fixes the rendezvous 
 in one of those pleasure resorts which he has just suppressed. 
 To the madcap Luzio, whom she also desires to punish for his 
 saucy suggestion to a novice, she relates the story of Friedrich's 
 proposal, and her pretended intention of complying, from 
 sheer necessity, with his desires. This she does in a fashion 
 so incomprehensively light-hearted that the otherwise frivolous 
 man, first dumb with amazement, ultimately yields to a fit of 
 desperate rage. He swears that, even if the noble maiden 
 herself can endure such shame, he will himself strive by every 
 means in his power to avert it, and would prefer to set all 
 Palermo on fire and in tumult rather than allow such a thing 
 to happen. And, indeed, he arranges things in such a manner 
 that on the appointed evening all his friends and acquaintances 
 assemble at the end of the Corso, as though for the opening of 
 the prohibited carnival procession. At nightfall, as things are 
 beginning to grow wild and merry, Luzio appears, and sings 
 an extravagant carnival song, with the refrain: 
 
 Who joins us not in frolic jest 
 Shall have a dagger in his breast; 
 
 by which means he seeks to stir the crowd to bloody revolt. 
 When a band of sbirri approaches, under Brighella's leadership, 
 to scatter the gay throng, the mutinous project seems on the 
 point of being accomplished. But for the present Luzio pre- 
 fers to yield, and to scatter about the neighbourhood, as he 
 must first of all win the real leader of their enterprise: for 
 here was the spot which Isabella had mischievously revealed 
 to him as the place of her pretended meeting with the Regent. 
 For the latter Luzio therefore lies in wait. Recognising him
 
 < LIEBESVERBOT ' 145 
 
 in an elaborate disguise, he blocks his way, and as Friedrich 
 violently breaks loose, is on the point of following him with 
 shouts and drawn sword, when, on a sign from Isabella, who is 
 hidden among some bushes, he is himself stopped and led away. 
 Isabella then advances, rejoicing in the thought of having 
 restored the betrayed Marianne to her faithless spouse. Believ- 
 ing that she holds in her hand the promised pardon for her 
 brother, she is just on the point of abandoning all thought of 
 further vengeance when, breaking the seal, to her intense horror 
 she recognises by the light of a torch that the paper contains 
 but a still more severe order of execution, which, owing to 
 her desire not to disclose to her brother the fact of his pardon, 
 a mere chance had now delivered into her hand, through the 
 agency of the bribed gaoler. After a hard fight with the 
 tempestuous passion of love, and recognising his helplessness 
 against this enemy of his peace, Friedrich has in fact already 
 resolved to face his ruin, even though as a criminal, yet still 
 as a man of honour. An hour on Isabella's breast, and then 
 his own death by the same law whose implacable severity shall 
 also claim Claudio's life. Isabella, perceiving in this conduct 
 only a further proof of the hypocrite's villainy, breaks out once 
 more into a tempest of agonised despair. Upon her cry for 
 immediate revolt against the scoundrelly tyrant, the people 
 collect together and form a motley and passionate crowd. 
 Luzio, who also returns, counsels the people with stinging 
 bitterness to pay no heed to the woman's fury; he points out 
 that she is only tricking them, as she has already tricked him 
 for he still believes in her shameless infidelity. Fresh con- 
 fusion ; increased despair of Isabella ; suddenly from the back- 
 ground comes the burlesque cry of Brighella for help, who, 
 himself suffering from the pangs of jealousy, has by mistake 
 arrested the masked Regent, and thus led to the latter's dis- 
 covery. Friedrich is recognised, and Marianne, trembling on 
 his breast, is also unmasked. Amazement, indignation! Cries 
 of joy burst forth all round; the needful explanations are 
 quickly given, and Friedrich sullenly demands to be set before 
 the judgment-seat of the returning King. Claudio, released 
 from prison by the jubilant populace, informs him that the 
 sentence of death for crimes of love is not intended for all
 
 146 MY LIFE 
 
 times; messengers arrive to announce the unexpected arrival 
 in harbour of the King; it is resolved to march in full masked 
 procession to meet the beloved Prince, and joyously to pay 
 him homage, all being convinced that he will heartily rejoice 
 to see how ill the gloomy puritanism of Germany is suited to 
 his hot-blooded Sicily. Of him it is said: 
 
 Your merry festals please him more 
 Than gloomy laws or legal lore. 
 
 Friedrich, with his freshly affianced wife, Marianne, must lead 
 the procession, followed by Luzio and the novice, who is for 
 ever lost to the convent. 
 
 These spirited and, in many respects, boldly devised scenes 
 I had clothed in suitable language and carefully written verse, 
 which had already been noticed by Laube. The police at first 
 took exception to the title of the work, which, had I not 
 changed it, would have led to the complete failure of my plans 
 for its presentation. It was the week before Easter, and the 
 theatre was consequently forbidden to produce jolly, or at least 
 frivolous, plays during this period. Luckily the magistrate, 
 with whom I had to treat concerning the matter, did not show 
 any inclination to examine the libretto himself; and when I 
 assured him that it was modelled upon a very serious play of 
 Shakespeare's, the authorities contented themselves merely with 
 changing the somewhat startling title. Die Novize von Palermo, 
 which was the new title, had nothing suspicious about it, and 
 was therefore approved as correct without further scruple. I 
 fared quite otherwise in Leipzig, where I attempted to intro- 
 duce this work in the place of my Feen, when the latter was 
 withdrawn. The director, Ringelhardt, whom I sought to 
 win over to my cause by assigning the part of Marianne to his 
 daughter, then making her debut in opera, chose to reject my 
 work on the apparently very reasonable grounds that the 
 tendency of the theme displeased him. He assured me that, 
 even if the Leipzig magistrates had consented to its production 
 a fact concerning which his high esteem for that body led 
 him to have serious doubts he himself, as a conscientious 
 father, could certainly not permit his daughter to take part 
 in it.
 
 < LIEBESVERBOT ' 147 
 
 Strange to say, I suffered nothing from the suspicious nature 
 of the libretto of my opera on the occasion of its production in 
 Magdeburg; for, as I have said, thanks to the unintelligible 
 manner in which it was produced, the story remained a complete 
 mystery to the public. This circumstance, and the fact that 
 no opposition had been raised on the ground of its tendency, 
 made a second performance possible, and as nobody seemed to 
 care one way or the other, no objections were raised. Feeling 
 sure that my opera had made no impression, and had left the 
 public completely undecided about its merits, I reckoned that, 
 in view of this being the farewell performance of our opera 
 company, we should have good, not to say large, takings. 
 Consequently I did not hesitate to charge ' full ' prices for 
 admittance. I cannot rightly judge whether, up to the com- 
 mencement of the overture, any people had taken their places 
 in the auditorium; but about a quarter of an hour before the 
 time fixed for beginning, I saw only Mme. Gottschalk and her 
 husband, and, curiously enough, a Polish Jew in full dress, 
 seated in the stalls. Despite this, I was still hoping for an 
 increase in the audience, when suddenly the most incredible 
 commotion occurred behind the scenes. Herr Pollert, the hus- 
 band of my prima donna (who was acting Isabella), was as- 
 saulting Schreiber, the second tenor, a very young and hand- 
 some man taking the part of Claudio, and against whom the 
 injured husband had for some time been nursing a secret 
 rancour born of jealousy. It appeared that the singer's hus- 
 band, who had surveyed the theatre from behind the drop- 
 scene with me, had satisfied himself as to the style of the 
 audience, and decided that the longed-for hour was at hand 
 when, without injuring the operatic enterprise, he could wreak 
 vengeance on his wife's lover. Claudio was so severely used 
 by him that the unfortunate fellow had to seek refuge in the 
 dressing-room, his face covered with blood. Isabella was told 
 of this, and rushed despairingly to her raging spouse, only to 
 be so soundly cuffed by him that she went into convulsions. 
 The confusion that ensued amongst the company soon knew no 
 bounds: they took sides in the quarrel, and little was wanting 
 for it to turn into a general fight, as everybody seemed to regard 
 this unhappy evening as particularly favourable for the paying
 
 148 MY LIFE 
 
 off of any old scores and supposed insults. This much was 
 clear, that the couple suffering from the effects of Herr Pollert's 
 conjugal resentment were unfit to appear that evening. The 
 manager was sent before the drop-scene to inform the small 
 and strangely assorted audience gathered in the theatre that, 
 owing to unforeseen circumstances, the representation would 
 not take place. 
 
 This was the end of my career as director and composer in 
 Magdeburg, which in the beginning had seemed so full of promise 
 and had been started at the cost of considerable sacrifice. The 
 serenity of art now gave way completely before the stern reali- 
 ties of life. My position gave food for meditation, and the 
 outlook was not a cheerful one. All the hopes that I and Minna 
 had founded upon the success of my work had been utterly 
 destroyed. My creditors, who had been appeased by the an- 
 ticipation of the expected harvest, lost faith in my talents, 
 and now counted solely on obtaining bodily possession of me, 
 which they endeavoured to do by speedily instituting legal pro- 
 ceedings. Now that every time I came home I found a sum-/ 
 mons nailed to my door, my Jittle dwelling in the Breiteri 
 Weg became unbearable; I avoided going there, especially^ 
 since my brown poodle, who had hitherto enlivened this retreat, ( 
 had vanished, leaving no trace. This I looked upon as a bad 
 sign, indicating my complete downfall. 
 
 At this time Minna, with her truly comforting assurance and 
 firmness of bearing, was a tower of strength to me and the one 
 thing I had left to fall back upon. Always full of resource, i 
 she had first of all provided for her own future, and was on the ,' 
 point of signing a not unfavourable contract with the directors 
 of the theatre at Konigsberg in Prussia. It was now a question 
 of finding me an appointment in the same place as musical 
 conductor; this post was already filled. The Konigsberg di- 
 rector, however, gathering from our correspondence that Minna's 
 acceptance of the engagement depended upon the possibility of 
 my being taken on at the same theatre, held out the prospect 
 of an approaching vacancy, and expressed his willingness to 
 allow it to be filled by me. On the strength of this assurance 
 it was decided that Minna should go on to Konigsberg and 
 pave the way for my arrival there.
 
 A LAST FAREWELL 149 
 
 Ere these plans could be carried out, we had still to spend a 
 time of dreadful and acute anxiety, which I shall never forget, 
 within the walls of Magdeburg. It is true I made one more 
 personal attempt in Leipzig to improve my position, on which 
 occasion I entered into the transactions mentioned above with 
 the director of the theatre regarding my new opera. But I 
 soon realised that it was out of the question for me to remain 
 in my native town, and in the disquieting proximity of my 
 family, from which I was restlessly anxious to get away. My 
 excitability and depression were noticed by my relations. My 
 mother entreated me, whatever else I might decide to do, on 
 no account to be drawn into marriage while still so young. To 
 this I made no reply. When I took my leave, Rosalie accom- 
 panied me to the head of the stairs. I spoke of returning as 
 soon as I had attended to certain important business matters, 
 and wanted to wish her a hurried good-bye: she grasped my 
 hand, and gazing into my face, exclaimed, " God alone knows 
 when I shall see you again ! ' This cut me to the heart, and I 
 felt conscience-stricken. The fact that she was expressing the* 
 presentiment she felt of her early death I only realised when, 
 barely two years later, without having seen her again, I received 
 the news that she had died very suddenly. 
 
 I spent a few more weeks with Minna in the strictest retire- 
 ment in Magdeburg : she endeavoured to the best of her ability 
 to relieve the embarrassment of my position. In view of our 
 approaching separation, and the length of time we might be 
 parted, I hardly left her side, our only relaxation being the 
 walks we took together round the outskirts of the town. Anx- 
 ious forebodings weighed upon us; the May sun which lit 
 the sad streets of Magdeburg, as if in mockery of our forlorn 
 condition, was one day more clouded over than I have ever 
 seen it since, and filled me with a positive dread. On our way 
 home from one of these walks, as we were approaching the 
 bridge crossing the Elbe, we caught sight of a man flinging 
 himself from it into the water beneath. We ran to the bank, 
 called for help, and persuaded a miller, whose mill was situated 
 on the river, to hold out a rake to the drowning man, who was 
 being swept in his direction by the current. With indescribable 
 anxiety we waited for the decisive moment saw the sinking
 
 150 MY LIFE 
 
 man stretch out his hands towards the rake, but he failed to 
 grasp it, and at the same moment disappeared under the mill, 
 never to he seen again. On the morning that I accompanied 
 Minna to the stage-coach to bid her a most sorrowful farewell, 
 the whole population was pouring from one of the gateways 
 of the town towards a big field, to witness the execution of a 
 man condemned to be put to death on the wheel ' from below.' 1 
 The culprit was a soldier who had murdered his sweetheart 
 in a fit of jealousy. When, later in the day, I sat down to 
 my last dinner at the inn, I heard the dreadful details of the 
 Prussian mode of execution being discussed on all sides. A 
 young magistrate, who was a great lover of music, told us about 
 a conversation he had had with the executioner, who had been 
 procured from Halle, and with whom he had discussed the 
 most humane method of hastening the death of the victim; in 
 telling us about him, he recalled the elegant dress and manners 
 of this ill-omened person with a shudder. 
 
 These were the last impressions I carried away from the 
 scene of my first artistic efforts and of my attempts at earning 
 an independent livelihood. Often since then on my departure 
 from places where I had expected to find prosperity, and to 
 which I knew I should never return, those impressions have 
 recurred to my mind with singular persistence. I have always 
 had much the same feelings upon leaving any place where I 
 had stayed in the hope of improving my position. 
 
 Thus I arrived in Berlin for the first time on the 18th May, 
 1836, and made acquaintance with the peculiar features of 
 that pretentious royal capital. While my position was an un- 
 certain one, I sought a modest shelter at the Crown Prince 
 in the Konigstrasse, where Minna had stayed a few months 
 before. I found a friend on whom I could rely when I came 
 across Laube again, who, while awaiting his verdict, was 
 
 1 Durch das Rod von unten. The punishment of the wheel was usually 
 inflicted upon murderers, incendiaries, highwaymen and church robbers. There 
 were two methods of inflicting this : (1) ' from above downwards ' (von oben nach 
 unten), in which the condemned man was despatched instantly owing to his neck 
 getting broken from the start; and (2) ' from below upwards ' (von unten nach 
 oben), which is the method referred to above, and in which all the limbs of the 
 victim were broken previous to his body being actually twisted through the 
 spokes of the wheel. EDITOB.
 
 BERLIN (1836) 151 
 
 busying himself with private and literary work in Berlin. 
 He was much interested in the fate of my work Liebesverbot, 
 and advised me to turn my present situation to account for 
 the purpose of obtaining the production of this opera at the 
 Konigstadt theatre. This theatre was under the direction 
 of one of the most curious creatures in Berlin: he was called 
 ' Cerf/ and the title of C ommissionsrath had been conferred 
 upon him by the King of Prussia. To account for the favours 
 bestowed upon him by royalty, many reasons of a not very 
 edifying nature were circulated. Through this royal patronage 
 he had succeeded in extending considerably the privileges 
 already enjoyed by the suburban theatre. The decline of grand 
 opera at the Theatre Royal had brought light opera, which 
 was performed with great success at the Konigstadt theatre, 
 into public favour. The director, puffed up by success, openly 
 laboured under the delusion that he was the right man in the 
 right place, and expressed his entire agreement with those 
 who declared that one could only expect a theatre to be suc- 
 cessfully managed by common and uneducated men, and 
 continued to cling to his blissful and boundless state of 
 ignorance in the most amusing manner. Relying absolutely 
 upon his own insight, he had assumed an entirely dictatorial 
 attitude towards the officially appointed artists of his theatre, 
 and allowed himself to deal with them according to his likes 
 and dislikes. I seemed destined to be favoured by this mode 
 of procedure: at my very first visit Cerf expressed his satis- 
 faction with me, but wished to make use of me as a ' tenor.' 
 He offered no objection whatever to my request for the pro- 
 duction of my opera, but, on the contrary, promised to have it 
 staged immediately. He seemed particularly anxious to appoint 
 me conductor of the orchestra. As he was on the point of 
 changing his operatic company, he foresaw that his present 
 conductor, Glaser, the composer of Adlershorst, would hinder 
 his plans by taking the part of the older singers : he was there- 
 fore anxious to have me associated with his theatre, that he 
 might have some one to support him who was favourably dis- 
 posed towards the new singers. 
 
 All this sounded so plausible, that I could scarcely be blamed 
 for believing that the wheel of fortune had taken a favourable
 
 152 MY LIFE 
 
 turn for me, and for feeling a sense of lightheartedness at tKe 
 thought of such rosy prospects. I had scarcely allowed myself 
 the few modifications in my manner of living which these 
 improved circumstances seemed to justify, ere it was made 
 clear to me that my hopes were built upon sand. I was filled 
 with positive dread when I soon fully realised how nearly Cerf 
 had come to defrauding me, merely it would seem for his own 
 amusement After the manner of despots, he had given his 
 favours personally and autocratically; the withdrawal and 
 annulment of his promises, however, he made known to me 
 through his servants and secretaries, thus placing his strange 
 conduct towards me in the light of the inevitable result of his 
 dependence upon officialdom. 
 
 As Cerf wished to rid himself of me without even offering 
 me compensation, I was obliged to try to come to some under- 
 standing regarding all that had been definitely arranged 
 between us, and this with the very people against whom he 
 had previously warned me and had wanted me to side with 
 him. The conductor, stage manager, secretary, etc., had to 
 make it clear to me that my wishes could not be satisfied, and 
 that the director owed me no compensation whatever for the 
 time he had made me waste while awaiting the fulfilment of 
 his promises. This unpleasant experience has been a source 
 of pain to me ever since. 
 
 Owing to all this my position was very much worse than it 
 had been before. Minna wrote to me frequently from Kb'nigs- 
 berg, but she had nothing encouraging to tell me with regard 
 to my hopes in that direction. The director of the theatre 
 there seemed unable to come to any clear understanding with 
 his conductor, a circumstance which I was afterwards able to 
 understand, but which at the time appeared to me inexplicable, 
 and made my chance of obtaining the coveted appointment 
 seem exceedingly remote. It seemed certain, however, that 
 the post would be vacant in the autumn, and as I was drifting 
 about aimlessly in Berlin and refused for a moment to enter- 
 tain the thought of returning to Leipzig, I snatched at this 
 faint hope, and in imagination soared above the Berlin quick- 
 sands to the safety of the harbour on the Baltic. 
 
 I only succeeded in doing so, however, after I had struggled
 
 MINNA 153 
 
 through difficult and s erious inward conflicts to which my 
 relations with Minna gave rise. An incomprehensible feature 
 in the character of this otherwise apparently simple-minded 
 woman had thrown my young heart into a turmoil. A good- 
 natured, well-to-do tradesman of Jewish extraction, named 
 Schwabe, who till that time had been established in Magdeburg, 
 made friendly advances to me in Berlin, and I soon discovered 
 that his sympathy was chiefly due to the passionate interest 
 which he had conceived for Minna. It afterwards became clear 
 to me that an intimacy had existed between this man and 
 Minna, which in itself could hardly be considered as a breach 
 of faith towards me, since it had ended in a decided repulse 
 of my rival's courtship in my favour. But the fact of this 
 episode having been kept so secret that I had not had the 
 faintest idea of it before, and also the suspicion I could not 
 avoid harbouring that Minna's comfortable circumstances were 
 in part due to this man's friendship, filled me with gloomy 
 misgivings. But as I have said, although I could find no real 
 cause to complain of infidelity, I was distracted and alarmed, 
 and was at last driven to the half-desperate resolve of regaining 
 my balance in this respect by obtaining complete possession 
 of Minna. It seemed to me as though my stability as a citizen, 
 as well as my professional success would be assured by a recog- 
 nised union with Minna. The two years spent in the theatrical 
 world had, in fact, kept me in a constant state of distraction, 
 of which in my heart of hearts I was most painfully conscious. 
 I realised vaguely that I was on the wrong path; I longed for 
 peace and quiet, and hoped to find these most effectually by 
 getting married, and so putting an end to the state of things 
 that had become the source of so much anxiety to me. 
 
 It was not surprising that Laube noticed by my untidy, 
 passionate, and wasted appearance that something unusual 
 was amiss with me. It was only in his company, which I 
 always found comforting, that I gained the only impressions of 
 Berlin which compensated me in any way for my misfortunes. 
 The most important artistic experience I had, came to me 
 through the performance of Ferdinand Cortez, conducted by 
 Spontini himself, the spirit of which astonished me more 
 than anything I had ever heard before. Though the actual
 
 154 MY LIFE 
 
 production, especially as regards the chief characters, who as 
 a whole could not be regarded as belonging to the flower of 
 Berlin opera, left me unmoved, and though the effect never 
 reached a point that could be even distantly compared to that 
 produced upon me by Schroder-Devrient, yet the exceptional 
 precision, fire, and richly organised rendering of the whole 
 was new to me. I gained a fresh insight into the peculiar 
 dignity of big theatrical representations, which in their several 
 parts could, by well-accentuated rhythm, be made to attain 
 the highest pinnacle of art. This extraordinarily distinct 
 impression took a drastic hold of me, and above all served to 
 guide me in my conception of Rienzi, so that, speaking from an 
 artistic point of view, Berlin may be said to have left its traces 
 on my development. 
 
 -For the present, however, my chief concern was to extricate 
 myself from my extremely helpless position. I was determined 
 to turn my steps to Konigsberg, and communicated my decision, 
 and the hopes founded upon it, to Laube. This excellent 
 friend, without further inquiry, made a point of exerting his 
 energies to free me from my present state of despair, and to 
 help me to reach my next destination, an object which, through 
 the assistance of several of his friends, he succeeded in accom- 
 plishing. When he said good-bye to me, Laube with sympa- 
 thetic foresight warned me, should I succeed in my desired 
 career of musical conductor, not to allow myself to be entangled 
 in the shallowness of stage life, and advised me, after fatiguing 
 rehearsals, instead of going to my sweetheart, to take a serious 
 book in hand, in order that my greater gifts might not go 
 uncultivated. I did not tell him that by taking an early and 
 decisive step in this direction I intended to protect myself 
 effectually against the dangers of theatrical intrigues. On 
 the 7th of July, therefore, I started on what was at that time 
 an extremely troublesome and fatiguing journey to the distant : 
 town of Kb'nigsberg. 
 
 It seemed to me as though I were leaving the world, as I 
 travelled on day after day through the desert marches. Then 
 followed a sad and humiliating impression of Konigsberg, where, 
 in one of the poorest-looking suburbs, Tragheim, near the 
 theatre, and in a lane such as one would expect to find in a
 
 SCHUBEKT 155 
 
 village, I found the ugly house in which Minna lodged. The 
 friendly and quiet kindness of manner, however, which was 
 peculiar to her, soon made me feel at home. She was popular 
 at the theatre, and was respected by the managers and actors, 
 a fact which seemed to augur well for her betrothed, the part 
 I was now openly to assume. 
 
 Though as yet there seemed no distinct prospect of my 
 getting the appointment I had come for, yet we agreed that 
 I could hold out a little longer, and that the matter would 
 certainly be arranged in the end. This was also the opinion 
 of the eccentric Abraham Moller, a worthy citizen of Konigs- 
 berg, who was devoted to the theatre, and who took a very 
 friendly interest in Minna, and finally also in me. This man, 
 who was already well advanced in life, belonged to the type of 
 theatre lovers now probably completely extinct in Germany, 
 but of whom so much is recorded in the history of actors of 
 earlier times. One could not spend an hour in the company of 
 this man, who at one time had gone in for the most reckless 
 speculations, without having to listen to his account of the 
 glory of the stage in former times, described in most lively 
 terms. As a man of means he had at one time made the 
 acquaintance of nearly all the great actors and actresses of his 
 day, and had even known how to win their friendship. Through 
 too great a liberality he unfortunately found himself in reduced 
 circumstances, and was now obliged to procure the means to 
 satisfy his craving for the theatre and his desire to protect 
 those belonging to it by entering into all kinds of strange 
 business transactions, in which, without running any real risk, 
 he felt there was something to be gained. He was accordingly 
 only able to afford the theatre a very meagre support, but one 
 which was quite in keeping with its decrepit condition. 
 
 This strange man, of whom the theatre director, Anton 
 Hiibsch, stood to a certain extent in awe, undertook to procure 
 me my appointment. The only circumstance against me was 
 the fact that Louis Schubert, the famous musician whom I 
 had known from very early times as the first violoncellist of 
 the Magdeburg orchestra, had come to Konigsberg from Riga, 
 where the theatre had been closed for a time, and where he had 
 left his wife, in order to fill the post of musical conductor here
 
 156 MY LIFE 
 
 until the new theatre in Kiga was opened, and he could return. 
 The reopening of the Riga theatre, which had already been 
 fixed for the Easter of this year, had been postponed, and he 
 was now anxious not to leave Konigsberg. Since Schubert 
 was a thorough master in his art, and since his choosing to 
 remain or go depended entirely on circumstances over which 
 he had no control, the theatre director found himself in the 
 embarrassing position of having to secure some one who would 
 be willing to wait to enter upon his appointment till Schubert's 
 business called him away. Consequently a young musical 
 conductor who was anxious to remain in Konigsberg at any 
 price could but be heartily welcomed as a reserve and sub- 
 stitute in case of emergency. Indeed, the director declared 
 himself willing to give me a small retaining fee till the time 
 should arrive for my definite entrance upon my duties. 
 
 Schubert, on the contrary, was furious at my arrival; there 
 was no longer any necessity for his speedy return to Riga, 
 since the reopening of the theatre there had been postponed 
 indefinitely. Moreover, he had a special interest in remaining 
 in Konigsberg, as he had conceived a passion for the prima 
 donna there, which considerably lessened his desire to return 
 to his wife. So at the last moment he clung to his Konigsberg 
 post with great eagerness, regarded me as his deadly enemy, 
 and, spurred on by his instinct of self-preservation, used every 
 means in his power to make my stay in Konigsberg, and the 
 already painful position I occupied while awaiting his departure, 
 a veritable hell to me. 
 
 While in Magdeburg I had been on the friendliest footing 
 with both musicians and singers, and had been shown the 
 greatest consideration by the public, I here found I had to 
 defend myself on all sides against the most mortifying ill-will. 
 This hostility towards me, which soon made itself apparent, 
 contributed in no small degree to make me feel as though in 
 coming to Konigsberg I had gone into exile. In spite of my 
 eagerness, I realised that under the circumstances my marriage 
 with Minna would prove a hazardous undertaking. At the 
 beginning of August the company went to Memel for a time, 
 to open the summer season there, and I followed Minna a few 
 days later. We went most of the way by sea, and crossed the
 
 HARDSHIPS 157 
 
 Kurische Haff in a sailing vessel in bad weather with the wind 
 against us one of the most melancholy crossings I have 
 ever experienced. As we passed the thin strip of sand that 
 divides this bay from the Baltic Sea, the castle of Runsitten, 
 where Hoffmann laid the scene of one of his most gruesome 
 tales (.Das Majorat), was pointed out to me. The fact that in 
 this desolate neighbourhood, of all places in the world, I 
 should after so long a lapse of time be once more brought in 
 contact with the fantastic impressions of my youth, had a 
 singular and depressing effect on my mind. The unhappy 
 sojourn in Memel, the lamentable role I played there, every- 
 thing in short, contributed to make me find my only consola- 
 tion in Minna, who, after all, was the cause of my having placed 
 myself in this unpleasant position. Our friend Abraham 
 followed us from Konigsberg and did all kinds of queer things 
 to promote my interests, and was obviously anxious to put 
 the director and conductor at variance with each other. One 
 day Schubert, in consequence of a dispute with Hiibsch on the 
 previous night, actually declared himself too unwell to attend 
 a rehearsal of Euryanthe, in order to force the manager to 
 summon me suddenly to take his place. In doing this my 
 rival maliciously hoped that as I was totally unprepared to 
 conduct this difficult opera, which was seldom played, I would 
 expose my incapacity in a manner most welcome to his hos- 
 tile intentions. Although I had never really had a score of 
 Euryanthe before me, his wish was so little gratified, that he 
 elected to get well for the representation in order to conduct 
 it himself, which he would not have done if it had been found 
 necessary to cancel the performance on account of my incom- 
 petence. In this wretched position, vexed in mind, exposed to 
 the severe climate, which even on summer evenings struck me 
 as horribly cold, and occupied merely in warding off the most 
 painful troubles of life, my time, as far as any professional 
 advancement was concerned, was completely lost. At last, on 
 our return to Konigsberg, and particularly under the guardian- 
 ship of Moller, the question as to what was to be done was more 
 earnestly considered. Finally, Minna and I were offered a 
 fairly good engagement in Danzig, through the influence of 
 my brother-in-law Wolfram and his wife, who had gone there.
 
 158 MY LIFE 
 
 Moller seized this opportunity to induce the director Hiibsch, 
 who was anxious not to lose Minna, to sign a contract including 
 us both, and by which it was understood that under any 
 circumstances I should be officially appointed as conductor at 
 his theatre from the following Easter. Moreover, for our 
 wedding, a benefit performance was promised, for which we 
 chose Die Stumme von Portici, to be conducted by me in person. 
 For, as Moller remarked, it was absolutely necessary for us to 
 get married, and to have a due celebration of the event; there 
 was no getting out of it Minna made no objection, and all 
 my past endeavours and resolutions seemed to prove that my 
 one desire was to take anchor in the haven of matrimony. In 
 spite of this, however, a strange conflict was going on within 
 me at this time. I had become sufficiently intimate with 
 Minna's life and character to realise the wide difference between 
 our two natures as fully as the important step I was about to 
 take necessitated; but my powers of judgment were not yet 
 sufficiently matured. 
 
 My future wife was the child of poor parents, natives of 
 Oederan in the Erzgebirge in Saxony. Her father was no 
 ordinary man; he possessed enormous vitality, but in his old 
 age showed traces of some feebleness of mind. In his young days 
 he had been a trumpeter in Saxony, and in this capacity had 
 taken part in a campaign against the French, and had also been 
 present at the battle of Wagram. He afterwards became a 
 mechanic, and took up the trade of manufacturing cards for 
 carding wool, and as he invented an improvement in the pro- 
 cess of their production, he is said to have made a very good 
 business of it for some time. A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz 
 once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the 
 year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved 
 serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, 
 and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy 
 Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money. When 
 the longed-for time arrived, however, he received the announce- 
 ment of his client's bankruptcy. The goods that had already 
 been delivered were lost, and the material that remained on 
 his hands there was no prospect of selling. The family never 
 succeeded in recovering from the state of confusion into which
 
 MINNA'S HISTOKY 159 
 
 this misfortune had thrown them; they went to Dresden, 
 where the father hoped to find remunerative employment as a 
 skilled mechanic, especially in the manufacture of pianos, of 
 which he supplied separate parts. He also brought away with 
 him a large quantity of the fine wire which had been destined 
 for the manufacture of the cards, and which he hoped to be 
 able to sell at a profit. The ten-year-old Minna was commis- 
 sioned to sell separate lots of it to the milliners for making 
 flowers. She would set out with a heavy basketful of wire, 
 and had such a gift for persuading people to buy that she soon 
 disposed of the whole supply to the best advantage. From 
 this time the desire was awakened in her to be of active use 
 to her impoverished family, and to earn her own living as soon 
 as possible, in order not to be a burden on her parents. As 
 she grew up and developed into a strikingly beautiful woman, 
 she attracted the attention of men at a very early age. A 
 certain Herr von Einsiedel fell passionately in love with her, 
 and took advantage of the inexperienced young girl when she 
 was off. her guard. Her family was thrown into the utmost 
 consternation, and only her mother and elder sister could be 
 told of the terrible position in which Minna found herself. 
 Her father, from whose anger the worst consequences were to' 
 be feared, was never informed that his barely seventeen-year- 
 old daughter had become a mother, and under conditions that 
 had threatened her life, had given birth to a girl. Minna, 
 who could obtain no redress from her seducer, now felt doubly 
 called upon to earn her own livelihood and leave her father's 
 house. Through the influence of friends, she had been brought 
 into contact with an amateur theatrical society: while acting 
 in a performance given there, she attracted the notice of mem- 
 bers of the Royal Court Theatre, and in particular drew the 
 attention of the director of the Dessau Court Theatre, who 
 was present, and who immediately offered her an engagement. 
 She gladly caught at this way of escape from her trying position, 
 as it opened up the possibility of a brilliant stage career, and 
 otsome day being able to provide amply for her family. She 
 had not the slightest passion for the stage, and utterly devoid 
 as she was of any levity or coquetry, she merely saw in a 
 theatrical career the means of earning a quick, and possibly
 
 '160 MY LIFE 
 
 even a rich, livelihood. Without any artistic training, the 
 theatre merely meant for her the company of actors and act- 
 resses. Whether she pleased or not seemed of importance 
 in her eyes only in so far as it affected her realisation of a 
 comfortable independence. To use all the means at her dis- 
 posal to assure this end seemed to her as necessary as it is for 
 a tradesman to expose his goods to the best advantage. 
 
 The friendship of the director, manager, and favourite 
 members of the theatre she regarded as indispensable, whilst 
 those frequenters of the theatre who, through their criticism 
 .or taste, influenced the public, and thus also had weight with 
 the management, she recognised as beings upon whom the 
 attainment of her most fervent desires depended. Never to 
 make enemies of them appeared so natural and so necessary 
 that, in order to maintain her popularity, she was prepared to 
 sacrifice even her self-respect. She had in this way created for 
 herself a certain peculiar code of behaviour, that on the one 
 hand prompted her to avoid scandals, but on the other hand 
 found excuses even for making herself conspicuous as long as she 
 herself knew that she was doing nothing wrong. Hence arose 
 a mixture of inconsistencies, the questionable sense of which 
 she was incapable of grasping. It was clearly impossible for 
 her not to lose all real sense of delicacy; she showed, however, 
 a sense of the fitness of things, which made her have regard 
 to what was considered proper, though she could not understand 
 that mere appearances were a mockery when they only served 
 to cloak the absence of a real sense of delicacy. As she wasi 
 without idealism, she had no artistic feeling ; neither did she 
 possess any talent for acting, and her power of pleasing was/ 
 due entirely to her charming appearance. Whether in timei 
 routine would have made her become a good actress it is 
 impossible for me to say. The strange power she exercised over 
 me from the very first was in no wise due to the fact that I 
 regarded her in any way as the embodiment of my ideal ; on 
 the contrary, she attracted me by the soberness and seriousness:, 
 of her character, which supplemented what I felt to be wanting 
 in my own, and afforded me the support that in my wanderings 
 after the ideal I knew to be necessary for me. 
 
 I had soon accustomed myself never to betray my craving
 
 MINNA ON THE STAGE 161 
 
 after the ideal before Minna: unable to account for this even 
 to myself, I always made a point of avoiding the subject by 
 passing it over with a laugh and a joke; but, on this account, 
 it was all the more natural for me to feel qualms when fears 
 arose in my mind as to her really possessing the qualities to 
 which I had attributed her superiority over me. Her strange 
 tolerance with regard to certain familiarities and even impor- 
 tunities on the part of patrons of the theatre, directed even 
 against her person, hurt me considerably ; and on my reproach- 
 ing her for this, I was driven to despair by her assuming an 
 injured expression as though I had insulted her. It was quite 
 by chance that I came across Schwabe's letters, and thus gained 
 an astonishing insight into her intimacy with that man, of 
 which she had left me in ignorance, and allowed me to gain 
 my first knowledge during my stay in Berlin. All my latent 
 jealousy, all my inmost doubts concerning Minna's character, 
 found vent in my sudden determination to leave the girl at 
 once. There was a violent scene between us, which was 
 typical of all our subsequent altercations. I had obviously 
 gone too far in treating a woman who was not passionately in 
 love with me, as if I had a real right over her; for, after 
 all, she had merely yielded to my importunity, and in no 
 way belonged to me. To add to my perplexity, Minna only 
 needed to remind me that from a worldly point of view she 
 had refused very good offers in order to give way to the impetu- 
 osity of a penniless young man, whose talent had not yet been 
 put to any real test, and to whom she had nevertheless shown 
 sympathy and kindness. 
 
 What she could least forgive in me was the raging vehem- 
 ence with which I spoke, and by which she felt so insulted, that 
 upon realising to what excesses I had gone, there was nothing 
 I could do but try and pacify her by owning myself in the 
 wrong, and begging her forgiveness. Such was the end of this 
 and all subsequent scenes, outwardly, at least, always to her 
 advantage. But peace was undermined for ever, and by the 
 frequent recurrence of such quarrels, Minna's character under- 
 went a considerable change. Just as in later times she became 
 perplexed by what she considered my incomprehensible con- 
 ception of art and its proportions, which upset her ideas about
 
 162 MY LIFE 
 
 everything connected with it, so now she grew more and more 
 confused by my greater delicacy in regard to morality, which 
 was very different from hers, especially as in many other respects 
 I displayed a freedom of opinion which she could neither 
 comprehend nor approve. 
 
 A feeling of passionate resentment was accordingly roused 
 in her otherwise tranquil disposition. It was not surprising 
 that this resentment increased as the years went on, and mani- 
 fested itself in a manner characteristic of a girl sprung from the 
 lower middle class, in whom mere superficial polish had taken 
 the place of any true culture. The real torment of our subse-^ 
 quent life together lay in the fact that, owing to her violence, 
 I had lost the last support I had hitherto found in her excep- 
 tionally sweet disposition. At that time I was filled only 
 with a dim foreboding of the fateful step I was taking in marry- \ 
 ing her. Her agreeable and soothing qualities still had such 
 a beneficial effect upon me, that with the frivolity natural to 
 me, as well as the obstinacy with which I met all opposition, 
 I silenced the inner voice that darkly foreboded disaster. 
 
 Since my journey to Konigsberg I had broken off all com- 
 munication with my family, that is to say, with my mother and 
 Rosalie, and I told no one of the step I had decided to take. 
 Under my old friend Holler's audacious guidance I overcame 
 all the legal difficulties that stood in the way of our union. 
 According to Prussian law, a man who has reached his majority 
 no longer requires his parents' consent to his marriage : but i 
 since, according to this same provision, I was not yet of age, f 
 I had recourse to the law of Saxony, to which country I belonged 
 by birth, and by whose regulations I had already attained my 
 majority at the age of twenty-one. Our banns had to be 
 published at the place where we had been living during the past 
 year, and this formality was carried out in Magdeburg without 
 any further objections being raised. As Minna's parents had 
 given their consent, the only thing that still remained to be 
 done to make everything quite in order was for us to go together 
 to the clergyman of the parish of Tragheim. This proved a 
 strange enough visit. It took place the morning preceding 
 the performance to be given for our benefit, in which Minna 
 had chosen the pantomimic role of Fenella; her costume was
 
 BEFORE THE WEDDING 163 
 
 not ready yet, and there was still a great deal to be done. 
 The rainy cold November weather made us feel out of humour, 
 when, to add to our vexation, we were kept standing in the hall 
 of the vicarage for an unreasonable time. Then an altercation 
 arose between us which speedily led to such bitter vituperation 
 that we were just on the point of separating and going each our 
 own way, when the clergyman opened the door. Not a little 
 embarrassed at having surprised us in the act of quarrelling, 
 he invited us in. We were obliged to put a good face on the 
 matter, however; and the absurdity of the situation so tickled 
 our sense of humour that we laughed ; the parson was appeased, 
 and the wedding fixed for eleven o'clock the next morning. 
 
 Another fruitful source of irritation, which often led to the 
 outbreak of violent quarrelling between us, was the arrange- 
 ment of our future home, in the interior comfort and beauty 
 of which I hoped to find a guarantee of happiness. . The 
 economical ideas of my bride filled me with impatience. I 
 was determined that the inauguration of a series of prosperous 
 years which I saw before me must be celebrated by a corre- 
 spondingly comfortable home. Furniture, household utensils, 
 and all necessaries were obtained on credit, to be paid for by 
 instalment. There was, of course, no question of a dowry, 
 a wedding outfit, or any of the things that are generally con- 
 sidered indispensable to a well-founded establishment. Our 
 witnesses and guests were drawn from the company of actors 
 accidentally brought together by their engagement at the j 
 Kb'nigsberg theatre. My friend Moller made us a present of 
 a silver sugar-basin, which was supplemented by a silver cake- 
 basket from another stage friend, a peculiar and, as far as I 
 can remember, rather interesting young man named Ernst 
 Castell. The benefit performance of the Die Stumme von j 
 Poriici, which I conducted with great enthusiasm, went off / 
 well, and brought us in as large a sum as we had counted upon. / 
 After spending the rest of the day before our wedding very 
 quietly, as we were tired out after our return from the theatre, 
 I took up my abode for the first time in our new home. Not 
 wishing to use the bridal bed, decorated for the occasion, I 
 lay down on a hard sofa, without even sufficient covering on 
 me, and froze valiantly while awaiting the happiness of the
 
 164 MY LIFE 
 
 following day. I was pleasantly excited the next morning by 
 the arrival of Minna's belongings, packed in boxes and baskets. 
 The weather, too, had quite cleared up, and the sun was shining 
 brightly; only our sitting-room refused to get properly warm, 
 which for some time drew down Minna's reproaches upon my 
 head for my supposed carelessness in not having seen to the 
 heating arrangements. At last I dressed myself in my new 
 suit, a dark blue frock-coat with gold buttons. The carriage 
 drove up, and I set out to fetch my bride. The bright sky 
 had put us all in good spirits, and in the best of humour I met 
 Minna, who was dressed in a splendid gown chosen by me. 
 She greeted me with sincere cordiality and pleasure shining from 
 her eyes; and taking the fine weather as a good omen, we 
 started off for what now seemed to us a most cheerful wedding. 
 We enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the church as over- 
 crowded as if a brilliant theatrical representation were being 
 given; it was quite a difficult matter to make our way to 
 the altar, where a group no less worldly than the rest, con- 
 sisting of our witnesses, dressed in all their theatrical finery, 
 were assembled to receive us. There was not one real friend 
 amongst all those present, for even our strange old friend 
 Moller was absent, because no suitable partner had been 
 found for him. I was not for a single moment insensible 
 to the chilling frivolity of the congregation, who seemed to 
 impart their tone to the whole ceremony. I listened like 
 one in a dream to the nuptial address of the parson, who, 
 I was afterwards told, had had a share in producing the spirit 
 of bigotry which at this time was so prevalent in Kb'nigs- 
 berg, and which exercised such a disquieting influence on its 
 population. 
 
 A few days later I was told that a rumour had got about 
 the town that I had taken action against the parson for some 
 gross insults contained in his sermon; I did not quite see 
 what was meant, but supposed that the exaggerated report 
 arose from a passage in his address which I in my excitement 
 had misunderstood. The preacher, in speaking of the dark 
 days, of which we were to expect our share, bade us look to 
 an unknown friend, and I glanced up inquiringly for further 
 particulars of this mysterious and influential patron who chose
 
 AFTER THE WEDDING 165 
 
 so strange a way of announcing himself. Reproachfully, and 
 with peculiar emphasis, the pastor then pronounced the name 
 of this unknown friend: Jesus. Now I was not in any way 
 insulted by this, as people imagined, but was simply dis- 
 appointed; at the same time, I thought that such exhortations 
 were probably usual in nuptial addresses. 
 
 But, on the whole, I was so absent-minded during this 
 ceremony, which was double Dutch to me, that when the parson 
 held out the closed prayer-book for us to place our wedding 
 rings upon, Minna had to nudge me forcibly to make me 
 follow her example. 
 
 " "1 
 
 At that moment I saw, as clearly as in a vision, my whol^ 
 being divided into two cross-currents that > dragged me iitt 
 different directions; the upper one faced the sun and carried! 
 me onward like a dreamer, whilst the lower one held my naturev 
 captive, a prey to some inexplicable fear. The extraordinary/ 
 levity with which I chased away the conviction which kepi 
 forcing itself upon me, that I was committing a twofold sin, 
 was amply accounted for by the really genuine affection with 
 which I looked upon the young girl whose truly exceptional 
 character (so rare in the environment in which she had been 
 placed) led her thus to bind herself to a young man without 
 any means of support. It was eleven o'clock on the morning V 
 of the 24th of November, 1836, and I was twenty-three and a j 
 half. 
 
 On the way home from church, and afterwards, my good 
 spirits rose superior to all my doubts. 
 
 Minna at once took upon herself the duty of receiving and 
 entertaining her guests. The table was spread, and a rich 
 feast, at which Abraham Moller, the energetic promoter of our 
 marriage, also took part, although he had been rather put out 
 by his exclusion from the church ceremony, made up for the 
 coldness of the room, which for a long time refused to get warm, 
 to the great distress of the young hostess. 
 
 Everything went off in the usual uneventful way. Never- . 
 theless, I retained my good spirits till the next morning, when > 
 I had to present myself at the magistrate's court to meet the 
 demands of my creditors, which had been forwarded to me from ' 
 Magdeburg to Konigsburg.
 
 166 MY LIFE 
 
 My friend Mb'ller, whom I had retained for my defence, had 
 foolishly advised me to meet my creditors' demands by plead- 
 ing infancy according to the law of Prussia, at all events until 
 actual assistance for the settlement of the claims could be 
 obtained. 
 
 The magistrate, to whom I stated this plea as I had been 
 advised, was astonished, being probably well aware of my 
 marriage on the previous day, which could only have taken 
 place on the production of documentary proof of my majority. 
 I naturally only gained a brief respite by this manoeuvre, and 
 the troubles which beset me for a long time afterwards had 
 their origin on the first day of my marriage. 
 
 During the period when I held no appointment at the theatre 
 I suffered various humiliations. Nevertheless, I thought it 
 wise to make the most of my leisure in the interests of my art, 
 and I finished a few pieces, among which was a grand overture 
 on Bide Britannia. 
 
 When I was still in Berlin I had written the overture entitled 
 Polonia, which has already been mentioned in connection 
 with the Polish festival. Rule Britannia was a further and 
 deliberate step in the direction of mass effects; at the close a 
 strong military band was to be added to the already over-full 
 orchestra, and I intended to have the whole thing performed 
 at the Musical Festival in Konigsberg in the summer. 
 
 To these two overtures I added a supplement an overture 
 entitled Napoleon. The point to which I devoted my chief 
 attention was the selection of the means for producing certain 
 effects, and I carefully considered whether I should express 
 the annihilating stroke of fate that befell the French Emperor 
 in Russia by a beat on the tom-tom or not. I believe it was 
 to a great extent my scruples about the introduction of this 
 beat that prevented me from carrying out my plan just then. 
 
 On the other hand, the conclusions which I had reached 
 regarding the ill-success of Liebesverbot resulted in an operatic 
 sketch in which the demands made on the chorus and the staff 
 of singers should be more in proportion to the known capacity 
 of the local company, as this small theatre was the only one 
 at my disposal. 
 
 A quaint tale from the Arabian Nights suggested the very
 
 A BEAK AT THE WEDDING 167 
 
 subject for a light work of this description, the title of which, 
 if 1 remember rightly, was Mimnerlist grosser als Frauenlist 
 ('Man outwits Woman'). 
 
 I transplanted the story from Bagdad to a modern setting. 
 A young goldsmith offends the pride of a young woman by 
 placing the above motto on the sign over his shop; deeply 
 veiled, she steps into his shop and asks him, as he displays 
 such excellent taste in his work, to express his opinion on her 
 own physical charms; he begins with her feet and her hands, 
 and finally, noticing his confusion, she removes the veil from 
 her face. The jeweller is carried away by her beauty, where- 
 upon she complains to him that her father, who has always kept 
 her in the strictest seclusion, describes her to all her suitors 
 as an ugly monster, his object being, she imagines, simply to 
 keep her dowry. The young man swears that he will not be 
 frightened off by these foolish objections, should the father 
 raise them against his suit. No sooner said than done. The 
 daughter of this peculiar old gentleman is promised to the 
 unsuspecting jeweller, and is brought to her bridegroom as 
 soon as he has signed the contract. He then sees that the 
 father has indeed spoken the truth, the real daughter being a 
 perfect scarecrow. The beautiful lady returns to the bride- 
 groom to gloat over his desperation, and promises to release 
 him from his terrible marriage if he will remove the motto 
 from his signboard. At this point I departed from the original, 
 and continued as follows: The enraged jeweller is on the 
 point of tearing down his unfortunate signboard when a curious 
 apparition leads him to pause in the act. He sees a bear- 
 leader in the street making his clumsy beast dance, in whom 
 the luckless lover recognises at a glance his own father, from 
 whom he has been parted by a hard fate. 
 
 He suppresses any sign of emotion, for in a flash a scheme 
 occurs to him by which he can utilise this discovery to free him- 
 self from the hated marriage with the daughter of the proud 
 old aristocrat. 
 
 He instructs the bear-leader to come that evening to the 
 garden where the solemn betrothal is to take place in the 
 presence of the invited guests. 
 
 He then explains to his young enemy that he wishes to leave
 
 108 MY LIFE 
 
 the signboard up for the time being, as he still hopes to prove 
 the tmth of the motto. 
 
 After the marriage contract, in which the young man arro- 
 gates to himself all kinds of fictitious titles of nobility, has been 
 read to the assembled company (composed, say, of the elite 
 of the noble immigrants at the time of the French Revolution), 
 there is heard suddenly the pipe of the bear-leader, who enters 
 the garden with his prancing beast. Angered by this trivial 
 diversion, the astonished company become indignant when the 
 bridegroom, giving free vent to his feelings, throws himself 
 with tears of joy into the arms of the bear-leader and loudly 
 proclaims him as his long-lost father. The consternation of 
 the company becomes even greater, however, when the bear 
 itself embraces the man they supposed to be of noble birth, 
 for the beast is no less a person than his own brother in the 
 flesh who, on the death of the real bear, had donned its skin, 
 thus enabling the poverty-stricken pair to continue to earn 
 their livelihood in the only way left to them. This public 
 disclosure of the bridegroom's lowly origin at once dissolves 
 the marriage, and the young woman, declaring herself out- 
 witted by man, offers her hand in compensation to the released 
 jeweller. 
 
 To this unassuming subject I gave the title of the Gluckliclie 
 Barenfamilie, and provided it with a dialogue which afterwards 
 met with Holtei's highest approval. 
 
 I was about to begin the music for it in a new light French 
 style, but the seriousness of my position, which grew more and 
 more acute, prevented further progress in my work. 
 
 In this respect my strained relations with the conductor 
 of the theatre were still a constant source of trouble. With 
 neither the opportunity nor the means to defend myself, I 
 had to submit to being maligned and rendered an object of 
 suspicion on all sides by my rival, who remained master of the 
 field. The object of this was to disgust me with the idea of 
 taking up my appointment as musical conductor, for which 
 the contract had been signed for Easter. Though I did not 
 lose my self-confidence, I suffered keenly from the indignity 
 and the depressing effect of this prolonged strain. 
 
 When at last, at the beginning of April, the moment arrived
 
 CONDUCTOR AT KONIGSBERG (1837) 169 
 
 for the musical conductor Schubert to resign, and for me to 
 take over the whole charge, he had the melancholy satisfaction 
 of knowing that not only was the standing of the opera seri- 
 ously weakened by the departure of the prima donna, but that 
 there was good reason to doubt whether the theatre could be 
 carried on at all. This month of Lent, which was such a bad 
 time in Germany for all similar theatrical enterprises, decimated 
 the Konigsberg audience with the rest. The director took the 
 greatest trouble imaginable to fill up the gaps in the staff of 
 the opera by means of engaging strangers temporarily, and by 
 new acquisitions, and in this my personality and unflagging 
 activity were of real service; I devoted all my energy to 
 buoying up by word and deed the tattered ship of the theatre, 
 in which I now had a hand for the first time. 
 
 For a long time I had to try and keep cool under the most 
 violent treatment by a clique of students, among whom my 
 predecessor had raised up enemies for me ; and by the unerring 
 certainty of my conducting I had to overcome the initial 
 opposition of the orchestra, which had been set against me. 
 
 After laboriously laying the foundation of personal respect, 
 I was now forced to realise that the business methods of the 
 director, Hiibsch, had already involved too great a sacrifice to 
 permit the theatre to make its way against the unfavourable- 
 ness of the season, and in May he admitted to me that he had 
 come to the point of being obliged to close the theatre. 
 
 By summoning up all my eloquence, and by making sugges- 
 tions which promised a happy issue, I was able to induce him 
 to persevere ; nevertheless, this was only possible by making 
 demands on the loyalty of his company, who were asked to 
 forego part of their salaries for a time. This aroused general 
 bitterness on the part of the uninitiated, and I found myself 
 in the curious position of being forced to place the director in 
 a favourable light to those who were hard hit by these measures, 
 while I myself and my position were affected in such a manner 
 that my situation became daily more unendurable under the 
 accumulation of intolerable difficulties taking their root in my 
 past. 
 
 But though I did not even then lose courage, Minna, who as 
 my wife was robbed of all that she had a right to expect,
 
 MY LIFE 
 
 found this turn of fate quite unbearable. The hidden canker 
 of our married life which, even before our marriage, had caused 
 me the most terrible anxiety and led to violent scenes, reached 
 its full growth under these sad conditions. The less I was able 
 to maintain the standard of comfort due to our position by 
 working and making the most of my talents, the more did 
 Minna, to my insufferable shame, consider it necessary to 
 take this burden upon herself by making the most of her 
 personal popularity. The discovery of similar condescensions 
 as I used to call them on Minna's part, had repeatedly 
 led to revolting scenes, and only her peculiar conception of 
 her professional position and the needs it involved had made a 
 charitable interpretation possible. 
 
 I was absolutely unable to bring my young wife to see my 
 point of view, or to make her realise my own wounded feelings 
 on these occasions, while the unrestrained violence of my 
 speech and behaviour made an understanding once and for all 
 impossible. These scenes frequently sent my wife into con- 
 vulsions of so alarming a nature that, as will easily be realised, 
 the satisfaction of reconciling her once more was all that 
 remained to me. Certain it was that our mutual attitude 
 became more and more incomprehensible and inexplicable to 
 us both. 
 
 These quarrels, which now became more frequent and more 
 distressing, may have gone far to diminish the strength of any 
 affection which Minna was able to give me, but I had no idea 
 that she was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to come 
 to a desperate decision. 
 
 To fill the place of tenor in our company, I had summoned 
 Friedrich Schmitt to Kb'nigsberg, a friend of my first year in 
 Magdeburg, to whom allusion has already been made. He 
 was sincerely devoted to me, and helped me as much as possible 
 in overcoming the dangers which threatened the prosperity 
 of the theatre as well as my own position. 
 
 The necessity of being on friendly terms with the public 
 made me much less reserved and cautious in making new 
 acquaintances, especially when in his company. 
 
 A rich merchant, of the name of Dietrich, had recently 
 constituted himself a patron of the theatre, and especially of
 
 MINNA SUSPECTED 
 
 the women. With due deference to the men with whom they 
 were connected, he used to invite the pick of these ladies to 
 dinner at his house, and affected, on these occasions, the well- 
 to-do Englishman, which was the beau-ideal for German 
 merchants, especially in the manufacturing towns of the 
 north. 
 
 I had shown my annoyance at the acceptance of the invita- 
 tion, sent to us among the rest, at first simply because his looks 
 were repugnant to me. Minna considered this very unjust. 
 Anyhow, I set my face decidedly against continuing our 
 acquaintance with this man, and although Minna did not 
 insist on receiving him, my conduct towards the intruder was 
 the cause of angry scenes between us. 
 
 One day Friedrich Schmitt considered it his duty to inform 
 me that this Herr Dietrich had spoken of me at a public dinner 
 in such a manner as to lead every one to suppose that he had 
 a suspicious intimacy with my wife. I felt obliged to suspect 
 Minna of having, in some way unknown to me, told the fellow 
 about my conduct towards her, as well as about our precarious 
 position. 
 
 Accompanied by Schmitt, I called this dangerous person to 
 account on the subject in his own home. At first this only 
 led to the usual denials. Afterwards, however, he sent secret 
 communications to Minna concerning the interview, thus pro- 
 viding her with a supposed new grievance against me in the 
 form of my inconsiderate treatment of her. 
 
 Our relations now reached a critical stage, and on certain 
 points we preserved silence. 
 
 At the same time it was towards the end of May, 1837 
 the business affairs of the theatre had reached the crisis above 
 mentioned, when the management was obliged to fall back 
 on the self-sacrificing co-operation of the staff to assure the 
 continuance of the undertaking. As I have said before, my 
 own position at the end of a year so disastrous to my welfare 
 was seriously affected by this; nevertheless, there seemed to 
 be no alternative for me but to face these difficulties patiently, 
 and relying on the faithful Friedrich Schmitt, but ignoring 
 Minna, I began to take the necessary steps for making my 
 post at Kb'nigsberg secure. This, as well as the arduous part
 
 17 2 MY LIFE 
 
 I took in the business of the theatre, kept me so busy and so 
 much away from home, that I was not able to pay any par- 
 ticular attention to Minna's silence and reserve. 
 
 On the morning of the 31st of May I took leave of Minna, 
 expecting to be detained till late in the afternoon by rehearsals 
 and business matters. With my entire approval she had for 
 some time been accustomed to have her daughter Nathalie, 
 who was supposed by every one to be her youngest sister, to 
 stay with her. 
 
 As I was about to wish them my usual quiet good-bye, the 
 two women rushed after me to the door and embraced me 
 passionately, Minna as well as her daughter bursting into tears. 
 I was alarmed, and asked the meaning of this excitement, but 
 could get no answer from them, and I was obliged to leave 
 them and ponder alone over their peculiar conduct, of the 
 reason for which I had not even the faintest idea. 
 
 I arrived home late in the afternoon, worn out by my exer- 
 tions and worries, dead-tired, pale and hungry, and was 
 surprised to find the table not laid and Minna not at home, 
 the maid telling me that she had not yet returned from her 
 walk with Nathalie. 
 
 I waited patiently, sinking down exhausted at the work- 
 table, which I absent-mindedly opened. To my intense as- 
 tonishment it was empty. Horror-struck, I sprang up and 
 went to the wardrobe, and realised at once that Minna had 
 left the house; her departure had been so cunningly planned 
 that even the maid was unaware of it. 
 
 With death in my soul I dashed out of the house to investi- 
 gate the cause of Minna's disappearance. 
 
 Old Moller, by his practical sagacity, very soon found out 
 that Dietrich, his personal enemy, had left Konigsberg in the 
 direction of Berlin by the special coach in the morning. 
 
 This horrible fact stood staring me in the face. 
 
 I had now to try and overtake the fugitives. With the 
 lavish use of money this might have been possible, but funds 
 were lacking, and had, in part, to be laboriously collected. 
 
 On Moller's advice I took the silver wedding presents with 
 me in case of emergency, and after the lapse of a few terrible 
 hours went off, also by special coach, with my distressed old
 
 PUKSUIT OF MINNA 173 
 
 friend. We hoped to overtake the ordinary mail-coach, which 
 had started a short time before, as it was probable that Minna 
 would also continue her journey in this, at a safe distance from 
 Konigsberg. 
 
 This proved impossible, and when next morning at break 
 of day we arrived in Elbing, we found our money exhausted 
 by the lavish use of the express coach, and were compelled 
 to return; we discovered, moreover, that even by using the 
 ordinary coach we should be obliged to pawn the sugar-basin 
 and cake-dish. 
 
 This return journey to Konigsberg rightly remains one of 
 the saddest memories of my youth. Of course, I did not for"^ 
 a moment entertain the idea of remaining in the place; my 
 one thought was how I could best get away. Hemmed in 
 between the Jaw-=s.uits- . of -my Magdeburg .creditors and the 
 tradesmen, who had claims on me for the payment 
 
 by instalment of my domestic accounts, my departure could 
 only be carried out in secrecy. For this very reason, too, it 
 was necessary for me to raise money, particularly for the long 
 journey from Konigsberg to Dresden, whither I determined to 
 go in quest of my wife, and these matters detained me for two 
 long and terrible days. 
 
 I received no news whatever from Minna; from Moller I 
 ascertained that she had gone to Dresden, and that Dietrich 
 had only accompanied her for a short distance on the excuse 
 of helping her in a friendly way. 
 
 I succeeded in assuring myself that she really only wished to 
 get away from a position that filled her with desperation, and 
 for this purpose had accepted the assistance of a man who 
 sympathised with her, and that she was for the present seeking 
 rest and shelter with her parents. My first indignation at the 
 event accordingly subsided to such an extent that I gradually 
 acquired more sympathy for her in her despair, and began to 
 reproach myself both for my conduct and for having brought 
 unhappiness on her. 
 
 I became so convinced of the correctness of this view during 
 the tedious journey to Dresden via Berlin, which I eventually 
 undertook on the 3rd of June, that when at last I found 
 Minna at the humble abode of her parents, I was really quite
 
 'MY LIFE 
 
 unable to express anything but repentence and heartbroken 
 
 sympathy. 
 
 It was quite true that Minna thought herself badly treated 
 by me, and declared that she had only been forced to take this 
 desperate step by brooding over our impossible position, to 
 which she thought me both blind and deaf. Her parents were 
 not pleased to see me: the painfully excited condition of their 
 daughter seemed to afford sufficient justification for her com- 
 plaints against me. Whether my own sufferings, my hasty 
 pursuit, and the heartfelt expression of my grief made any 
 favourable impression on her, I can really hardly say, as her 
 manner towards me was very confused and, to a certain extent, 
 incomprehensible. Still she was impressed when I told her 
 that there was a good prospect of my obtaining the post of 
 musical conductor at Riga, where a new theatre was about to 
 be opened under the most favourable conditions. I felt that 
 I must not press for new resolutions concerning the regulation 
 of our future relations just then, but must strive the more 
 earnestly to lay a better foundation for them. Consequently, 
 after spending a fearful week with my wife under the most 
 painful conditions, I went to Berlin, there to sign my agree- 
 ment with the new director of the Riga theatre. I obtained 
 the appointment on fairly favourable terms which, I saw, 
 would enable me to keep house in such a style that Minna 
 could retire from the theatre altogether. By this means she 
 would be in a position to spare me all humiliation and anxiety. 
 
 On returning to Dresden, I found that Minna was ready to 
 lend a willing ear to my proposed plans, and I succeeded 
 in inducing her to leave her parents' house, which was very 
 cramped for us, and to establish herself in the country at 
 Blasewitz, near Dresden, to await our removal to Riga. We 
 found modest lodgings at an inn on the Elbe, in the farm- 
 yard of which I had often played as a child. Here Minna's 
 frame of mind really seemed to be improving. She had 
 begged me not to press her too hard, and I spared her as 
 much as possible. After a few weeks I thought I might con- 
 sider the period of uneasiness past, but was surprised to find 
 the situation growing worse again without any apparent reason. 
 Minna then told me of some advantageous offers she lui I
 
 DIETRICH AND MINNA 175 
 
 received from different theatres, and astonished me one day 
 by announcing her intention of taking a short pleasure trip 
 with a girl friend and her family. As I felt obliged to avoid 
 putting any restraint upon her, I offered no objection to the 
 execution of this project, which entailed a week's separation, 
 but accompanied her back to her parents myself, promising 
 to await her return quietly at Blasewitz. A few days later 
 her eldest sister called to ask me for the written permission 
 required to make out a passport for my wife. This alarmed me, 
 and I went to Dresden to ask her parents what their daughter 
 was about. There, to my surprise, I met with a very un- 
 pleasant reception; they reproached me coarsely for my 
 behaviour to Minna, whom they said I could not even manage 
 to support, and when I only replied by asking for information 
 as to the whereabouts of my wife, and about her plans for the 
 future, I was put off with improbable statements. Tormented 
 by the sharpest forebodings, and understanding nothing of 
 what had occurred, I went back to the village, where I found 
 a letter from Konigsberg, from Mb'ller, which poured light on 
 all my misery. Herr Dietrich had gone to Dresden, and I 
 was told the name of the hotel at which he was staying. The 
 terrible illumination thrown by this communication upon 
 Minna's conduct showed me in a flash what to do. I hurried 
 into town to make the necessary inquiries at the hotel 
 mentioned, and found that the man in question had been there, 
 but had moved on again. He had vanished, and Minna too! 
 I now knew enough to demand of the Fates why, at such an 
 early age, they had sent me this terrible experience which, as 
 it seemed to me, had poisoned my whole existence. 
 
 I sought consolation for my boundless grief in the society 
 of my sister Ottilie and her husband, Hermann Brockhaus, an 
 excellent fellow to whom she had been married for some years. 
 They were then living at their pretty summer villa in the 
 lovely Grosser Garten, near Dresden. I had looked them up 
 at once the first time I went to Dresden, but as I had not at 
 that time the slightest idea of how things were going to turn 
 out, I had told them nothing, and had seen but little of them. 
 Now I was moved to break my obstinate silence, and unfold 
 to them the cause of my misery, with but few reservations.
 
 !76 MY LIFE 
 
 For the first time I was in a position gratefully to appreciate 
 the advantages of family intercourse, and of the direct and 
 disinterested intimacy between blood relations. Explanations 
 were hardly necessary, and as brother and sister we found 
 ourselves as closely linked now as we had been when we were 
 children. We arrived at a complete understanding without 
 having to explain what we meant; I was unhappy, she was 
 happy; consolation and help followed as a matter of course. 
 
 This was the sister to whom I once had read Leubald und 
 Adelaide in a thunderstorm; the sister who had listened, 
 filled with astonishment and sympathy, to that eventful 
 performance of my first overture on Christmas Eve, and whom 
 I now found married to one of the kindest of men, Hermann 
 Brockhaus, who soon earned a reputation for himself as an 
 expert in oriental languages. He was the youngest brother 
 of my elder brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus. Their union 
 was blessed by two children; their comfortable means 
 favoured a life free from care, and when I made my daily 
 pilgrimage from Blasewitz to the famous Grosser Garten, it 
 was like stepping from a desert into paradise to enter their 
 house (one of the popular villas), knowing that I would invari- 
 ably find a welcome in this happy family circle. Kot only 
 was my spirit soothed and benefited by intercourse with my 
 sister, but my creative instincts, which had long lain dormant, 
 were stimulated afresh by the society of my brilliant and 
 learned brother-in-law. It was brought home to me, without 
 in any way hurting my feelings, that my early marriage, excus- 
 able as it may have been, was yet an error to be retrieved, and 
 my mind regained sufficient elasticity to compose some sketches, 
 designed this time not merely to meet the requirements of the 
 theatre as I knew it During the last wretched days I had 
 spent with Minna at Blasewitz, I had read Bulwer Lytton's 
 novel, Rienzi; during my convalescence in the bosom of my 
 sympathetic family, I now worked out the scheme for a grand 
 opera under the inspiration of this book. Though obliged for 
 the present to return to the limitations of a small theatre, I 
 tried from this time onwards to aim at enlarging my sphere 
 of action. I sent my overture, Rule Britannia, to the 
 Philharmonic Society in London, and tried to get into com-
 
 MINNA'S SISTER 177 
 
 munication with. Scribe in Paris about a setting for H. Konig's 
 novel, Die Hohe Braut, which I had sketched out. 
 
 Thus I spent the remainder of this summer of ever-happy 
 memory. At the end of August I had to leave for Riga to take 
 up my new appointment. Although I knew that my sister 
 Rosalie had shortly before married the man of her choice, 
 Professor Oswald Marbach of Leipzig, I avoided that city, 
 probably with the foolish notion of sparing myself any humilia- 
 tion, and went straight to Berlin, where I had to receive certain 
 additional instructions from my future director, and also to 
 obtain my passport. There I met a younger sister of Minna's, 
 Amalie Planer, a singer with a pretty voice, who had joined our 
 opera company at Magdeburg for a short time. My report of 
 Minna quite overwhelmed this exceedingly kind-hearted girl. 
 We went to a performance of Fidelio together, during which 
 she, like myself, burst into tears and sobs. Refreshed by the 
 sympathetic impression I had received, I went by way of 
 Schwerin, where I was disappointed in my hopes of finding 
 traces of Minna, to Liibeck, to wait for a merchant ship going 
 to Riga. We had set sail for Travemiinde when an unfavour- 
 able wind set in, and held up our departure for a week: I had 
 to spend this disagreeable time in a miserable ship's tavern. 
 Thrown on my own resources I tried, amongst other things, to 
 read Till Eulenspiegel, and this popular book first gave me the 
 idea of a real German comic opera. Long afterwards, when I 
 was composing the words for my Junger Siegfried, I remember 
 having many vivid recollections of this melancholy sojourn 
 in Travemiinde and my reading of Till Eulenspiegel. After a 
 voyage of four days we at last reached port at Bolderaa. I 
 was conscious of a peculiar thrill on coming into contact with 
 Russian officials, whom I had instinctively detested since the 
 days of my sympathy with the Poles as a boy. It seemed to 
 me as if the harbour police must read enthusiasm for the 
 Poles in my face, and would send me to Siberia on the spot, 
 and I was the more agreeably surprised, on reaching Riga, 
 to find myself surrounded by the familiar German element 
 which, above all, pervaded everything connected with the 
 theatre. 
 
 After my unfortunate experiences in connection with the
 
 178 MY LIFE 
 
 conditions of small German stages, the way in which this newly 
 opened theatre was run had at first a calming effect on my mind. 
 A society had been formed by a number of well-to-do theatre- 
 goers and rich business men to raise, by voluntary subscription, 
 sufficient money to provide the sort of management they re- 
 garded as ideal with a solid foundation. The director they 
 appointed was Karl von Holtei, a fairly popular dramatic 
 writer, who enjoyed a certain reputation in the theatrical 
 world. This man's ideas about the stage represented a special 
 tendency, which was at that time on the decline. He 
 possessed, in addition to his remarkable social gifts, an extra- 
 ordinary acquaintance with all the principal people connected 
 with the theatre during the past twenty years, and belonged to 
 a society called Die Liebenswurdigen Libertins (' The Amiable 
 Libertines'). This was a set of young would-be wits, who 
 looked upon the stage as a playground licensed by the public 
 for the display of their mad pranks, from which the middle 
 class held aloof, while people of culture were steadily losing all 
 interest in the theatre under these hopeless conditions. 
 
 Holtei's wife had in former days been a popular actress at 
 the Kb'nigstadt theatre in Berlin, and it was here, at the time 
 when Henriette Sontag raised it to the height of its fame, 
 that Holtei's style had been formed. The production there of 
 his melodrama Leonore (founded on Burger's ballad) had in 
 particular earned him a wide reputation as a writer for the 
 stage, besides which he produced some Liederspiele, and among 
 them one, entitled Der Alte Feldherr, became fairly popular. 
 His invitation to Riga had been particularly welcome, as it 
 bid fair to gratify his craving to absorb himself completely 
 in the life of the stage; he hoped, in this out-of-the-way 
 place, to indulge his passion without restraint. His peculiar 
 familiarity of manner, his inexhaustible store of amusing small 
 talk, and his airy way of doing business, gave him a remark- 
 able hold on the tradespeople of Riga, who wished for nothing 
 better than such entertainment as he was able to give them. 
 They provided him liberally with all the necessary means and 
 treated him in every respect with entire confidence. Under 
 his auspices my own engagement had been very easily secured. 
 Surly old pedants he would have none of, favouring young men
 
 THE THEATRE OPENS 1T9 
 
 on the score of their youth alone. As far as I myself was 
 concerned, it was enough for him to know that I belonged to 
 a family which he knew and liked, and hearing, moreover, of 
 my fervent devotion to modern Italian and French music in 
 particular, he decided that I was the very man for him. He 
 had the whole shoal of Bellini's, Donizetti's, Adam's, and 
 Auber's operatic scores copied out, and I was to give the good 
 people of Riga the benefit of them with all possible speed. 
 
 The first time I visited Holtei I met an old Leipzig acquaint- 
 ance, Heinrich Dorn, my former mentor, who now held the per- 
 manent municipal appointment of choir-master at the church 
 and music-teacher in the schools. He was pleased to find his 
 curious pupil transformed into a practical opera conductor of 
 independent position, and no less surprised to see the eccentric 
 worshipper of Beethoven changed into an ardent champion of 
 Bellini and Adam. He took me home to his summer residence, 
 which was built, according to Riga phraseology, ' in the fields,' 
 that is literally, on the sand. While I was giving him some 
 account of the experiences through which I had passed, I grew 
 conscious of the strangely deserted look of the place. Feeling 
 frightened and homeless, my initial uneasiness gradually devel- 
 oped into a passionate longing to escape from all the whirl of 
 theatrical life which had wooed me to such inhospitable regions. 
 This uneasy mood was fast dispelling the flippancy which at 
 Magdeburg had led to my being dragged down to the level 
 of the most worthless stage society, and had also conduced to 
 spoil my musical taste. It also contained the germs of a new 
 tendency which developed during the period of my activity 
 at Riga, brought me more and more out of touch with the 
 theatre, thereby causing Director Holtei all the annoyance 
 which inevitably attends disappointment. 
 
 For some time, however, I found no difficulty in making the 
 best of a bad bargain. We were obliged to open the theatre 
 before the company was complete. To make this possible, we 
 gave a performance of a short comic opera by C. Blum, called 
 Marie, Max und Michel, For this work I composed an addi- 
 tional air for a song which Holtei had written for the bass 
 singer, Giinther ; it consisted of a sentimental introduction and 
 a gay military rondo, and was very much appreciated. Later on,
 
 180 MY LIFE 
 
 I introduced another additional song into the Schweizerfamilie, 
 to be sung by another bass singer, Scheibler; it was of a devo- 
 tional character, and pleased not only the public, but myself, 
 and showed signs of the upheaval which was gradually taking 
 place in my musical development. I was entrusted with the 
 composition of a tune for a National Hymn written by Brakel 
 in honour of the Tsar Nicholas's birthday. I tried to give it 
 as far as possible the right colouring for a despotic patriarchal 
 monarch, and once again I achieved some fame, for it was sung 
 for several successive years on that particular day. Holtei 
 tried to persuade me to write a bright, gay comic opera, or 
 rather a musical play, to be performed by our company just 
 as it stood. I looked up the libretto of my Gluckliche Bdren- 
 familie, and found Holtei very well disposed towards it (as I 
 have stated elsewhere) ; but when I unearthed the little music 
 which I had already composed for it, I was overcome with dis- 
 gust at this way of writing ; whereupon I made a present of the 
 book to my clumsy, good-natured friend, Lobmann, my right- 
 hand man in the orchestra, and never gave it another thought 
 from that day to this. I managed, however, to get to work on 
 the libretto of Rienzi, which I had sketched out at Blasewitz. 
 I developed it from every point of view, on so extravagant a 
 scale, that with this work I deliberately cut off all possibility 
 of being tempted by circumstances to produce it anywhere but 
 on one of the largest stages in Europe. 
 
 But while this helped to strengthen my endeavour to escape 
 from all the petty degradations of stage life, new complications 
 arose which affected me more and more seriously, and offered 
 further opposition to my aims. The prima donna engaged by 
 Holtei had failed us, and we were therefore without a singer 
 for grand opera. Under the circumstances, Holtei joyfully 
 agreed to my proposal to ask Amalie, Minna's sister (who was 
 glad to accept an engagement that brought her near me), to 
 come to Riga at once. In her answer to me from Dresden, 
 where she was then living, she informed me of Minna's return 
 to her parents, and of her present miserable condition owing to 
 a severe illness. I naturally took this piece of news very coolly, 
 for what I had heard about Minna since she left me for the last 
 time had forced me to authorise my old friend at Konigsberg
 
 MINNA COMES TO KIGA 181 
 
 to take steps to procure a divorce. It was certain that Minna 
 had stayed for some time at a hotel in Hamburg with that ill- 
 omened man, Herr Dietrich, and that she had spread ahroad 
 the story of our separation so unreservedly that the theatrical 
 world in particular had discussed it in a manner that was 
 positively insulting to me. I simply informed Amalie of this, 
 and requested her to spare me any further news of her 
 sister. 
 
 Hereupon Minna herself appealed to me, and wrote me a 
 positively heartrending letter, in which she openly confessed her 
 infidelity. She declared that she had been driven to it by 
 despair, but that the great trouble she had thus brought upon 
 herself having taught her a lesson, all she now wished was to 
 return to the right path. Taking everything into account, 
 I concluded that she had been deceived in the character of her 
 seducer, and the knowledge of her terrible position had placed 
 her both morally and physically in a most lamentable con- 
 dition, in which, now ill and wretched, she turned to me again 
 to acknowledge her guilt, crave my forgiveness, and assure me, 
 in spite of all, that she had now become fully aware of her love 
 for me. Never before had I heard such sentiments from Minna, 
 nor was I ever to hear the same from her again, save on one 
 touching occasion many years later, when similar outpourings 
 moved and affected me in the same way as this particular letter 
 had done. In reply I told her that there should never again 
 be any mention between us of what had occurred, for which I 
 took upon myself the chief blame; and I can pride myself on 
 having carried out this resolution to the letter. 
 
 When her sister's engagement was satisfactorily settled, I 
 at once invited Minna to come to Riga with her. Both gladly 
 accepted my invitation, and arrived from Dresden at my new 
 home on 19th October, wintry weather having already set in. 
 With much regret I perceived that Minna's health had really 
 suffered, and therefore did all in my power to provide her with 
 all the domestic comforts and quiet she needed. This pre- 
 sented difficulties, for my modest income as a conductor was 
 all I had at my disposal, and we were both firmly determined 
 not to let Minna go on the stage again. On the other hand, 
 the carrying out of this resolve, in view of the financial incon-
 
 182 MY LIFE 
 
 venience it entailed, produced strange complications, the nature 
 of which was only revealed to me later, when startling develop- 
 ments divulged the real moral character of the manager Holtei. 
 For the present I had to let people think that I was jealous of 
 my wife. I bore patiently with the general belief that I had 
 good reasons to be so, and rejoiced meanwhile at the restora- 
 tion of our peaceful married life, and especially at the sight of 
 our humble home, which we made as comfortable as our means 
 would allow, and in the keeping of which Minna's domestic 
 talents came strongly to the fore. As we were still childless, 
 and were obliged as a rule to enlist the help of a dog in order 
 to give life to the domestic hearth, we once lighted upon the 
 eccentric idea of trying our luck with a young wolf which was 
 brought into the house as a tiny cub. When we found, how- 
 ever, that this experiment did not increase the comfort of our 
 home life, we gave him up after he had been with us a few 
 weeks. We fared better with sister Amalie; for she, with her 
 good-nature and simple homely ways, did much to make up 
 for the absence of children for a time. The two sisters, neither 
 of whom had had any real education, often returned playfully 
 to the ways of their childhood. When they sang children's 
 duets, Minna, though she had had no musical training, always 
 managed very cleverly to sing seconds, and afterwards, as we 
 sat at our evening meal, eating Russian salad, salt salmon from 
 the Dwina, or fresh Russian caviare, we were all three very 
 cheerful and happy far away in our northern home. 
 
 Amalie's beautiful voice and real vocal talent at first won 
 for her a very favourable reception with the public, a fact 
 which did us all a great deal of good. Being, however, very 
 short, and having no very great gift for acting, the scope of 
 her powers was very limited, and as she was soon surpassed 
 by more successful competitors, it was a real stroke of good 
 luck for her that a young officer in the Russian army, then 
 Captain, now General, Carl von Meek, fell head over ears in 
 love with the simple girl, and married her a year later. The 
 unfortunate part of this engagement, however, was that it 
 caused many difficulties, and brought the first cloud over our 
 menage a trois. For, after a while, the two sisters quarrelled 
 bitterly, and I had the very unpleasant experience of living
 
 LIFE AT RIGA (1838) 183 
 
 for a whole year in the same house with two relatives who 
 neither saw nor spoke to each other. 
 
 We spent the winter at the beginning of 1838 in a very small 
 dingy dwelling in the old town; it was not till the spring that 
 we moved into a pleasanter house in the more salubrious 
 Petersburg suburb, where, in spite of the sisterly breach be- 
 fore referred to, we led a fairly bright and cheerful life, as 
 we were often able to entertain many of our friends and acquain- 
 tances in a simple though pleasant fashion. In addition to 
 members of the stage I knew a few people in the town, and we 
 received and visited the family of Dorn, the musical director, 
 with whom I became quite intimate. But it was the second 
 musical director, Franz Lobmann, a very worthy though not 
 a very gifted man, who became most faithfully attached to me. 
 However, I did not cultivate many acquaintances in wider 
 circles, and they grew fewer as the ruling passion of my life 
 grew steadily stronger; so that when, later on, I left Riga, 
 after spending nearly two years there, I departed almost as a 
 stranger, and with as much indifference as I had left Magdeburg 
 and Konigsberg. What, however, specially embittered my de- 
 parture was a series of experiences of a particularly disagree- 
 able nature, which firmly determined me to cut myself off 
 entirely from the necessity of mixing with any people like 
 those I had met with in my previous attempts to create a 
 position for myself at the theatre. 
 
 Yet it was only gradually that I became quite conscious of 
 all this. At first, under the safe guidance of my renewed 
 wedded happiness, which had for a time been so disturbed in 
 its early days, I felt distinctly better than I had before in all 
 my professional work. The fact that the material position of 
 the theatrical undertaking was assured exercised a healthy 
 influence on the performances. The theatre itself was cooped 
 up in a very narrow space; there was as little room for scenic 
 display on its tiny stage as there 'was accommodation for rich 
 musical effects in the cramped orchestra. In both directions 
 the strictest limits were imposed, yet I contrived to introduce 
 considerable reinforcements into an orchestra which was really 
 only calculated for a string quartette, two first and two second 
 violins, two violas, and one 'cello. These successful exertions
 
 184 MY LIFE 
 
 of mine were the first cause of the dislike Holtei evinced towards 
 me later on. After this we were able to get good concerted 
 music for the opera. I found the thorough study of MehuPs 
 opera, Joseph in Aegypten, very stimulating. Its noble and 
 simple style, added to the touching effect of the music, which 
 quite carries one away, did much towards effecting a favour- 
 able change in my taste, till then warped by my connection 
 with the theatre. 
 
 It was most gratifying to feel my former serious taste again 
 aroused by really good dramatic performances. I specially re- 
 member a production of King Lear, which I followed with the 
 greatest interest, not only at the actual performances, but at 
 all the rehearsals as well. Yet these educative impressions 
 tended to make me feel ever more and more dissatisfied with 
 ---Tny work at the theatre. On the one hand, the members of 
 the company became gradually more distasteful to me, and on 
 the other I was growing discontented with the management. 
 With regard to the staff of the theatre, I very soon found out 
 the hollowness, vanity, and the impudent selfishness of this 
 uncultured and undisciplined class of people, for I had now lost 
 my former liking for the Bohemian life that had such an attrac- 
 tion for me at Magdeburg. Before long there were but a few 
 members of our company with whom I had not quarrelled, 
 thanks to one or the other of these drawbacks. But my saddest 
 experience was, that in such disputes, into which in fact I was 
 led simply by my zeal for the artistic success of the performances 
 as a whole, not only did I receive no support from Holtei, the 
 director, but I actually made him my enemy. He even declared 
 publicly that our theatre had become far too respectable for 
 his taste, and tried to convince me that good theatrical per- 
 formances could not be given by a strait-laced company. 
 
 In his opinion the idea of the dignity of theatrical art was 
 pedantic nonsense, and he thought light serio-comic vaudeville 
 the only class of performance worth considering. Serious 
 opera, rich musical ensemble, was his particular aversion, and 
 my demands for this irritated him so that he met them only 
 with scorn and indignant refusals. Of the strange connection 
 between this artistic bias and his taste in the domain of morality 
 I was also to become aware, to my horror, in due course. For
 
 COMPLETION OF 'RIENZI' 185 
 
 the present I felt so repelled by the declaration of his artistic 
 antipathies, as to let my dislike for the theatre as a profession 
 steadily grow upon me. I still took pleasure in some good 
 performances which I was able to get up, under favourable 
 circumstances, at the larger theatre at Mitau, to where the 
 company went for a time in the early part of the summer. 
 Yet it was while I was there, spending most of my time reading 
 Bulwer Lytton's novels, that I made a secret resolve to try 
 hard to free myself from all connection with the only branch 
 
 of theatrical art which had so far been open to me. 
 
 in the early days of my sojourn in Riga, was destined to bridge 
 
 The composition of mj Rienzi^ the text of which I had finished 
 
 
 me over to the glorious world for which I had longed so in- 
 tensely. I had laid aside the completion of my GlucTcliche 
 Bdrenfamilie, for the simple reason that the lighter character of 
 this piece would have thrown me more into contact with the very 
 theatrical people I most despised. My greatest consolation now 
 was to prepare Bienzi with such an utter disregard of the means 
 which were available there for its production, that my desire to 
 produce it would force me out of the narrow confines of this 
 puny theatrical circle to seek a fresh connection with one of the 
 larger theatres. It was after our return from Mitau, in the 
 middle of the summer of 1838, that I set to work on this com- 
 position, and by so doing roused myself to a state of enthusiasm 
 which, considering my position, was nothing less than desperate 
 dare-devilry. All to whom I confided my plan perceived at 
 once, on the mere mention of my subject, that I was preparing 
 to break away from nly present position, in which there could 
 be no possibility of producing my work, and I was looked upon 
 as light-headed and fit only for an asylum. 
 
 To all my acquaintances my procedure seemed stupid and 
 reckless. Even the former patron of my peculiar Leipzig over- 
 ture thought it impracticable and eccentric, seeing that I had 
 again turned my back on light opera. lie expressed this opinion 
 very freely in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, in a report of 
 a concert I had given towards the end of the previous winter, 
 and openly ridiculed the Magdeburg Columbus Overture and 
 the Rule Britannia Overture previously mentioned. I myself 
 had not taken any pleasure in the performance of either of
 
 1 86 MY LIFE 
 
 these overtures, as my predilection for cornets, strongly marked 
 in both these overtures, again played me a sorry trick, as ] 
 had evidently expected too much of our Riga musicians, and 
 had to endure all kinds of disappointment on the occasion of 
 the performance. As a complete contrast to my extravagant 
 setting of Rienzi, this same director, H. Dorn, had set to work 
 to write an opera in which he had most carefully borne in mind 
 the conditions obtaining at the Riga theatre. Der Schoffe von 
 Paris, an historical operetta of the period of the siege of Paris 
 by Joan of Arc, was practised and performed by us to the 
 complete satisfaction of the composer. However, the success 
 of this work gave me no reason for abandoning my project to 
 complete my Rienzi, and I was secretly pleased to find that I 
 could regard this success without a trace of envy. Though 
 animated by no feeling of rivalry, I gradually gave up associ- 
 ating with the Riga artists, confining myself chiefly to the 
 performance of the duties I had undertaken, and worked away 
 at the two first acts of my big opera without troubling myself 
 at all whether I should ever get so far as to see it produced. 
 
 The serious and bitter experiences I had had so early in life 
 had done much to guide me towards that intensely earnest side 
 of my nature that had manifested itself in my earliest youth. 
 The effect of these bitter experiences was now to be still further 
 emphasised by other sad impressions. Not long after Minna 
 had rejoined me, I received from home the news of the death 
 of my sister Rosalie. It was the first time in my life that I had 
 experienced the passing away of one near and dear to me. The 
 death of this sister struck me as a most cruel and significant 
 blow of fate ; it was out of love and respect for her that I had 
 turned away so resolutely from my youthful excesses, and it 
 was to gain her sympathy that I had devoted special thought 
 and care to my first great works. When the passions and cares 
 of life had come upon me and driven me away from my home, 
 it was she who had read deep down into my sorely stricken 
 heart, and who had bidden me that anxious farewell on my 
 departure from Leipzig. At the time of my disappearance, 
 when the news of my wilful marriage and of my consequent 
 unfortunate position reached my family, it was she who, as 
 my mother informed me later, never lost her faith in me, but
 
 ROSALIE'S DEATH 187 
 
 who always cherished the hope that I would one day reach 
 the full development of my capabilities and make a genuine 
 success of my life. 
 
 Now, at the news of her death, and illuminated by the recol- 
 lection of that one impressive farewell, as by a flash of light- 
 ning I saw the immense value my relations with this sister 
 had been to me, and I did not fully realise the extent of her 
 influence until later on, when, after my first striking successes, 
 my mother tearfully lamented that Rosalie had not lived to 
 witness them. It really did me good to be again in communi- 
 cation with my family. My mother and sisters had had news 
 of my doings somehow or other, and I was deeply touched, in 
 the letters which I was now receiving from them, to hear no 
 reproaches anent my headstrong and apparently heartless 
 behaviour, but only sympathy and heartfelt solicitude. My 
 family had also received favourable reports about my wife's 
 good qualities, a fact about which I was particularly glad, as 
 I was thus spared the difficulties of defending her questionable 
 behaviour to me, which I should have been at pains to excuse. 
 This produced a salutary calm in my soul, which had so recently 
 been a prey to the worst anxieties. All that had driven me 
 with such passionate haste to an improvident and premature 
 marriage, all that had consequently weighed on me so ruinously, 
 now seemed set at rest, leaving peace in its stead. And although 
 the ordinary cares of life still pressed on me for many years, 
 often in a most vexatious and troublesome form, yet the 
 anxieties attendant on my ardent youthful wishes were in a 
 manner subdued and calm. From thence forward till the at- 
 tainment of my professional independence, all my life's struggles 
 could be directed entirely towards that more ideal aim which, 
 from the time of the conception of my Rienzi, was to be my only 
 guide through life. 
 
 It was only later that I first realised the real character of 
 my life in Riga, from the utterance of one of its inhabitants, 
 who was astonished to learn of the success of a man of whose 
 importance, during the whole of his two years' sojourn in the 
 small capital of Livonia, nothing had been known. Thrown 
 entirely on my own resources, I was a stranger to every one. 
 As I mentioned before, I kept aloof from all the theatre folk,
 
 188 MY LIFE 
 
 in consequence of my increasing dislike of them, and therefore, 
 when at the end of March, 1839, at the close of my second win- 
 ter there, I was given my dismissal by the management, although 
 this occurrence surprised me for other reasons, yet I felt fully 
 reconciled to this compulsory change in my life. The reasons 
 which led to this dismissal were, however, of such a nature 
 that I could only regard it as one of the most disagreeable 
 experiences of my life. Once, when I was lying dangerously 
 ill, I heard of Holtei's real feelings towards me. I had caught 
 a severe cold in the depth of winter at a theatrical rehearsal, 
 and it at once assumed a serious character, owing to the fact 
 that my nerves were in a state of constant irritation from the 
 continual annoyance and vexatious worry caused by the con- 
 temptible character of the theatrical management. It was just 
 at the time when a special performance of the opera Norma 
 was to be given by our company in Mitau. Holtei insisted on 
 my getting up from a sick-bed to make this wintry journey, 
 and thus to expose myself to the danger of seriously increasing 
 my cold in the icy theatre at Mitau. Typhoid fever was the 
 consequence, and this pulled me down to such an extent that 
 Holtei, who heard of my condition, is said to have remarked at 
 the theatre that I should probably never conduct again, and 
 that, to all intents and purposes, ' I was on my last legs.' It 
 was to a splendid homoeopathic physician, Dr. Prutzer, that I 
 owed my recovery and my life. Not long after that Holtei 
 left our theatre and Riga for ever ; his occupation there, with 
 1 the far too respectable conditions,' as he expressed it, had 
 become intolerable to him. In addition, however, circum- 
 stances had arisen in his domestic life (which had been much 
 affected by the death of his wife) which seemed to make him 
 consider a complete break with Riga eminently desirable. But 
 to my astonishment I now first became aware that I too had 
 unconsciously been a sufferer from the troubles he had brought 
 upon himself. When Holtei's successor in the management 
 Joseph Hoffmann the singer informed me that his prede- 
 cessor had made it a condition to his taking over the post that he 
 should enter into the same engagement that Holtei had made 
 with the conductor Dora for the post which I had hitherto 
 filled, and my reappointinent had therefore been made an
 
 HOLTEI EXPOSED 189 
 
 impossibility, my wife met my astonishment at this news by 
 giving me the reason, of which for some considerable time past 
 she had been well aware, namely, Holtei's special dislike of 
 us both. When I was afterwards informed by Minna of what 
 had happened she having purposely kept it from me all this 
 time, so as not to cause bad feeling between me and my direc- 
 tor a ghastly light was thrown upon the whole affair. I 
 did indeed remember perfectly how, soon after Minna's arrival 
 in Riga, I had been particularly pressed by Holtei not to pre- 
 vent my wife's engagement at the theatre. I asked him to 
 talk things quietly over with her, so that he might see that 
 Minna's unwillingness rested on a mutual understanding, and 
 not on any jealousy on my part. I had intentionally given him 
 the time when I was engaged at the theatre on rehearsals for 
 the necessary discussions with my wife. At the end of these 
 meetings I had, on my return, often found Minna in a very 
 excited condition, and at length she declared emphatically that 
 under no circumstances would she accept the engagement of- 
 fered by Holtei. I had also noticed in Minna's demeanour 
 towards me a strange anxiety to know why I was not unwilling 
 to allow Holtei to try to persuade her. Now that the catas- 
 trophe had occurred, I learned that Holtei had in fact used 
 these interviews for making improper advances to my wife, 
 the nature of which I only realised with difficulty on further 
 acquaintance with this man's peculiarities, and after having 
 heard of other instances of a similar nature. I then discovered 
 that Holtei considered it an advantage to get himself talked 
 about in connection with pretty women, in order thus to divert 
 the attention of the public from other conduct even more dis- 
 reputable. After this Minna was exceedingly indignant at 
 Holtei, who, finding his own suit rejected, appeared as the 
 medium for another suitor, on whose behalf he urged that he 
 would think none the worse of her for rejecting him, a grey- 
 haired and penniless man, but at the same time advocated the 
 suit of Brandenburg, a very wealthy and handsome young 
 merchant. His fierce indignation at this double repulse, his 
 humiliation at having revealed his real nature to no purpose, 
 seems, to judge from Minna's observations, to have been exceed- 
 ingly great. I now understood too well that his frequent and
 
 19 o MY LIFE 
 
 profoundly contemptuous sallies against respectable actors and 
 actresses had not been mere spirited exaggerations, but that he 
 had probably often had to complain of being put thoroughly 
 to shame on this account. 
 
 The fact that the playing of such criminal parts as the one 
 he had had in view with my wife was unable to divert the 
 ever-increasing attention of the outside world from his vicious 
 and dissolute habits, does not seem to have escaped him; for 
 those behind the scenes told me candidly that it was owing to 
 the fear of very unpleasant revelations that he had suddenly 
 decided to give up his position at Riga altogether. Even in 
 much later years I heard about Holtei's bitter dislike of me, a 
 dislike which showed itself, among other things, in his denun- 
 ciation of The Music of the Future, 1 and of its tendency to 
 jeopardise the simplicity of pure sentiment. I have previously 
 mentioned that he displayed so much personal animosity against 
 me during the latter part of the time we were together in Riga 
 that he vented his hostility upon me in every possible way. Up 
 to that time I had felt inclined to ascribe it to the divergence 
 of our respective views on artistic points. 
 
 To my dismay I now became aware that personal considera- 
 tions alone were at the bottom of all this, and I blushed to 
 realise that by my former unreserved confidence in a man 
 whom I thought was absolutely honest, I had based my knowl- 
 edge of human nature on such very weak foundations. But 
 still greater was my disappointment when I discovered the 
 real character of my friend H. Dora. During the whole time 
 of our intercourse at Riga, he, who formerly treated me more 
 like a good-natured elder brother, had become my most con- 
 fidential friend. We saw and visited each other almost daily, 
 very frequently in our respective homes. I kept not a single 
 secret from him, and the performance of his Schoffe von Paris 
 under my direction was as successful as if it had been under 
 his own. Now, when I heard that my post had been given to 
 him 1 , I felt obliged to ask him about it, in order to learn whether 
 there was any mistake on his part as to my intention regarding 
 the position I had hitherto held. But from his letter in reply 
 
 1 Zukunftsmusik is a pamphlet revealing some of Wagner's artistic aims and 
 aspirations, written 1860-61. EDITOE.
 
 DORN AS A ' FRIEND' 191 
 
 I could clearly see that Dorn had really made use of Holtei's 
 dislike for me to extract from him, before his departure, an 
 arrangement which was both binding on his successor and also 
 in his (Dorn's) own favour. As my friend he ought to have 
 known that he could benefit by this agreement only in the 
 event of my resigning my appointment in Riga, because in 
 our confidential conversations, which continued to the end, he 
 always carefully refrained from touching on the possibility of 
 my going away or remaining. In fact, he declared that Holtei 
 had distinctly told him he would on no account re-engage me, 
 as I could not get on with the singers. He added that after 
 this one could not take it amiss if he, who had been inspired 
 with fresh enthusiasm for the theatre by the success of his 
 Schoffe von Paris, had seized and turned to his own advantage 
 the chance offered to him. Moreover, he had gathered from 
 my confidential communications that I was very awkwardly 
 situated, and that, owing to my small salary having been cut 
 down by Holtei from the very beginning, I was in a very pre- 
 carious position on account of the demands of my creditors 
 in Kb'nigsberg and Magdeburg. It appeared that these people 
 had employed against me a lawyer, who was a friend of Dorn's, 
 and that, consequently, he had come to the conclusion that I 
 would not be able to remain in Riga. Therefore, even as my 
 friend, he had felt his conscience quite clear in accepting 
 Holtei's proposal. 
 
 In order not to leave him in the complacent enjoyment of 
 this self-deception, I put it clearly before him that he could 
 not be ignorant of the fact that a higher salary had been 
 promised to me for the third year of my contract; and that, 
 by the establishment of orchestral concerts, which had already 
 made a favourable start, I now saw my way to getting free 
 from those long-standing debts, having already overcome the 
 difficulties of the removal and settling down. I also asked him 
 how he would act if I saw it was to my own interest to retain 
 my post, and to call on him to resign his agreement with 
 Holtei, who, as a matter of fact, after his departure from 
 Riga, had withdrawn his alleged reason for my dismissal. To 
 this I received no answer, nor have I had one up to the present 
 day; but, on the other hand, in 1865, I was astonished to see
 
 192 MY LIFE 
 
 Dorn enter my house in Munich unannounced, and -when to 
 his joy I recognised him, he stepped up to me with a gesture 
 which clearly showed his intention of embracing me. Although 
 I managed to evade this, yet I soon saw the difficulty of pre- 
 venting him from addressing me with the familiar form of 
 'thou,' as the attempt to do so would have necessitated ex- 
 planations that would have been a useless addition to all my 
 worries just then; for it was the time when my Tristan was 
 being produced. 
 
 Such a man was Heinrich Dorn. Although, after the fail- 
 ure of three operas, he had retired in disgust from the thea- 
 tre to devote himself exclusively to the commercial side of 
 music, yet the success of his opera, Der Schoffe von Paris, in 
 Riga helped him back to a permanent place among the dra- 
 matic musicians of Germany. But to this position he was 
 first dragged from obscurity, across the bridge of infidelity to 
 his friend, and by the aid of virtue in the person of Director 
 Holtei, thanks to a magnanimous oversight on the part of 
 Franz Listz. The preference of King Friedrich "Wilhelm IV. 
 for church scenes contributed to secure him eventually his 
 important position at the greatest lyric theatre in Germany. 
 the Royal Opera of Berlin. For he was prompted far less by 
 his devotion to the dramatic muse than by his desire to secure 
 a good position in some important German city, when, as 
 already hinted, through Liszt's recommendation he was ap- 
 pointed musical director of Cologne Cathedral. During a 
 fete connected with the building of the cathedral he managed, 
 as a musician, so to work upon the Prussian monarch's religious 
 feelings, that he was appointed to the dignified post of musical 
 conductor at the Royal Theatre, in which capacity he long 
 continued to do honour to German dramatic music in conjunc- 
 tion with Wilhelm Taubert. 
 
 I must give J. Hoffmann, who from this time forward was 
 the manager of the Riga theatre, the credit of having felt the 
 treachery practised upon me very deeply indeed. He told me 
 that his contract with Dorn bound him only for one year, 
 and that the moment the twelve months had elapsed he wished 
 to come to a fresh agreement with me. As soon as this 
 was known, my patrons in Riga came forward with offers of
 
 KESOLVE TO GO TO PARIS (1839) 193 
 
 teaching engagements and arrangements for sundry concerts, 
 by way of compensating me for the year's salary which I should 
 lose by being away from my work as a conductor. Though I 
 was much gratified by these offers, yet, as I have already 
 pointed out, the longing to break loose from the kind of 
 theatrical life which I had experienced up to that time so 
 possessed me that I resolutely seized this chance of abandon- 
 ing my former vocation for an entirely new one. Not without 
 some shrewdness, I played upon my wife's indignation at the 
 treachery I had suffered, in order to make her fall in with my. 
 eccentric notion of going to Paris. Already in my conception 
 of Rienzi I had dreamed of the most magnificent theatrical 
 conditions, but now, without halting at any intermediate 
 stations, my one desire was to reach the very heart of all 
 European grand opera. While still in Magdeburg I had made 
 H. Konig's romance, Die Hohe Braut, the subject of a grand 
 opera in five acts, and in the most luxurious French style. 
 After the scenic draft of this opera, which had been translated 
 into French, was completely worked out, I sent it from Konigs- 
 berg to Scribe in Paris. With this manuscript I sent a letter 
 to the famous operatic poet, in which I suggested that he might 
 make use of my plot, on condition that he would secure me the 
 composition of the music for the Paris Opera House. To 
 convince him of my ability to compose Parisian operatic music, 
 I also sent him the score of my Liebesverbot. At the same 
 time I wrote to Meyerbeer, informing him of my plans, and 
 begging him to support me. I was not at all disheartened at 
 receiving no reply, for I was content to know that now at 
 last 1 1 was in communication with Paris.' W T hen, therefore, I 
 started out upon my daring journey from Riga, I seemed to 
 have a comparatively serious object in view, and my Paris 
 projects no longer struck me as being altogether in the air. 
 In addition to this I now heard that my youngest sister, 
 Cecilia, had become betrothed to a certain Eduard Avenarius, 
 an employee of the Brockhaus book-selling firm, and that he 
 had undertaken the management of their Paris branch. To 
 him I applied for news of Scribe, and for an answer to the 
 application I had made to that gentleman some years previ- 
 ously. Avenarius called on Scribe, and from him received an
 
 194 MY LIFE 
 
 acknowledgment of the receipt of my earlier communication. 
 Scribe also showed that he had some recollection of the subject 
 itself; for he said that, so far as he could remember, there 
 was a joueuse de Jiarpe in the piece, who was ill-treated by 
 her brother. The fact that this merely incidental item had 
 alone remained in his memory led me to conclude that he had 
 not extended his acquaintance with the piece beyond the first 
 act, in which the item in question occurs. When, moreover, 
 I heard that he had nothing to say in regard to my score, 
 except that he had had portions of it played over to him by a 
 pupil of the Conservatoire, I really could not flatter myself 
 that he had entered into definite and conscious relations with 
 me. And yet I had palpable evidence in a letter of his to 
 Avenarius, which the latter forwarded to me, that Scribe had 
 actually occupied himself with my work, and that I was indeed 
 in communication with him, and this letter of Scribe's made 
 such an impression upon my wife, who was by no means 
 inclined to be sanguine, that she gradually overcame her 
 apprehensions in regard to the Paris adventure. At last it 
 was fixed and settled that on the expiry of my second year's 
 contract in Riga (that is to say, in the coming summer, 1839), 
 we should journey direct from Riga to Paris, in order that I 
 might try my luck there as a composer of opera. 
 
 The production of my Rienzi now began to assume greater 
 importance. The composition of its second act was finished 
 before we started, and into this I wove a heroic ballet of 
 extravagant dimensions. It was now imperative that I should 
 speedily acquire a knowledge of French, a language which, 
 during my classical studies at the Grammar School, I had 
 contemptuously laid aside. As there were only four weeks 
 in which to recover the time I had lost, I engaged an excellent 
 French master. But as I soon realised that I could achieve 
 but little in so short a time, I utilised the hours of the lessons 
 in order to obtain from him, under the pretence of receiving 
 instruction, an idiomatic translation of my Rienzi libretto. 
 This I wrote with red ink on such parts of the score as were 
 finished, so that on reaching Paris I might immediately submit 
 my half-finished opera to French judges of art. 
 
 Everything now seemed to be carefully prepared for my
 
 PLANS FOR THE JOURNEY 195 
 
 departure, and all that remained to be done was to raise the 
 necessary funds for my undertaking. But in this respect the 
 outlook was bad. The sale of our modest household furniture, 
 the proceeds of a benefit concert, and my meagre savings only 
 sufficed to satisfy the importunate demands of my creditors in 
 Magdeburg and Konigsberg. I knew that if I were to devote 
 all my cash to this purpose, there would not be a farthing 
 left. Some way out of the fix must be found, and this our 
 old Konigsberg friend, Abraham Moller, suggested in his usual 
 flippant and obscure manner. Just at this critical moment 
 he paid us a second visit to Riga. I acquainted him with the 
 difficulties of our position, and all the obstacles which stood in 
 the way of my resolve to go to Paris. In his habitual laconical 
 way he counselled me to reserve all my savings for our journey, 
 and to settle with my creditors when my Parisian successes 
 had provided the necessary means. To help us in carrying 
 out this plan, he offered to convey us in his carriage across the 
 Russian frontier at top speed to an East Prussian port. We 
 should have to cross the Russian frontier without passports, 
 as these had been already impounded by our foreign creditors. 
 He assured us that we should find it quite simple to carry out 
 this very hazardous expedition, and declared that he had a 
 friend on a Prussian estate close to the frontier who would 
 render us very effective assistance. My eagerness to escape 
 at any price from my previous circumstances, and to enter 
 with all possible speed upon the wider field, in which I hoped 
 very soon to realise my ambition, blinded me to all the un- 
 pleasantnesses which the execution of his proposal must entail. 
 Director Hoffmann, who considered himself bound to serve me 
 to the utmost of his ability, facilitated my departure by allow- 
 ing me to leave some months before the expiration of my en- 
 gagement. After continuing to conduct the operatic portion 
 of the Mitau theatrical season through the month of June, we 
 secretly started in a special coach hired by Moller and under 
 his protection. The goal of our journey was Paris, but many 
 unheard-of hardships were in store for us before we were to 
 reach that city. 
 
 The sense of contentment involuntarily aroused by our pas- 
 sage through the fruitful Courland in the luxuriant month
 
 196 MY LIFE 
 
 of July, and by the sweet illusion that now at last I had cut 
 myself loose from a hateful existence, to enter upon a new 
 and boundless path of fortune, was disturbed from its very 
 outset by the miserable inconveniences occasioned by the 
 presence of a huge Newfoundland dog called Robber. This 
 beautiful creature, originally the property of a Riga merchant, 
 had, contrary to the nature of his race, become devotedly at- 
 tached to me. After I had left Riga, and during my long stay 
 in Mitau, Robber incessantly besieged my empty house, and 
 so touched the hearts of my landlord and the neighbours by 
 his fidelity, that they sent the dog after me by the conductor 
 of the coach to Mitau, where I greeted him with genuine 
 effusion, and swore that, in spite of all difficulties, I would 
 never part with him again. Whatever might happen, the dog 
 must go with us to Paris. And yet, even to get him into the 
 carriage proved almost impossible. All my endeavours to find 
 him a place in or about the vehicle were in vain, and, to my 
 great grief, I had to watch the huge northern beast, with 
 his shaggy coat, gallop all day long in the blazing sun beside 
 the carriage. At last, moved to pity by his exhaustion, and 
 unable to bear the sight any longer, I hit upon a most ingenious 
 plan for bringing the great animal with us into the carriage, 
 where, in spite of its being full to overflowing, he was just able 
 to find room. 
 
 On the evening of the second day we reached the Russo- 
 Prussian frontier. Mb'ller's evident anxiety as to whether we 
 should be able to cross it safely showed us plainly that the 
 matter was one of some danger. His good friend from the other 
 side duly turned up with a small carriage, as arranged, and in 
 this conveyance drove Minna, myself, and Robber through by- 
 paths to a certain point, whence he led us on foot to a house 
 of exceedingly suspicious exterior, where, after handing us 
 over to a guide, he left us. There we had to wait until sun- 
 down, and had ample leisure in which to realise that we were 
 in a smugglers' drinking den, which gradually became filled to 
 suffocation with Polish Jews of most forbidding aspect. 
 
 At last we were summoned to follow our guide. A few 
 hundred feet away, on the slope of a hill, lay the ditch which 
 runs the whole length of the Russian frontier, watched continu-
 
 197 
 
 ally and at very narrow intervals by Cossacks. Our chance 
 was to utilise the few moments after the relief of the watch, 
 during which the sentinels were elsewhere engaged. We had, 
 therefore, to run at full speed down the hill, scramble through 
 the ditch, and then hurry along until we were beyond the 
 range of the soldiers' guns; for the Cossacks were bound in 
 case of discovery to fire upon us even on the other side of the 
 ditch. In spite of my almost passionate anxiety for Minna, 
 I had observed with singular pleasure the intelligent behaviour 
 of Robber, who, as though conscious of the danger, silently 
 kept close to our side, and entirely dispelled my fear that he 
 would give trouble during our dangerous passage. At last our 
 trusted helpmeet reappeared, and was so delighted that he 
 hugged us all in his arms. Then, placing us once more in his 
 carriage, he drove us to the inn of the Prussian frontier village, 
 where my friend Moller, positively sick with anxiety, leaped 
 sobbing and rejoicing out of bed to greet us. 
 
 It was only now that I began to realise the danger to which 
 I had exposed, not only myself, but also my poor Minna, and 
 the folly of which I had been guilty through my ignorance of 
 the terrible difficulties of secretly crossing the frontier diffi- 
 culties concerning which Moller had foolishly allowed me to 
 remain in ignorance. 
 
 I was simply at a loss to convey to my poor exhausted wife 
 how extremely I regretted the whole affair. 
 
 And yet the difficulties we had just overcome were but the 
 prelude to the calamities incidental to this adventurous journey 
 which had such a decisive influence on my life. The following 
 day, when, with courage renewed, we drove through the rich 
 plain of Tilsit to Arnau, near Konigsberg, we decided, as the 
 next stage of our journey, to proceed from the Prussian harbour 
 of Pillau by sailing vessel to London. Our principal reason for 
 this was the consideration of the dog we had with us. It was 
 the easiest way to take him. To convey him by coach from 
 Konigsberg to Paris was out of the question, and railways were 
 unknown. But another consideration was our budget; the 
 whole result of my desperate efforts amounted to not quite 
 one hundred ducats, which were to cover not only the journey 
 to Paris, but our expenses there until I should have earned
 
 19 8 MY LIFE 
 
 something. Therefore, after a few days' rest in the inn at 
 Arnau, we drove to the little seaport town of Pillau, again 
 accompanied by Moller, in one of the ordinary local conveyances, 
 which was not much better than a wagon. In order to avoid 
 Konigsberg, we passed through the smaller villages and over 
 bad roads. Even this short distance was not to be covered 
 without accident. The clumsy conveyance upset in a farmyard, 
 and Minna was so severely indisposed by the accident, owing 
 to an internal shock, that I had to drag her with the greatest 
 difficulty, as she was quite helpless to a peasant's house. The 
 people were surly and dirty, and the night we spent there was 
 a painful one for the poor sufferer. A delay of several days 
 occurred before the departure of the Pillau vessel, but this was 
 welcome as a respite to allow of Minna's recovery. Finally, as 
 the captain was to take us without a passport, our going on 
 board was accompanied by exceptional difficulties. We had 
 to contrive to slip past the harbour watch to our vessel in a 
 small boat before daybreak. Once on board, we still had the 
 troublesome task of hauling Robber up the steep side of the 
 vessel without attracting attention, and after that to conceal 
 ourselves at once below deck, in order to escape the notice of 
 officials visiting the ship before its departure. The anchor 
 was weighed, and at last, as the land faded gradually out of 
 sight, we thought we could breathe freely and feel at ease. 
 
 We were on board a merchant vessel of the smallest type. 
 She was called the Thetis; a bust of the nymph was erected in 
 the bows, and she carried a crew of seven men, including the 
 captain. With good weather, such as was to be expected in 
 summer, the journey to London was estimated to take eight 
 days. However, before we had left the Baltic, we were delayed 
 by a prolonged calm. I made use of the time to improve my 
 knowledge of French by the study of a novel, La Derniere 
 Aldini, by George Sand. We also derived some entertainment 
 from associating with the crew. There was an elderly and 
 peculiarly taciturn sailor named Koske, whom we observed 
 carefully because Robber, who was usually so friendly, had 
 taken an irreconcilable dislike to him. Oddly enough, this 
 fact was to add in some degree to our troubles in the hour of 
 danger. After seven days' sailing we were no further than
 
 ON BOARD THE THETIS 199 
 
 Copenhagen, where, without leaving the vessel, we seized an 
 opportunity of making our very spare diet on board more 
 bearable by various purchases of food and drink. In good 
 spirits we sailed past the beautiful castle of Elsinore, the sight 
 of which brought me into immediate touch with my youthful 
 impressions of Hamlet. We were sailing all unsuspecting 
 through the Cattegat to the Skagerack, when the wind, which 
 had at first been merely unfavourable, and had forced us to 
 a process of weary tacking, changed on the second day to a 
 violent storm. For twenty-four hours we had to struggle 
 against it under disadvantages which were quite new to us. 
 In the captain's painfully narrow cabin, in which one of us 
 was without a proper berth, we were a prey to sea-sickness and 
 endless alarms. Unfortunately, the brandy cask, at which the 
 crew fortified themselves during their strenuous work, was let 
 into a hollow under the seat on which I lay at full length. 
 Now it happened to be Koske who came most frequently in 
 search of the refreshment which was such a nuisance to me, 
 and this in spite of the fact that on each occasion he had to 
 encounter Robber in mortal combat. The dog flew at him 
 with renewed rage each time he came climbing down the narrow 
 steps. I was thus compelled to make efforts which, in my 
 state of complete exhaustion from sea-sickness, rendered my 
 condition every time more critical. At last, on 27th July, 
 the captain was compelled by the violence of the west wind 
 to seek a harbour on the Norwegian coast. And how relieved 
 I was to behold that far-reaching rocky coast, towards which 
 we were being driven at such speed ! A Norwegian pilot came 
 to meet us in a small boat, and, with experienced hand, assumed 
 control of the Thetis, whereupon in a very short time I was to 
 have one of the most marvellous and most beautiful impres- 
 sions of my life. What I had taken to be a continuous line 
 of cliffs turned out on our approach to be a series of separate 
 rocks projecting from the sea. Having sailed past them, we 
 perceived that we were surrounded, not only in front and at 
 the sides, but also at our back, by these reefs, which closed in 
 behind us so near together that they seemed to form a single 
 chain of rocks. At the same time the hurricane was so broken 
 by the rocks in our rear that the further we sailed through this
 
 200 MY LIFE 
 
 ever-changing labyrinth of projecting rocks, the calmer the 
 sea became, until at last the vessel's progress was perfectly 
 smooth and quiet as we entered one of those long sea-roads 
 running through a giant ravine for such the Norwegian 
 fjords appeared to me. 
 
 A feeling of indescribable content came over me when the 
 enormous granite walls echoed the hail of the crew as they cast 
 anchor and furled the sails. The sharp rhythm of this call 
 clung to me like an omen of good cheer, and shaped itself 
 presently into the theme of the seamen's song in my Fliegen- 
 der Hollander. The idea of this opera was, even at that 
 time, ever present in my mind, and it now took on a definite 
 poetic and musical colour under the influence of my recent im- 
 pressions. Well, our next move was to go on shore. I learned 
 that the little fishing village at which we landed was called Sand- 
 wike, and was situated a few miles away from the much larger 
 town of Arendal. We were allowed to put up at the hospitable 
 house of a certain ship's captain, who was then away at sea, and 
 here we were able to take the rest we so much needed, as the 
 unabated violence of the wind in the open detained us there 
 two days. On 31st July the captain insisted on leaving, de- 
 spite the pilot's warning. We had been on board the Thetis 
 a few hours, and were in the act of eating a lobster for the 
 first time in our lives, when the captain and the sailors began 
 to swear violently at the pilot, whom I could see at the helm, 
 rigid with fear, striving to avoid a reef barely visible above 
 the water towards which our ship was being driven. Great 
 was our terror at this violent tumult, for we naturally thought 
 ourselves in the most extreme danger. The vessel did actually 
 receive a severe shock, which, to my vivid imagination, seemed 
 like the splitting up of the whole ship. Fortunately, however, 
 it transpired that only the side of our vessel had fouled the 
 reef, and there was no immediate danger. Nevertheless, the 
 captain deemed it necessary to steer for a harbour to have the 
 vessel examined, and we returned to the coast and anchored 
 at another point. The captain then offered to take us in a small 
 boat with two sailors to Tromsond, a town of some importance 
 situated at a few hours' distance, where he had to invite the 
 harbour officials to examine his ship. This again proved a most
 
 THE THETIS IN A STORM 201 
 
 attractive and impressive excursion. The view of one fjord 
 in particular, which extended far inland, worked on my imagi- 
 nation like some unknown, awe-inspiring desert. This im- 
 pression was intensified, during a long walk from Tromsond up 
 to the plateau, by the terribly depressing effect of the dun moors, 
 bare of tree or shrub, boasting only a covering of scanty moss, 
 which stretch away to the horizon, and merge imperceptibly 
 into the gloomy sky. It was long after dark when we returned 
 from this trip in our little boat, and my wife was very anxious. 
 The next morning (1st August), reassured as to the condition 
 of the vessel, and the wind favouring us, we were able to go to 
 sea without further hindrance. 
 
 After four days' calm sailing a strong north wind arose, 
 which drove us at uncommon speed in the right direction. We 
 began to think ourselves nearly at the end of our journey 
 when, on 6th August, the wind changed, and the storm began 
 to rage with unheard-of violence. On the 7th, a Wednesday, 
 at half-past two in the afternoon, we thought ourselves in 
 imminent danger of death. It was not the terrible force with 
 which the vessel was hurled up and down, entirely at the mercy 
 of this sea monster, which appeared now as a fathomless abyss, 
 now as a steep mountain peak, that filled me with mortal 
 dread; my premonition of some terrible crisis was aroused 
 by the despondency of the crew, whose malignant glances 
 seemed superstitiously to point to us as the cause of the 
 threatening disaster. Ignorant of the trifling occasion for the 
 secrecy of our journey, the thought may have occurred to them 
 that our need of escape had arisen from suspicious or even 
 criminal circumstances. The captain himself seemed, in his 
 extreme distress, to regret having taken us on board; for we 
 had evidently brought him ill-luck on this familiar passage 
 usually a rapid and uncomplicated one, especially in summer. 
 At this particular moment there raged, beside the tempest on 
 the water, a furious thunderstorm overhead, and Minna ex- 
 pressed the fervent wish to be struck by lightning with me 
 rather than to sink, living, into the fearful flood. She even 
 begged me to bind her to me, so that we might not be parted 
 as we sank. Yet another night was spent amid these incessant 
 terrors, which only our extreme exhaustion helped to mitigate.
 
 202 
 
 The following day the storm had subsided ; the wind remained 
 unfavourable, but was mild. The captain now tried to find 
 our bearings by means of his astronomical instruments. He 
 complained of the sky, which had been overcast so many days, 
 swore that he would give much for a single glimpse of the sun 
 or the stars, and did not conceal the uneasiness he felt at not 
 being able to indicate our whereabouts with certainty. He 
 consoled himself, however, by following a ship which was 
 sailing some knots ahead in the same direction, and whose 
 movements he observed closely through the telescope. Sud- 
 denly he sprang up in great alarm, and gave a vehement order 
 to change our course. He had seen the ship in front go aground 
 on a sand-bank, from which, he asserted, she could not extricate 
 herself; for he now realised that we were near the most 
 dangerous part of the belt of sand-banks bordering the Dutch 
 coast for a considerable distance. By dint of very skilful sail- 
 ing, we were enabled to keep the opposite course towards the 
 English coast, which we in fact sighted on the evening of 9th 
 August, in the neighbourhood of Southwold. I felt new life 
 come into me when I saw in the far distance the English 
 pilots racing for our ship. As competition is free among 
 pilots on the English coast, they come out as far as possible 
 to meet incoming vessels, even when the risks are very great 
 
 The winner in our case was a powerful grey-haired man, who, 
 after much vain battling with the seething waves, which tossed 
 his light boat away from our ship at each attempt, at last 
 succeeded in boarding the Thetis. (Our poor, hardly-used boat 
 still bore the name, although the wooden figure-head of our 
 patron nymph had been hurled into the sea during our first 
 storm in the Cattegat an ill-omened incident in the eyes of 
 the crew.) We were filled with pious gratitude when this quiet 
 English sailor, whose hands were torn and bleeding from his 
 repeated efforts to catch the rope thrown to him on his approach, 
 took over the rudder. His whole personality impressed us 
 most agreeably, and he seemed to us the absolute guarantee 
 of a speedy deliverance from our terrible afflictions. We re- 
 joiced too soon, however, for we still had before us the perilous 
 passage through the sand-banks off the English coast, where, 
 as I was assured, nearly four hundred ships are wrecked on an
 
 ARRIVAL IN LONDON 203 
 
 average every year. We were fully twenty-four hours (from 
 the evening of the 10th to the llth of August) amid these sand- 
 banks, fighting a westerly gale, which hindered our progress 
 so seriously that we only reached the mouth of the Thames 
 on the evening of the 12th of August. My wife had, up to that 
 point, been so nervously affected by the innumerable danger 
 signals, consisting chiefly of small guardships painted bright 
 red and provided with bells on account of the fog, that she 
 could not close her eyes, day or night, for the excitement of 
 watching for them and pointing them out to the sailors. I, 
 on the contrary, found these heralds of human proximity and 
 deliverance so consoling that, despite Minna's reproaches, I in- 
 dulged in a long refreshing sleep. Kow that we were anchored 
 in the mouth of the Thames, waiting for daybreak, I found my- 
 self in the best of spirits; I dressed, washed, and even shaved 
 myself up on deck near the mast, while Minna and the whole 
 exhausted crew were wrapped in deep slumber. And with 
 deepening interest I watched the growing signs of life in this 
 famous estuary. Our desire for a complete release from our 
 detested confinement led us, after we had sailed a little way 
 up, to hasten our arrival in London by going on board a passing 
 steamer at Gravesend. As we neared the capital, our astonish- 
 ment steadily increased at the number of ships of all sorts that 
 filled the river, the houses, the streets, the famous docks, and 
 other maritime constructions which lined the banks. When 
 at last we reached London Bridge, this incredibly crowded 
 centre of the greatest city in the world, and set foot on land 
 after our terrible three weeks' voyage, a pleasurable sensation 
 of giddiness overcame us as our legs carried us staggering 
 through the deafening uproar. Robber seemed to be similarly 
 affected, .for he whisked round the corners like a mad thing, 
 and threatened to get lost every other minute. But we soon 
 sought safety in a cab, which took us, on our captain's recom- 
 mendation, to the Horseshoe Tavern, near the Tower, and here 
 we had to make our plans for the conquest of this giant 
 metropolis. 
 
 The neighbourhood in which we found ourselves was such 
 that we decided to leave it with all possible haste. A very 
 friendly little hunchbacked Jew from Hamburg suggested
 
 204 MY LIFE 
 
 better quarters in the West End, and I remember vividly our 
 drive there, in one of the tiny narrow cabs then in use, the 
 journey lasting fully an hour. They were built to carry two 
 people, who had to sit facing each other, and we therefore had 
 to lay our big dog crosswise from window to window. The 
 sights we saw from our whimsical nook surpassed anything 
 we had imagined, and we arrived at our boarding-house in 
 Old Compton Street agreeably stimulated by the life and the 
 overwhelming size of the great city. Although at the age of 
 twelve I had made what I supposed to be a translation of a 
 monologue from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, I found my 
 knowledge of English quite inadequate when it came to con- 
 versing with the landlady of the King's Arms. But the good 
 dame's social condition as a sea-captain's widow led her to think 
 she could talk French to me, and her attempts made me wonder 
 which of us knew least of that language. And then a most 
 disturbing incident occurred we missed Robber, who must 
 have run away at the door instead of following us into the house. 
 Our distress at having lost our good dog after having brought 
 him all the way there with such difficulty occupied us exclu- 
 sively during the first two hours we spent in this new home 
 on land. We kept constant watch at the window until, of a 
 sudden, we joyfully recognised Robber strolling unconcernedly 
 towards the house from a side street. Afterwards we learned 
 that our truant had wandered as far as Oxford Street in search 
 of adventures, and I have always considered his amazing 
 return to a house which he had not even entered as a strong 
 proof of the absolute certainty of the animal's instincts in the 
 matter of memory. 
 
 We now had time to realise the tiresome after-effects of the 
 voyage. The continuous swaying of the floor and our clumsy 
 efforts to keep from falling we found fairly entertaining; but 
 when we came to take our well-earned rest in the huge English 
 double bed, and found that that too rocked up and down, it 
 became quite unbearable. Every time we closed our eyes we 
 sank into frightful abysses, and, springing up again, cried out 
 for help. It seemed as if that terrible voyage would go on 
 to the end of our lives. Added to this we felt miserably sick ? 
 for, after the atrocious food on board, we had been only too
 
 ADVENTURES IN LONDON 205 
 
 ready to partake, with less discretion than relish, of tastier 
 fare. 
 
 We were so exhausted by all these trials that we forgot to 
 consider what was, after all, the vital question the probable 
 result in hard cash. Indeed, the marvels of the great city 
 proved so fascinating, that we started off in a cab, for all the 
 world as if we were on a pleasure trip, to follow up a plan I had 
 sketched on my map of London. In our wonder and delight 
 at what we saw, we quite forgot all we had gone through. 
 Costly as it proved, I considered our week's stay justified in 
 view of Minna's need of rest in the first place, and secondly, 
 the excellent opportunity it afforded me of making acquaint- 
 ances in the musical world. During my last visit to Dresden 
 I had sent Rule Britannia, the overture composed at Kb'nigs- 
 berg, to Sir John Smart, president of the Philharmonic Society. 
 It is true he had never acknowledged it, but I felt it the more 
 incumbent on me to bring him to task about it. I therefore 
 spent some days trying to find out where he lived, wondering 
 meanwhile in which language I should have to make myself 
 understood, but as the result of my inquiries I discovered that 
 Smart was not in London at all. I next persuaded myself 
 that it would be a good thing to look up Bulwer Lytton, and 
 to come to an understanding about the operatic performance 
 of his novel, Rienzi, which I had dramatised. Having been 
 told, on the continent, that Bulwer was a member of Parlia- 
 ment, I went to the House, after a few days, to inquire on the 
 spot. My total ignorance of the English language stood me in 
 good stead here, and I was treated with unexpected considera- 
 tion; for, as none of the lower officials in that vast building 
 could make out what I wanted, I was sent, step by step, to one 
 high dignitary after the other, until at last I was introduced to 
 a distinguished-looking man, who came out of a large hall as 
 we passed, as an entirely unintelligible individual. (Minna was 
 with me all the time; only Robber had been left behind at 
 the King's Arms.) He asked me very civilly what I wanted, 
 in French, and seemed favourably impressed when I inquired 
 for the celebrated author. He was obliged to tell me, however, 
 that he was not in London. I went on to ask whether I could 
 not be admitted to a debate, but was told that, in consequence
 
 206 MY LIFE 
 
 of the old Houses of Parliament having been burnt down, they 
 were using temporary premises where the space was so limited 
 that only a few favoured visitors could procure cards of admit- 
 tance. But on my pressing more urgently he relented, and 
 shortly after opened a door leading direct into the strangers' 
 seats in the House of Lords. It seemed reasonable to con- 
 clude from this that our friend was a lord in person. I was 
 immensely interested to see and hear the Premier, Lord Mel- 
 bourne, and Brougham (who seemed to me to take a very 
 active part in the proceedings, prompting Melbourne several 
 times, as I thought), and the Duke of Wellington, who looked 
 so comfortable in his grey beaver hat, with his hands diving 
 deep into his trousers pockets, and who made his speech in so 
 conversational a tone that I lost my feeling of excessive awe. 
 He had a curious way, too, of accenting his points of special 
 emphasis by shaking his whole body. I was also much inter- 
 ested in Lord Lyndhurst, Brougham's particular enemy, and 
 was amazed to see Brougham go across several times to sit 
 down coolly beside him, apparently with a view to prompting 
 even his opponent. The matter in hand was, as I learned 
 afterwards from the papers, the discussion of measures to be 
 taken against the Portuguese Government to ensure the pass- 
 ing of the Anti-Slavery Bill. The Bishop of London, who 
 was one of the speakers on this occasion, was the only one of 
 these gentlemen whose voice and manner seemed to me stiff 
 or unnatural, but possibly I was prejudiced by my dislike of 
 parsons generally. 
 
 After this pleasing adventure I imagined I had exhausted 
 the attractions of London for the present, for although I could 
 not gain admittance to the Lower House, my untiring friend, 
 whom I came across again as I went out, showed me the room 
 where the Commons sat, explained as much as was necessary, 
 and gave me a sight of the Speaker's woolsack, and of his 
 mace lying hidden under the table. He also gave me such 
 careful details of various things that I felt I knew all there was 
 to know about the capital of Great Britain. I had not the 
 smallest intention of going to the Italian opera, possibly 
 because I imagined the prices to be too ruinous. We 
 thoroughly explored all the principal streets, often tiring
 
 DEPASTURE FOR BOULOGNE 207 
 
 ourselves out ; we shuddered through a ghastly London Sunday, 
 and wound up with a train trip (our very first) to Gravesend 
 Park, in the company of the captain of the Thetis. On the 
 20th of August we crossed over to France by steamer, 
 arriving the same evening at Boulogne-sur-mer, where we 
 took leave of the sea with the fervent desire never to go on 
 it again. 
 
 We were both of us secretly convinced that we should meet 
 with disappointments in Paris, and it was partly on that ac- 
 count that we decided to spend a few weeks at or near Boulogne. 
 It was, in any case, too early in the season to find the various 
 important people whom I proposed to see, in town; on the 
 other hand, it seemed to me a most fortunate circumstance 
 that Meyerbeer should happen to be at Boulogne. Also, I 
 had the instrumentation of part of the second act of Rienzi to 
 finish, and was bent on having at least half of the work ready 
 to show on my arrival in the costly French capital. We there- 
 fore set out to find less expensive accommodation in the country 
 round Boulogne. Beginning with the immediate neighbour- 
 hood, our search ended in our taking two practically unfurnished 
 rooms in the detached house of a rural wine merchant's, situated 
 on the main road to Paris at half an hour's distance from 
 Boulogne. We next provided scanty but adequate furniture, 
 and in bringing our wits to bear upon this matter Minna par- 
 ticularly distinguished herself. Besides a bed and two chairs, 
 we dug up a table, which, after I had cleared away my Rienzi 
 papers, served for our meals, which we had to prepare at our 
 own fireside. 
 
 While we were here I made my first call on Meyerbeer. I 
 had often read in the papers of his proverbial amiability, and 
 bore him no ill-will for not replying to my letter. My favour- 
 able opinion was soon to be confirmed, however, by his kind 
 reception of me. The impression he made was good in every 
 respect, particularly as regards his appearance. The years had 
 not yet given his features the flabby look which sooner or later 
 mars most Jewish faces, and the fine formation of his brow 
 round about the eyes gave him an expression of countenance 
 that inspired confidence. He did not seem in the least inclined 
 to depreciate my intention of trying my luck in Paris as a
 
 208 
 
 LIFE 
 
 composer of opera; he allowed me to read him my libretto for 
 Rienzi, and really listened up to the end of the third act. He 
 kept the two acts that were complete, saying that he wished 
 to look them over, and assured me, when I again called on him, 
 of his whole-hearted interest in my work. Be this as it may, 
 it annoyed me somewhat that he should again and again fall 
 back on praising my minute handwriting, an accomplishment 
 he considered especially Saxonian. He promised to give me 
 letters of recommendation to Duponchel, the manager of the 
 Opera House, and to Habeneck, the conductor. I now felt 
 that I had good cause to extol my good fortune which, after 
 many vicissitudes, had sent me precisely to this particular 
 spot in France. What better fortune could have befallen me 
 than to secure, in so short a time, the sympathetic interest of 
 the most famous composer of French opera! Meyerbeer took 
 me to see Moscheles, who was then in Boulogne, and also 
 Fraulein Blahedka, a celebrated virtuoso whose name I had 
 known for many years. I spent a few informal musical even- 
 ings at both houses, and thus came into close touch with musical 
 celebrities, an experience quite new to me. 
 
 I had written to my future brother-in-law, Avernarius, in 
 Paris, to ask him to find us suitable accommodations, and we 
 started on our journey thither on 16th September in the dili- 
 gence, my efforts to hoist Robber on to the top being attended 
 by the usual difficulties. 
 
 My first impression of Paris proved disappointing in view 
 of the great expectations I had cherished of that city; after 
 London it seemed to me narrow and confined. I had imagined 
 the famous boulevards to be much vaster, for instance, and was 
 really annoyed, when the huge coach put us down in the Rue 
 de la Juissienne, to think that I should first set foot on Parisian 
 soil in such a wretched little alley. Neither did the Rue 
 Richelieu, where my brother-in-law had his book-shop, seem 
 imposing after the streets in the west end of London. As for 
 the chambre garnie, which had been engaged for me in the Rue 
 de la Tonnellerie, one of the narrow side-streets which link the 
 Rue St. Honore with the Marche des Innocents, I felt positively 
 degraded at having to take up my abode there. I needed all 
 tin 1 consolation that could be derived from an inscription,
 
 FIRST DAYS IN PARIS 209 
 
 placed under a bust of Moliere, which read: maison ou naquit 
 Moliere, to raise my courage after the mean impression the 
 house had first made upon me. The room, which had been 
 prepared for us on the fourth floor, was small but cheerful, 
 decently furnished, and inexpensive. From the windows we 
 could see the frightful bustle in the market below, which became 
 more and more alarming as we watched it, and I wondered 
 what we were doing in such a quarter. 
 
 Shortly after this, Avenarius had to go to Leipzig to bring 
 home his bride, my youngest sister Cecilia, after the wedding 
 in that city. Before leaving, he gave me an introduction to his 
 only musical acquaintance, a German holding an appointment 
 in the music department of the Bibliotheque Royale, named 
 E. G. Anders, who lost no time in looking us up in Moliere's 
 house. He was, as I soon discovered, a man of very unusual 
 character, and, little as he was able to help me, he left an 
 affecting and ineffaceable impression on my memory. He was 
 a bachelor in the fifties, whose reverses had driven him to the 
 sad necessity of earning a living in Paris entirely without as- 
 sistance. He had fallen back on the extraordinary biblio- 
 graphical knowledge which, especially in reference to music, it 
 had been his hobby to acquire in the days of his prosperity. 
 His real name he never told me, wishing to guard the secret 
 of that, as of his misfortunes, until after his death. For the 
 time being he told me only that he was known as Anders, was 
 of noble descent, and had held property on the Rhine, but 
 that he had lost everything owing to the villainous betrayal 
 of his gullibility and good-nature. The only thing he had man- 
 aged to save was his very considerable library, the size of 
 which I was able to estimate for myself. It filled every wall 
 of his small dwelling. Even here in Paris he soon complained 
 of bitter enemies ; for, in spite of having come furnished with 
 an introduction to influential people, he still held the inferior 
 position of an employee in the library. In spite of his long 
 service there and his great learning, he had to see really ignorant 
 men promoted over his head. I discovered afterwards that the 
 real reason lay in his unbusinesslike methods, and the effemi- 
 nacy consequent on the delicate way in which he had been 
 nutured in early life, which made him incapable of developing
 
 210 MY LIFE 
 
 the energy necessary for his work. On a miserable pittance of 
 fifteen hundred francs a year, he led a weary existence, full of 
 anxiety. With nothing in view but a lonely old age, and the 
 probability of dying in a hospital, it seemed as if our society 
 put new life into him; for though we were poverty-stricken, 
 we looked forward boldly and hopefully to the future. My 
 vivacity and invincible energy filled him with hopes of my 
 success, and from this time forward he took a most tender 
 and unselfish part in furthering my interests. Although he 
 was a contributor to the Gazette Musicale, edited by Moritz 
 Schlesinger, he had never succeeded in making his influence felt 
 there in the slightest degree. He had none of the versatility 
 of a journalist, and the editors entrusted him with little besides 
 the preparation of bibliographical notes. Oddly enough, it 
 was with this unworldly and least resourceful of men that I 
 had to discuss my plan for the conquest of Paris, that is, of 
 musical Paris, which is made up of all the most questionable 
 characters imaginable. The result was practically always the 
 same ; we merely encouraged each other in the hope that some 
 unforeseen stroke of luck would help my cause. 
 
 To assist us in these discussions Anders called in his friend 
 and housemate Lehrs, a philologist, my acquaintance with 
 whom was soon to develop into one of the most beautiful 
 friendships of my life. Lehrs was the younger brother of a 
 famous scholar at Konigsberg. He had left there to come to 
 Paris some years before, with the object of gaining an indepen- 
 dent position by his philological work. This he preferred, in 
 spite of the attendant difficulties, to a post as teacher with a 
 salary which only in Germany could be considered sufficient 
 for a scholar's wants. He soon obtained work from Didot, the 
 bookseller, as assistant editor of a large edition of Greek classics, 
 but the editor traded on his poverty, and was much more con- 
 cerned about the success of his enterprise than about the con- 
 dition of his poor collaborator. Lehrs had therefore perpetu- 
 ally to struggle against poverty, but he preserved an even 
 temper, and showed himself in every way a model of disin- 
 terestedness and self-sacrifice. At first he looked upon me 
 only as a man in need of advice, and incidentally a fellow- 
 sufferer in Paris; for he had no knowledge of music, and had
 
 DUPONCHEL. HABENECK 211 
 
 no particular interest in it. We soon became so intimate that 
 I had him dropping in nearly every evening with Anders, 
 Lehrs being extremely useful to his friend, whose unsteadiness 
 in walking obliged him to use an umbrella and a walking-stick 
 as crutches. He was also nervous in crossing crowded thorough- 
 fares, and particularly so at night; while he always liked to 
 make Lehrs cross my threshold in front of him to distract the 
 attention of Robber, of whom he stood in obvious terror. Our 
 usually good-natured dog became positively suspicious of this 
 visitor, and soon adopted towards him the same aggressive 
 attitude which he had shown to the sailor Koske on board the 
 Thetis. The two men lived at an hotel garni in Rue de Seine. 
 They complained greatly of their landlady, who appropriated 
 so much of their income that they were entirely in her power. 
 Anders had for years been trying to assert his independence 
 by leaving her, without being able to carry out his plan. We 
 soon threw off mutually every shred of disguise as to the 
 present state of our finances, so that, although the two house- 
 holds were actually separated, our common troubles gave us all 
 the intimacy of one united family. 
 
 The various ways by which I might obtain recognition in 
 Paris formed the chief topic of our discussions at that time. 
 Our hopes were at first centred on Meyerbeer's promised letters 
 of introduction. Duponchel, the director of the Opera, did 
 actually see me at his ofiice, where, fixing a monocle in his 
 right eye, he read through Meyerbeer's letter without betraying 
 the least emotion, having no doubt opened similar communi- 
 cations from the composer many times before. I went away, 
 and never heard another word from him. The elderly con- 
 ductor, Habeneck, on the other hand, took an interest in my 
 work that was not merely polite, and acceded to my request to 
 have something of mine played at one of the orchestral practises 
 at the Conservatoire as soon as he should have leisure. I had, 
 unfortunately, no short instrumental piece that seemed suitable 
 except my queer Columbus Overture, which I considered the 
 most effective of all that had emanated from my pen. It had 
 been received with great applause on the occasion of its per- 
 formance in the theatre at Magdeburg, with the assistance of 
 the valiant trumpeters from the Prussian garrison. I gave
 
 212 MY LIFE 
 
 Habeneck the score and parts, and was able to report to our 
 committee at home that I had now one enterprise on foot 
 
 I gave up the attempt to try and see Scribe on the mere 
 ground of our having had some correspondence, for my friends 
 had made it clear to me, in the light of their own experience, 
 that it was out of the question to expect this exceptionally 
 busy author to occupy himself seriously with a young and 
 unknown musician. Anders was able to introduce me to 
 another acquaintance, however, a certain M. Dumersan. This 
 grey-haired gentleman had written some hundred vaudeville 
 pieces, and would have been glad to see one of them performed 
 as an opera on a larger scale before his death. He had no idea 
 of standing on his dignity as an author, and was quite willing 
 to undertake the translation of an existing libretto into French 
 verse. We therefore entrusted him with the writing of my 
 Liebesverbot, with a view to a performance at the Theatre 
 de la Kenaissance, as it was then called. (It was the third 
 existing theatre for lyric drama, the performances being given 
 in the new Salle Ventadour, which had been rebuilt after its 
 destruction by fire.) On the understanding that it was to be 
 a literal translation, he at once turned the three numbers of 
 my opera, for which I hoped to secure a hearing, into neat 
 French verse. Besides this, he asked me to compose a chorus 
 for a vaudeville entitled La Descente de la Courtille, which was 
 to be played at the Varietes during the carnival. 
 
 This was a second opening. .My friends now strongly advised 
 me to write something small in the way of songs, which I could 
 offer to popular singers for concert purposes. Both Lehrs and 
 Anders produced words for these. Anders brought a very 
 innocent Dors, mon enfant, written by a young poet of his 
 acquaintance; this was the first thing I composed to a French 
 text. It was so successful that, when I had tried it over softly 
 several times on the piano, my wife, who was in bed, called out 
 to me that it was heavenly for sending one to sleep. I also 
 set L'Attente from Hugo's Orientates, and Eonsard's song, 
 Mignonne, to music. I have no reason to be ashamed of these 
 small pieces, which I published subsequently as a musical sup- 
 plement to Europa (Lewald's publication) in 1841. 
 
 I next stumbled on the idea of writing a grand bass aria with
 
 CALL ON MEYERBEER 213 
 
 a chorus, for Lablache to introduce into his part of Orovist 
 in Bellini's Norma. Lehrs had to hunt up an Italian political 
 refugee to get the text out of him. This was done, and I 
 produced an effective composition a la Bellini (which still 
 exists among my manuscripts), and went off at once to offer 
 it to Lablache. 
 
 The friendly Moor, who received me in the great singer's 
 anteroom, insisted upon admitting me straight into his master's 
 presence without announcing me. As I had anticipated some 
 difficulty in getting near such a celebrity, I had written my 
 request, as I thought this would be simpler than explaining 
 verbally. 
 
 The black servant's pleasant manner made me feel very un- 
 comfortable; I entrusted my score and letter to him to give to 
 Lablache, without taking any notice of his kindly astonishment 
 at my refusal of his repeated invitation to go into his master's 
 room and have an interview, and I left the house hurriedly, 
 intending to call for my answer in a few days. When I came 
 back Lablache received me most kindly, and assured me that 
 my aria was excellent, though it was impossible to introduce 
 it into Bellini's opera after the latter had already been per- 
 formed so very often. My relapse into the domain of Bellini's 
 style, of which I had been guilty through the writing of this aria, 
 was therefore useless to me, and I soon became convinced of 
 the fruitlessness of my efforts in that direction. I saw that I 
 should need personal introductions to various singers in order 
 to ensure the production of one of my other compositions. 
 
 When Meyerbeer at last arrived in Paris, therefore, I was 
 delighted. He was not in the least astonished at the lack of 
 success of his letters of introduction ; on the contrary, he made 
 use of this opportunity to impress upon me how difficult it was ' 
 to get on in Paris, and how necessary it was for me to look ' 
 out for less pretentious work. With this object he introduced 
 me to Maurice Schlesinger, and leaving me at the mercy of 
 that monstrous person, went back to Germany. 
 
 At first Schlesinger did not know what to do with me; the 
 acquaintances I made through him (of whom the chief was 
 the violinist Panofka) led to nothing, and I therefore returned 
 to my advisory board at home, through whose influence I had
 
 214: MY LIFE 
 
 recently received an order to compose the music to the Two 
 Grenadiers, by Heine, translated by a Parisian professor. I 
 wrote this song for baritone, and was very pleased with the 
 result; on Ander's advice I now tried to find singers for my 
 new compositions. Mme. Pauline Viardot, on whom I first 
 called, went through my songs with me. She was very amiable, 
 and praised them, but did not see why she should sing them. 
 I went through the same experience with a Mme. Widmann, a 
 grand contralto, who sang my Dors, mon enfant with great 
 feeling; all the same she had no further use for my composi- 
 tion. A certain M. Dupont, third tenor at the grand opera, 
 tried my setting of the Ronsard poem, but declared that the 
 language in which it was written was no longer palatable to the 
 Paris public. M. Geraldy, a favourite concert singer and 
 teacher, who allowed me to call and see him frequently, told 
 me that the Two Grenadiers was impossible, for the simple 
 reason that the accompaniment at the end of the song, which 
 I had modelled upon the Marseillaise, could only be sung in 
 the streets of Paris to the accompaniment of cannons and gun- 
 shots. Habeneck was the only person who fulfilled his promise 
 to conduct my Columbus Overture at one of the rehearsals for 
 the benefit of Anders and myself. As, however, there was no 
 question of producing this work even at one of the celebrated 
 Conservatoire concerts, I saw clearly that the old gentleman 
 was only moved by kindness and a desire to encourage me. It 
 could not lead to anything further, and I myself was con- 
 vinced that this extremely superficial work of my young days 
 could only give the orchestra a wrong impression of my talents. 
 However, these rehearsals, to my surprise, made such an un- 
 expected impression on me in other ways that they exercised 
 a decisive influence in the crisis of my artistic development. 
 This was due to the fact that I listened repeatedly to Bee- 
 thoven's Ninth Symphony, which, by dint of untiring practice, 
 received such a marvellous interpretation at the hands of this 
 celebrated orchestra, that the picture I had had of it in my 
 mind in the enthusiastic days of my youth now stood before 
 me almost tangibly in brilliant colours, undimmed, as though 
 it had never been effaced by the Leipzig orchestra who had 
 slaughtered it under Pohlenz's baton. Where formerly I had
 
 AN OVERTURE TO FAUST 215 
 
 only seen mystic constellations and weird shapes without mean- 
 ing, I now found, flowing from innumerable sources, a stream 
 of the most touching and heavenly melodies which delighted 
 my heart 
 
 The whole of that period of the deterioration of my musical 
 tastes which dated, practically speaking, from those selfsame 
 confusing ideas about Beethoven, and which had grown so 
 much worse through my acquaintance with that dreadful 
 theatre all these wrong views now sank down as if into an 
 abyss of shame and remorse. 
 
 This inner change had been gradually prepared by many 
 painful experiences during the last few years. I owed the 
 recovery of my old vigour and spirits to the deep impression 
 the rendering of the Ninth Symphony had made on me when 
 performed in a way I had never dreamed of. This important 
 event in my life can only be compared to the upheaval caused 
 within me when, as a youth of sixteen, I saw Schroder-Devrient 
 act in Fidelio. 
 
 The direct result of this was my intense longing to compose 
 something that would give me a similar feeling of satisfaction, 
 and this desire grew in proportion to my anxiety about my 
 unfortunate position in Paris, which made me almost despair 
 of success. 
 
 In this mood I sketched an overture to Faust which, 
 according to my original scheme, was only to form the first 
 part of a whole Faust Symphony, as I had already got 
 the ' Gretchen ' idea in my head for the second movement 
 This is the same composition that I rewrote in several parts 
 fifteen years later; I had forgotten all about it, and I owed 
 its reconstruction to the advice of Liszt, who gave me many 
 valuable hints. This composition has been performed many 
 times under the title of eine Faust-ouveriure, and has met 
 with great appreciation. At the time of which I am speak- 
 ing, I hoped that the Conservatoire orchestra would have 
 been willing to give the work a hearing, but I was told they 
 thought they had done enough for me, and hoped to be rid of 
 me for some time. 
 
 Having failed everywhere, I now turned to Meyerbeer for 
 more introductions, especially to singers. I was very much
 
 216 MY LIFE 
 
 surprised wh'en, in consequence of my request, Meyerbeer intro- 
 duced me to a certain M. Gouin, a post-office official, and 
 Meyerbeer's sole agent in Paris, whom he instructed to do his 
 utmost for me. Meyerbeer specially wished me to know M. 
 Antenor Joly, director of the Theatre de la Renaissance, the 
 musical theatre already mentioned. M. Gouin, with almost 
 suspicious levity, promised me to produce my opera Liebes- 
 verbot, which now only required translation. There was a 
 question of having a few numbers of my opera sung to the 
 committee of the theatre at a special audience. When I 
 suggested that some of the singers of this very theatre should 
 undertake to sing three of the numbers which had been already 
 translated by Dumersan, I was refused on the plea that all 
 these artists were far too busy. But Gouin saw a way out 
 of the difficulty; on the authority of Maitre Meyerbeer, he 
 won over to our cause several singers who were under an 
 obligation to Meyerbeer: Mme. Dorus-Gras, a real prima- 
 donna of the Grand Opera, Mme. Widmann and M. Dupont 
 (the two last-named had previously refused to help me) now 
 promised to sing for me at this audience. 
 
 This much, then, did I achieve in six months. It was now 
 nearly Easter of the year 1840. Encouraged by Gouin's 
 negotiations, which seenied to spell hope, I made up my mind 
 to move from the obscure Quartier des Innocents to a part 
 of Paris nearer to the musical centre; and in this I was 
 
 ' encouraged by Lehrs' foolhardy advice. 
 
 f What this change meant to me, my readers will learn when 
 
 ' they hear under what circumstances we had dragged on our 
 
 \existence during our stay in Paris. 
 
 Although we were living in the cheapest possible way, 
 dining at a very small restaurant for a franc a head, it was 
 impossible to prevent the rest of our money from melting 
 away. Our friend Moller had given us to understand that we 
 could ask him if we were in need, as he would put aside for us 
 the first money that came in from any successful business 
 transaction. There was no alternative but to apply to him for 
 money; in the meantime we pawned all the trinkets we 
 possessed that were of any value. As I was too shy to make 
 inquiries about a pawnshop, I looked up the French equivalent
 
 STRAITENED CIRCUMSTANCES 217 
 
 in the dictionary in order to be able to recognise such a place 
 when I saw it. In my little pocket dictionary I could not find 
 any other word than l Lombard.' On looking at a map of 
 Paris I found, situated in the middle of an inextricable maze 
 of streets, a very small lane called Rue des Lombards. Thither 
 I wended my way, but my expedition was fruitless. Often, 
 on reading by the light of the transparent lanterns the in- 
 scription ( Mont de Piete,' I became very curious to know its 
 meaning, and on consulting my advisory board at home about 
 this ' Mount of Piety/ * I was told, to my great delight, that it 
 was precisely there that I should find salvation. To this ' Mont 
 de Piete ' we now carried all we possessed in the way of silver, 
 namely, our wedding presents. After that followed my wife's 
 trinkets and the rest of her former theatrical wardrobe, amongst 
 which was a beautiful silver-embroidered blue dress with a 
 court train, once the property of the Duchess of Dessau. Still 
 we heard nothing from our friend Moller, and we were obliged 
 to wait on from day to day for the sorely needed help from 
 Konigsberg, and at last, one dark day, we pledged our wedding 
 rings. When all hope of assistance seemed vain, I heard that 
 the pawn-tickets themselves were of some value, as they could 
 be sold to buyers, who thereby acquired the right to redeem 
 the pawned articles. I had to resort even to this, and thus 
 the blue court-dress, for instance, was lost for ever. Moller 
 never wrote again. When later on he called on me at the time 
 of my conductorship in Dresden, he admitted that he had 
 been embittered against me owing to humiliating and deroga- 
 tory remarks we were said to have made about him after we 
 parted, and had resolved not to have anything further to do 
 with us. We were certain of our innocence in the matter, and 
 very grieved at having, through pure slander, lost the chance 
 of such assistance in our great need. 
 
 At the beginning of our pecuniary difficulties we sustained 
 a loss which we looked upon as providential, in spite of the 
 grief it caused us. This was our beautiful dog, which we had 
 managed to bring across to Paris with endless difficulty. As 
 he was a very valuable animal, and attracted much attention, 
 
 1 This is the correct translation of the words Berg der FrSmmigkeit used 
 m the original. EDITOR.
 
 218 MY LIFE 
 
 he had probably been stolen. In spite of the terrible state of 
 the traffic in Paris, he had always found his way home in the 
 same clever manner in which he had mastered the difficulties 
 of the London streets. Quite at the beginning of our stay in 
 Paris he had often gone off by himself to the gardens of the 
 Palais Royal, where he used to meet many of his friends, and 
 had returned safe and sound after a brilliant exhibition of 
 swimming and retrieving before an audience of gutter children. 
 At the Quai du Pont-neuf he generally begged us to let him 
 bathe ; there he used to draw a large crowd of spectators round 
 him, who were so loud in their enthusiasm about the way in 
 which he dived for and brought to land various objects of 
 clothing, tools, etc., that the police begged us to put an end 
 to the obstruction. One morning I let him out for a little run 
 as usual ; he never returned, and in spite of our most strenuous 
 efforts to recover him, no trace of him was to be found. This 
 loss seemed to many of our friends a piece of luck, for they could 
 not understand how it was possible for us to feed such a huge 
 animal when we ourselves had not enough to eat. About this 
 time, the second month of our stay in Paris, my sister Louisa 
 came over from Leipzig to join her husband, Eriedrich Brock- 
 haus, in Paris, where he had been waiting for her for some 
 time. They intended to go to Italy together, and Louisa made 
 use of this opportunity to buy all kinds of expensive things 
 in Paris. I did not expect them to feel any pity for us on 
 account of our foolish removal to Paris, and its attendant 
 miseries, or that they should consider themselves bound to 
 help us in any way; but although we did not try to conceal 
 our position, we derived no benefit from the visit of our rich 
 relations. Minna was even kind enough to help my sister 
 with her luxurious shopping, and we were very anxious not 
 to make them think we wanted to rouse their pity. In return 
 my sister introduced me to an extraordinary friend of hers, 
 who was destined to take a great interest in me. This was the 
 young painter, Ernst Kietz, from Dresden; he was an excep- 
 tionally kind-hearted and unaffected young man, whose talent 
 for portrait painting (in a sort of coloured pastel style) had 
 made him such a favourite in his own town, that he had been 
 induced by his financial successes to come to Paris for a time
 
 E. KIETZ AS A PAINTER 819 
 
 to finish his art studies. He had now been working in De- 
 laroche's studio for about a year. He had a curious and 
 almost childlike disposition, and his lack of all serious educa- 
 tion, combined with a certain weakness of character, had made 
 him choose a career in which he was destined, in spite of all 
 his talent, to fail hopelessly. I had every opportunity of rec- 
 ognising this, as I saw a great deal of him. At the time, 
 however, the simple-hearted devotion and kindness of this 
 young man were very welcome both to myself and my wife, 
 who often felt lonely, and his friendship was a real source of 
 help in our darkest hours of adversity. He became almost a 
 member of the family, and joined our home circle every night, 
 providing a strange contrast to nervous old Anders and the 
 grave-faced Lehrs. His good-nature and his quaint remarks 
 soon made him indispensable to us ; he amused us tremendously 
 with his French, into which he would launch with the greatest 
 confidence, although he could not put together two consecutive 
 sentences properly, in spite of having lived in Paris for twenty 
 years. With Delaroche he studied oil-painting, and had ob- 
 viously considerable talent in this direction, although it was 
 the very rock on which he stranded. The mixing of the colours 
 on his palette, and especially the cleaning of his brushes, took 
 up so much of his time that he rarely came to the actual paint- 
 ing. As the days were very short in midwinter, he never had 
 time to do any work after he had finished washing his palette 
 and brushes, and, as far as I can remember, he never completed 
 a single portrait. Strangers to whom he had been introduced, 
 and who had given him orders to paint their portraits, were 
 obliged to leave Paris without seeing them even half done, 
 and at last he even complained because some of his sitters 
 died before their portraits were completed. His landlord, to 
 whom he was always in debt for rent, was the only creature 
 who succeeded in getting a portrait of his ugly person from 
 the painter, and, as far as I know, this is the only finished 
 portrait in existence by Kietz. On the other hand, he was 
 very clever at making little sketches of any subject suggested 
 by our conversation during the evening, and in these he dis- 
 played both originality and delicacy of execution. During 
 the winter of that year he completed a good pencil portrait
 
 220 MY LIFE 
 
 of me, which he touched up two years afterwards when he 
 knew me more intimately, finishing it off as it now stands. 
 It pleased him to sketch me in the attitude I often assumed 
 during our evening chats when I was in a cheerful mood. 
 No evening ever passed during which I did not succeed in 
 shaking off the depression caused by my vain endeavours, 
 and by the many worries I had gone through during the day, 
 and in regaining my natural cheerfulness, and Kietz was 
 anxious to represent me to the world as a man who, in spite 
 of the hard times he had to face, had confidence in his suc- 
 cess, and rose smiling above the troubles of life. Before the 
 end of the year 1839, my youngest sister Cecilia also arrived 
 in Paris with her husband, Edward Avenarius. It was only 
 natural that she should feel embarrassed at the idea of meeting 
 us in Paris in our extremely straitened circumstances, especi- 
 ally as her husband was not very well off. Consequently, in- 
 stead of calling on them frequently, we preferred waiting until 
 they came to see us, which, by the way, took them a long 
 time. On the other hand, the renewal of our acquaintance with 
 Heinrich Laube, who came over to Paris at the beginning 
 of 1840 with his young wife, Iduna (nee Budaus), was very 
 cheering. She was the widow of a wealthy Leipzig doctor, 
 and Laube had married her under very extraordinary circum- 
 stances, since we last saw him in Berlin; they intended to 
 enjoy themselves for a few months in Paris. During the long 
 period of his detention, while awaiting his trial, this young 
 lady had been so touched by his misfortunes that without 
 knowing much of him, she had shown great sympathy and in- 
 terest in his case. Laube's sentence was pronounced soon after 
 I left Berlin; it was unexpectedly light, consisting of only 
 one year's imprisonment in the town gaol. He was allowed 
 to undergo this term in the prison at Muskau in Silesia, where 
 he had the advantage of being near his friend, Prince Piickler, 
 who in his official capacity, and on account of his influence 
 with the governor of the prison, was permitted to afford the 
 prisoner even the consolation of personal intercourse. 
 
 The young widow resolved to marry him at the beginning of 
 his term of imprisonment, so that she might be near him at 
 Muskau with her loving assistance. To see my old friend
 
 H. HEINE. LATJBE AS A FRIEKD 221 
 
 under such favourable conditions was in itself a pleasure to 
 me ; I also experienced the liveliest satisfaction at finding there 
 was no change in his former sympathetic attitude. We met 
 frequently; our wives also became friends, and Laube was the 
 first to approve in his kindly humorous way of our folly in 
 moving to Paris. 
 
 In his house I made the acquaintance of Heinrich Heine, 
 and both of them joked good-humouredly over my extraordinary 
 position, making even me laugh. Laube felt himself compelled 
 to talk seriously to me about my expectations of succeeding 
 in Paris, as he saw that I treated my situation, based on such 
 trivial hopes, with a humour that charmed him even against 
 his better judgment. He tried to think how he could help 
 me without prejudicing my future. With this object he wanted 
 me to make a more or less plausible sketch of my future plans, 
 so that on his approaching visit to our native land he might 
 procure some help for me. I happened just at that time to 
 have come to an exceedingly promising understanding with 
 the management of the Theatre de la Renaissance. I thus 
 seemed to have obtained a footing, and I thought it safe to 
 assert, that if I were guaranteed the means of livelihood for 
 six months, I could not fail within that period to accomplish 
 something. Laube promised to make this provision, and kept 
 his word. He induced one of his wealthy friends in Leipzig, 
 and, following this example, my well-to-do relations, to provide 
 me for six months with the necessary resources, to be paid 
 in monthly instalments through Avenarius. 
 
 We therefore decided, as I have said, to leave our furnished 
 apartments and take a flat for ourselves in the Rue du Helder. 
 My prudent, careful wife had suffered greatly on account of the 
 careless and uncertain manner in which I had hitherto con- 
 trolled our meagre resources, and in now undertaking the re- 
 sponsibility, she explained that she understood how to keep 
 house more cheaply than we could do by living in furnished 
 rooms and restaurants. Success justified the step; the serious 
 part of the question lay in the fact that we had to start house- 
 keeping without any furniture of our own, and everything 
 necessary for domestic purposes had to be procured, though we 
 had not the v^herewithal to get it. In this matter Lehrs, who
 
 222 MY LIFE 
 
 was well versed in the peculiarities of Parisian life, was able to 
 advise us. In his opinion the only compensation for the ex- 
 periences we had undergone hitherto would be a success equiva- 
 lent to my daring. As I did not possess the resources to allow 
 of long years of patient waiting for success in Paris, I must 
 either count on extraordinary luck or renounce all my hopes 
 forthwith. The longed-for success must come within a year, or 
 I should be ruined. Therefore I must dare all, as befitted my 
 name, for in my case he was not inclined to derive ' Wagner ' l 
 from Fuhrwerk. I was to pay my rent, twelve hundred francs, 
 in quarterly instalments; for the furniture and fittings, he 
 recommended me, through his landlady, to a carpenter who 
 provided everything that was necessary for what seemed to be 
 a reasonable sum, also to be paid by instalments, all of which 
 appeared very simple. Lehrs maintained that I should do 
 no good in Paris unless I showed the world that I had con- 
 fidence in myself. My trial audience was impending; I felt 
 sure of the Theatre de la Renaissance, and Dumersan was keenly 
 anxious to make a complete translation of my Liebesverbot into 
 French. So we decided to run the risk. On 15th April, to 
 the astonishment of the concierge of the house in the Rue 
 du Helder, we moved with an exceedingly small amount of 
 luggage into our comfortable new apartments. 
 
 The very first visit I received in the rooms I had taken with 
 such high hopes was from Anders, who came with the tidings 
 that the Theatre de la Renaissance had just gone bankrupt, 
 and was closed. This news, which came on me like a thunder- 
 clap, seemed to portend more than an ordinary stroke of bad 
 luck; it revealed to me like a flash of lightning the absolute 
 emptiness of my prospects. My friends openly expressed the 
 opinion that Meyerbeer, in sending me from the Grand Opera 
 to this theatre, probably knew the whole of the circumstances. 
 I did not pursue the line of thought to which this supposition 
 might lead, as I felt cause enough for bitterness when I won- 
 dered what I should do with the rooms in which I was so 
 nicely installed. 
 
 As my singers had now practised the portions of Liebes- 
 
 ' Wagner' in German means one who dares, also a Wagoner; and 
 Fuhrwerk 1 means a carriage. EDITOR.
 
 PERFORMANCE BEFORE M. MONNAIE 223 
 
 verbot intended for the trial audience, I was anxious at least 
 to have them performed before some persons of influence. 
 M. Edouard Monnaie, who had been appointed temporary di- 
 rector of the Grand Opera after Duponchel's retirement, was 
 the less disposed to refuse as the singers who were to take part 
 belonged to the institution over which he presided; moreover, 
 there was no obligation attached to his presence at the audience. 
 I also took the trouble to call on Scribe to invite him to attend, 
 and he accepted with the kindest alacrity. At last my three 
 pieces were performed before these two gentlemen in the green 
 room of the Grand Opera, and I played the piano accompani- 
 ment. They pronounced the music charming, and Scribe ex- 
 pressed his willingness to arrange the libretto for me as soon 
 as the managers of the opera had decided on accepting the 
 piece ; all that M. Monnaie had to reply to this offer was that 
 it was impossible for them to do so at present. I did not fail 
 to realise that these were only polite expressions; but at all 
 events I thought it very nice of them, and particularly con- 
 descending of Scribe to have got so far as to think me deserving 
 of a little politeness. 
 
 But in my heart of hearts I felt really ashamed of having 
 gone back again seriously to that superficial early work from 
 which I had taken these three pieces. Of course I had only 
 done this because I thought I should win success more rapidly 
 in Paris by adapting myself to its frivolous taste. My aversion 
 from this kind of taste, which had been long growing, coincided 
 with my abandonment of all hopes of success in Paris. I was 
 placed in an exceedingly melancholy situation by the fact 
 that my circumstances had so shaped themselves that I dared 
 not express this important change in my feelings to any one, 
 especially to my poor wife. But if I continued to make the best 
 of a bad bargain, I had no longer any illusions as to the possi- 
 bility of success in Paris. Face to face with unheard-of misery, 
 I shuddered at the smiling aspect which Paris presented in the 
 bright sunshine of May. It was the beginning of the slack 
 season for any sort of artistic enterprise in Paris, and from 
 every door at which I knocked with feigned hope I was turned 
 away with the wretchedly monotonous phrase, Monsieur est a 
 la campagne.
 
 224 MY LIFE 
 
 On our long walks, when we felt ourselves absolute strangers 
 in the midst of the gay throng, I used to romance to my wife 
 about the South American Free States, far away from all this 
 sinister life, where opera and music were unknown, and the 
 foundations of a sensible livelihood could easily be secured by 
 industry. I told Minna, who was quite in the dark as to my 
 meaning, of a book I had just read, Zschokke's Die Griindung 
 von Maryland, in which I found a very seductive account of the 
 sensation of relief experienced by the European settlers after 
 their former sufferings and persecutions. She, being of a more 
 practical turn of mind, used to point out to me the necessity of 
 procuring means for our continued existence in Paris, for which 
 she had thought out all sorts of economies. 
 
 I, for my part, was sketching out the plan of the poem of 
 my Fliegender Hollander, which I kept steadily before me as 
 a possible means of making a debut in Paris. I put together the 
 material for a single act, influenced by the consideration that 
 I could in this way confine it to the simple dramatic develop- 
 ments between the principal characters, without troubling about 
 the tiresome operatic accessories. From a practical point of 
 view, I thought I could rely on a better prospect for the ac- 
 ceptance of my proposed work if it were cast in the form of a 
 one-act opera, such as was frequently given as a curtain raiser 
 before a ballet at the Grand Opera. I wrote about it to Meyer- 
 beer in Berlin, asking for his help. I also resumed the 
 composition of Rienzi, to the completion of which I was now 
 giving my constant attention. 
 
 In the meantime our position became more and more gloomy ; 
 I was soon compelled to draw in advance on the subsidies 
 obtained by Laube, but in so doing I gradually alienated the 
 sympathy of my brother-in-law Avenarius, to whom our stay 
 in Paris was incomprehensible. 
 
 One morning, when we had been anxiously consulting as to 
 the possibility of raising our first quarter's rent, a carrier ap- 
 peared with a parcel addressed to me from London ; I thought 
 it was an intervention of Providence, and broke open the seal. 
 At the same moment a receipt-book was thrust into my face 
 for signature, in which I at once saw that I had to pay seven 
 franca for carriage. I recognised, moreover, that the parcel
 
 FRL. LEPLAY SHARES OUR HOME 225 
 
 contained my overture Rule Britannia, returned to me from 
 the London Philharmonic Society. In my fury I told the 
 bearer that I would not take in the parcel, whereupon he 
 remonstrated in the liveliest fashion, as I had already opened it. 
 It was no use; I did not possess seven francs, and I told him 
 he should have presented the bill for the carriage before I had 
 opened the parcel. So I made him return the only copy of 
 my overture to Messrs. Laffitte and Gaillard's firm, to do what 
 they liked with it, and I never cared to inquire what became 
 of that manuscript. 
 
 Suddenly Kietz devised a way out of these troubles. He 
 had been commissioned by an old lady of Leipzig, called Frau- 
 lein Leplay, a rich and very miserly old maid, to find a cheap 
 lodging in Paris for her and for his stepmother, with whom she 
 intended to travel. As our apartment, though not spacious, 
 was larger than we actually needed, and had very quickly 
 become a troublesome burden to us, we did not hesitate for a 
 moment to let the larger portion of it to her for the time of her 
 stay in Paris, which was to last about two months. In addition, 
 my wife provided the guests with breakfast, as though they 
 were in furnished apartments, and took a great pride in looking 
 at the few pence she earned in this way. Although we found ' 
 this amazing example of old-maidishness trying enough, the 
 arrangement we had made helped us in some degree to tide 
 over the anxious time, and I was able, in spite of this dis-/ 
 organisation of our household arrangements, to continue work- 
 ing in comparative peace at my Rienzi. 
 
 This became more difficult after Fraulein Leplay's departure, 
 when we let one of our rooms to a German commercial traveller, 
 who in his leisure hours zealously played the flute. His name 
 was Brix ; he was a modest, decent fellow, and had been recom- 
 mended to us by Pecht the painter, whose acquaintance we 
 had recently made. He had been introduced to us by Kietz, 
 who studied with him in Delaroche's studio. He was the very 
 antithesis of Kietz in every way, and obviously endowed with 
 less talent, yet he grappled with the task of acquiring the art 
 of oil-painting in the shortest possible time under difficult 
 circumstances with an industry and earnestness quite out of 
 the common. He was, moreover, well educated, and eagerly
 
 226 MY LIFE 
 
 assimilated information, and was very straightforward, earnest, 
 and trustworthy. Without attaining to the same degree of 
 intimacy with us as our three older friends, he was, neverthe- 
 less, one of the few who continued to stand by us in our 
 troubles, and habitually spent nearly every evening in our 
 company. 
 
 One day I received a fresh surprising proof of Laube's 
 continued solicitude on our behalf. The secretary of a certain 
 Count Kuscelew called on us, and after some inquiry into our 
 affairs, the state of which he had heard from Laube at Karlsbad, 
 informed us in a brief and friendly way that his patron wished 
 to be of use to us, and with that object in view desired to make 
 my acquaintance. In fact, he proposed to engage a small 
 light opera company in Paris, which was to follow him to his 
 Russian estates. He was therefore looking for a musical director 
 of sufficient experience to assist in recruiting the members 
 in Paris. I gladly went to the hotel where the count was 
 staying, and there found an elderly gentleman of frank and 
 agreeable bearing, who willingly listened to my little French 
 compositions. Being a shewd reader of human nature, he 
 saw at a glance that I was not the man for him, and though 
 he showed me the most polite attention, he went no further 
 into the opera scheme. But that very day he sent me, accom- 
 panied by a friendly note, ten golden napoleons, in payment 
 for my services. What these services were I did not know. 
 I thereupon wrote to him, and asked for more precise details 
 of his wishes, and begged him to commission a composition, the 
 fee for which I presumed he had sent in advance. As I received 
 no reply, I made more than one effort to approach him again, 
 but in vain. From other sources I afterwards learned that the 
 only kind of opera Count Kuscelew recognised was Adam's. 
 As for the operatic company to be engaged to suit his taste, 
 what he really wanted was more a small harem than a company 
 of artists. 
 
 So far I had not been able to arrange anything with the 
 music publisher Schlesinger. It was impossible to persuade 
 him to publish my little French songs. In order to do some- 
 thing, however, towards making myself known in this direction, 
 I decided to have my Two Grenadiers engraved by him at my
 
 THE 'TWO GRENADIERS' 227 
 
 own expense. Kietz was to lithograph a magnificent title- 
 page for it. Schlesinger ended by charging me fifty francs for 
 the cost of production. The story of this publication is curious 
 from beginning to end; the work bore Schlesinger's name, and 
 as I had defrayed all expenses, the proceeds were, of course, to 
 be placed to my account. I had afterwards to take the pub- 
 lisher's word for it that not a single copy had been sold. Subse- 
 quently, when I had made a quick reputation for myself in 
 Dresden through my Rienzi, Schott the publisher in Mainz, 
 who dealt almost exclusively in works translated from the 
 French, thought it advisable to bring out a German edition 
 of the Two Grenadiers. Below the text of the French trans- 
 lation he had the German original by Heine printed; but as 
 the French poem was a very free paraphrase, in quite a different 
 metre to the original, Heine's words fitted my composition so 
 badly that I was furious at the insult to my work, and thought 
 it necessary to protest against Schott's publication as an 
 entirely unauthorised reprint. Schott then threatened me 
 with an action for libel, as he said that, according to his agree- 
 ment, his edition was not a reprint (Nachdruck), but a reim- 
 pression (Abdruck). In order to be spared further annoyance, 
 I was induced to send him an apology in deference to the dis- 
 tinction he had drawn, which I did not understand. 
 
 In 1848, when I made inquiries of Schlesinger's successor in 
 Paris (M. Brandus) as to the fate of my little work, I learned 
 from him that a new edition had been published, but he de- 
 clined to entertain any question of rights on my part. Since I 
 did not care to buy a copy with my own money, I have to this 
 day had to do without my own property. To what extent, 
 in later years, others profited by similar transactions relating 
 to the publication of my works, will appear in due course. 
 
 For the moment the point was to compensate Schlesinger for 
 the fifty francs agreed upon, and he proposed that I should do 
 this by writing articles for his Gazette Musicals. 
 
 As I was not expert enough in the French language for 
 literary purposes, my article had to be translated and half 
 the fee had to go to the translator. However, I consoled 
 myself by thinking I should still receive sixty francs per sheet 
 for the work. I was soon to learn, when I presented myself
 
 LIFE 
 
 to the angry publisher for payment, what was meant by a 
 sheet. It was measured by an abominable iron instrument, 
 on which the lines of the columns were marked off with figures ; 
 this was applied to the article, and after careful subtraction 
 of the spaces left for the title and signature, the lines were added 
 up. After this process had been gone through, it appeared 
 that what I had taken for a sheet was only half a sheet. 
 
 So far so good. I began to write articles for Schlesinger's 
 wonderful paper. The first was a long essay, De la musique 
 allemande, in which I expressed with the enthusiastic exaggera- 
 * tion characteristic of me at that time my appreciation of the 
 sincerity and earnestness of German music. This article led 
 my friend Anders to remark that the state of affairs in Germany 
 must, indeed, be splendid if the conditions were really as I 
 described. I enjoyed what was to me the surprising satis- 
 faction of seeing this article subsequently reproduced in Italian, 
 in a Milan musical journal, where, to my amusement, I saw 
 myself described as Dottissimo Musico Tedesco, a mistake 
 which nowadays would be impossible. My essay attracted 
 favourable comment, and Schlesinger asked me to write an 
 article in praise of the arrangement made by the Russian 
 General Lwoff of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater,, which I did as 
 superficially as possible. On my own impulse I then wrote 
 an essay in a still more amiable vein called Du metier du 
 virtuose et de I'independance de la composition. 
 
 In the meantime I was surprised in the middle of the summer 
 by the arrival of Meyerbeer, who happened to come to Paris 
 for a fortnight. He was very sympathetic and obliging. When 
 I told him my idea of writing a one-act opera as a curtain 
 raiser, and asked him to give me an introduction to M. Leon 
 Fillet, the recently appointed manager of the Grand Opera, 
 he at once took me to see him, and presented me to him. But 
 alas, I had the unpleasant surprise of learning from the serious 
 conversation which took place between those two gentlemen 
 as to my future, that Meyerbeer thought I had better decide 
 to compose an act for the ballet in collaboration with another 
 musician. Of course I could not entertain such an idea for a 
 moment. I succeeded, however, in handing over to M. Fillet 
 my brief sketch of the subject of the Flying Dutchman.
 
 'CORNET A PISTONS' 229 
 
 Things had reached this point when Meyerbeer again left 
 Paris, this time for a longer period of absence. 
 
 As I did not hear from M. Pillet for quite a long time, I now 
 began to work diligently at my composition of Rienzi, though, 
 to my great distress, I had often to interrupt this task in order 
 to undertake certain pot-boiling hack-work for Schlesinger. 
 
 As my contributions to the Gazette Musicale proved so 
 unremunerative, Schlesinger one day ordered me to work out 
 a method for the Cornet a pistons. When I told him about my 
 embarrassment, in not knowing how to deal with the subject, 
 he replied by sending me five different published ' Methods ' 
 for the Cornet a pistons, at that time the favourite amateur 
 instrument among the younger male population of Paris. I 
 had merely to devise a new sixth method out of these five, as 
 all Schlesinger wanted was to publish an edition of his own. 
 I was racking my brains how to start, when Schlesinger, who 
 had just obtained a new complete method, released me from 
 the onerous task. I was, however, told to write fourteen 
 ' Suites ' for the Cornet a pistons that is to say, airs out of 
 operas arranged for this instrument. To furnish me with 
 material for this work, Schlesinger sent me no less than sixty 
 complete operas arranged for the piano. I looked them 
 through for suitable airs for my ( Suites/ marked the pages in 
 the volumes with paper strips, and arranged them into a curious- 
 looking structure round my work-table, so that I might have 
 the greatest possible variety of the melodious material within 
 my reach. When I was in the midst of this work, however, 
 to my great relief and to my poor wife's consternation, 
 Schlesinger told me that M. Schlitz, the first cornet player in 
 Paris, who had looked my ' Etudes ' through, preparatory to 
 their being engraved, had declared that I knew absolutely 
 nothing about the instrument, and had generally adopted keys 
 that were too high, which Parisians would never be able to use. 
 The part of the work I had already done was, however, accepted, 
 Schlitz having agreed to correct it, but on condition that I 
 should share my fee with him. The remainder of the work 
 was then taken off my hands, and the sixty pianoforte arrange- 
 ments went back to the curious shop in the Rue Richelieu. 
 
 So my exchequer was again in a sorry plight. The distress-
 
 230 MY LIFE 
 
 ing poverty of my home grew more apparent every day, and 
 yet I was now free to give a last touch to Rienzi, and by the 
 19th of November I had completed this most voluminous of all 
 my operas. I had decided, some time previously, to offer the 
 first production of this work to the Court Theatre at Dresden, 
 so that, in the event of its being a success, I might thus resume 
 my connection with Germany. I had decided upon Dresden 
 as I knew that there I should have in Tichatschek the most 
 suitable tenor for the leading part. I also reckoned on my 
 acquaintance with Schroder-Devrient, who had always been 
 nice to me and who, though her efforts were ineffectual, had 
 been at great pains, out of regard for my family, to get my 
 Feen introduced at the Court Theatre, Dresden. In the 
 secretary of the theatre, Hofrat Winkler (known as Theodor 
 Hell), I also had an old friend of my family, besides which I 
 had been introduced to the conductor, Reissiger, with whom 
 I and my friend Apel had spent a pleasant evening on the 
 occasion of our excursion to Bohemia in earlier days. To all 
 these people I now addressed most respectful and eloquent 
 appeals, wrote out an official note to the director, Herr von 
 Liittichau, as well as a formal petition to the King of Saxony, 
 and had everything ready to send off. 
 
 Meantime, I had not omitted to indicate the exact tempi 
 in my opera by means of a metronome. As I did not possess 
 such a thing, I had to borrow one, and one morning I went 
 out to restore the instrument to its owner, carrying it under 
 my thin overcoat. The day when this occurred was one of 
 the strangest in my life, as it showed in a really horrible way 
 the whole misery of my position at that time. In addition 
 to the fact that I did not know where to look for the few francs 
 wherewith Minna was to provide for our scanty household 
 requirements, some of the bills which, in accordance with the 
 custom in Paris in those days, I had signed for the purpose of 
 fitting up our apartments, had fallen due. Hoping to get help 
 from one source or another, I first tried to get those bills pro- 
 longed by the holders. As such documents pass through many 
 hands, I had to call on all the holders across the length and 
 breadth of the city. That day I was to propitiate a cheese- 
 monger who occupied a fifth-floor apartment in the Cite. I
 
 SUDDEN REAPPEARANCE OF ROBBER 231 
 
 also intended to ask for help from Heinrich, the brother of my 
 brother-in-law, Brockhaus, as he was then in Paris; and I 
 was going to call at Schlesinger's to raise the money to pay for 
 the despatch of my score that day by the usual mail service. 
 
 As I had also to deliver the metronome, I left Minna early 
 in the morning after a sad good-bye. She knew from experi- 
 ence that as I was on a money-raising expedition, she would 
 not see me back till late at night. The streets were enveloped 
 in a dense fog, and the first thing I recognised on leaving 
 the house was my dog Robber, who had been stolen from 
 us a year before. At first I thought it was a ghost, but 
 I called out to him sharply in a shrill voice. The animal 
 seemed to recognise me, and approached me cautiously, 
 but my sudden movement towards him with outstretched 
 arms seemed only to revive memories of the few chastise- 
 ments I had foolishly inflicted on him during the latter 
 part of our association, and this memory prevailed over all 
 others. He drew timidly away from me and, as I followed 
 him with some eagerness, he ran, only to accelerate his 
 speed when he found he was being pursued. I became more 
 and more convinced that he had recognised me, because he 
 always looked back anxiously when he reached a corner; but 
 seeing that I was hunting him like a maniac, he started off 
 again each time with renewed energy. Thus I followed him 
 through a labyrinth of streets, hardly distinguishable in the 
 thick mist, until I eventually lost sight of him altogether, never 
 to see him again. It was near the church of St. Roch, and I, 
 wet with perspiration and quite breathless, was still bearing 
 the metronome. For a while I stood motionless, glaring into 
 the mist, and wondered what the ghostly reappearance of the 
 companion of my travelling adventures on this day might 
 portend! The fact that he had fled from his old master with 
 the terror of a wild beast filled my heart with a strange bitter- 
 ness and seemed to me a horrible omen. Sadly shaken, I set 
 out again, with trembling limbs, upon my weary errand. 
 
 Heinrich Brockhaus told me he could not help me, and I 
 left him. I was sorely ashamed, but made a strong effort to 
 conceal the painfulness of my situation. My other under- 
 takings turned out equally hopeless, and after having been
 
 232 MY LIFE 
 
 kept waiting for hours at Schlesinger's, listening to my em- 
 ployer's very trivial conversations with his callers conver- 
 sations which he seemed purposely to protract I reappeared 
 under the windows of my home long after dark, utterly un- 
 successful. I saw Minna looking anxiously from one of the 
 windows. Half expecting my misfortune she had, in the 
 meantime, succeeded in borrowing a small sum of our lodger 
 and boarder, Brix, the flute-player, whom we tolerated 
 patiently, though at some inconvenience to ourselves, as he 
 was a good-natured fellow. So she was able to offer me at 
 least a comfortable meal. Further help was to come to me 
 subsequently, though at the cost of great sacrifices on my 
 part, owing to the success of one of Donizetti's operas, La 
 Favorita, a very poor work of the Italian maestro's, but 
 welcomed with great enthusiasm by the Parisian public, 
 already so much degenerated. This opera, the success of which 
 was due mainly to two lively little songs, had been acquired 
 by Schlesinger, who had lost heavily over Halevy's last operas. 
 
 Taking advantage of my helpless situation, of which he was 
 well aware, he rushed into our rooms one morning, beaming 
 all over with amusing good-humour, called for pen and ink, 
 and began to work out a calculation of the enormous fees 
 which he had arranged for me ! He put down : ' La Favorita, 
 complete arrangement for pianoforte, arrangement without 
 words, for solo; ditto, for duet; complete arrangement for 
 quartette; the same for two violins; ditto for a Cornet 
 a piston. Total fee, frcs. 1100. Immediate advance in cash, 
 frcs. 500.' I could see at a glance what an enormous amount 
 of trouble this work would involve, but I did not hesitate a 
 moment to undertake it. 
 
 Curiously enough, when I brought home these five hundred 
 francs in hard shining five-franc pieces, and piled them up on 
 the table for our edification, my sister Cecilia Avenarius 
 happened to drop in to see us. The sight of this abundance of 
 wealth seemed to produce a good effect on her, as she had 
 hitherto been rather chary of coming to see us; and after 
 that we used to see rather more of her, and were often invited 
 to dine with them on Sundays. But I no longer cared for any 
 amusements. I was so deeply impressed by my past experi-
 
 STORY FOB THE 'GAZETTE MUSICALE ' 233 
 
 ences that I made up my mind to work through this humiliat- 
 ing, albeit profitable task, with untiring energy, as though it 
 were a penance imposed on me for the expiation of my bygone 
 sins. To save fuel, we limited ourselves to the use of the bed- 
 room, making it serve as a drawing-room, dining-room, and 
 study, as well as dormitory. It was only a step from my bed 
 to my work-table; to be seated at the dining-table, all I had 
 to do was to turn my chair round, and I left my seat altogether 
 only late at night when I wanted to go to bed again. Every 
 fourth day I allowed myself a short constitutional. This 
 penitential process lasted almost all through the winter, and 
 sowed the seeds of those gastric disorders which were to be 
 more or less of a trouble to me for the rest of my life. 
 
 In return for the minute and almost interminable work of 
 correcting the score of Donizetti's opera, I managed to get 
 three hundred francs from Schlesinger, as he could not get 
 any one else to do it. Besides this, I had to find the time to 
 copy out the orchestra parts of my overture to Faust, which I 
 was still hoping to hear at the Conservatoire ; and by the way of 
 counteracting the depression produced by this humiliating 
 occupation, I wrote a short story, Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beet- ' 
 hoven (A Pilgrimage to Beethoven), which appeared in the 
 Gazette Musicale, under the title Une Visite d Beethoven. 
 Schlesinger told me candidly that this little work had created 
 quite a sensation, and had been received with very marked' 
 approval ; and, indeed, it was actually reproduced, either { 
 complete or in parts, in a good many fireside journals. 
 
 He persuaded me to write some more of the same kind ; and 
 in a sequel entitled Das Ende eines Musikers in Paris (Un 
 Nusicien etranger d Paris} I avenged myself for all the mis- 
 fortunes I had had to endure. Schlesinger was not quite so 
 pleased with this as with my first effort, but it received touching 
 signs of approval from his poor assistant; while Heinrich 
 Heine praised it by saying that ' Hoffmann would have been 
 incapable of writing such a thing.' Even Berlioz was touched 
 by it, and spoke of the story very favourably in one of his 
 articles in the Journal des Debats. He also gave me signs of 
 his sympathy, though only during a conversation, after the 
 appearance of another of my musical articles entitled Ueber
 
 234 MY LIFE 
 
 die Ouvertiire (Concerning Overtures), mainly because I had 
 illustrated my principle by pointing to Gluck's overture to 
 Iphigenia in Aidis as a model for compositions of this class. 
 ( Encouraged by these signs of sympathy, I felt anxious to 
 become more intimately acquainted with Berlioz. I had been 
 introduced to him some time previously at Schlesinger's office, 
 i where we used to meet occasionally. I had presented him 
 with a copy of my Two Grenadiers, but could, however, never 
 learn any more from him concerning what he really thought of 
 it than the fact that as he could only strum a little on the 
 guitar, he was unable to play the music of my composition to 
 himself on the piano. During the previous winter I had often 
 heard his grand instrumental pieces played under his own 
 direction, and had been most favourably impressed by them. 
 During that winter (1839-40) he conducted three performances 
 of his new symphony, Romeo and Juliet, at one of which I was 
 present. 
 
 All this, to be sure, was quite a new world to me, and I was 
 desirous of gaining some unprejudiced knowledge of it. At 
 first the grandeur and masterly execution of the orchestral part 
 almost overwhelmed me. It was beyond anything I could 
 have conceived. The fantastic daring, the sharp precision 
 with which the boldest combinations almost tangible in their 
 clearness impressed me, drove back my own ideas of the 
 poetry of music with brutal violence into the very depths of 
 my soul. I was simply all ears for things of which till then 
 I had never dreamt, and which I felt I must try to realise. 
 True, I found a great deal tKat was empty and shallow in his 
 Romeo and Juliet, a work that lost much by its length and 
 form of combination; and this was the more painful to me 
 seeing that, on the other hand, I felt overpowered by many 
 really bewitching passages which quite overcame any objections 
 on my part. 
 
 During the same winter Berlioz produced his Sinfonie 
 Fantastique and his Harold ('Harold en Italic'). I was 
 also much impressed by these works; the musical genre- 
 pictures woven into the first-named symphony were particu- 
 larly pleasing, while Harald delighted me in almost every 
 ( respect.
 
 BERLIOZ 235 
 
 It was, however, the latest work of this wonderful master, 
 his Trauer-Symphonie fur die Opfer der JulirRevolution 
 (Grande Symphonic Funebre et Triomphale), most skilfully 
 composed for massed military bands during the summer of 
 1840 for the anniversary of the obsequies of the July heroes, 
 and conducted by him under the column of the Place de lai 
 Bastille, which had at last thoroughly convinced me of the 
 greatness and enterprise of this incomparable artist. But 
 while admiring this genius, absolutely unique in his methods, 
 I could never quite shake off a certain peculiar feeling of 
 anxiety. His works left me with a sensation as of something ' 
 strange, something with which I felt I should never be able 
 to be familiar, and I was often puzzled at the strange fact that, 
 though ravished by his compositions, I was at the same time' 
 repelled and even wearied by them. It was only much later t 
 that I succeeded in clearly grasping and solving this problem, 
 which for years exercised such a painful spell over me. 
 
 It is a fact that at that time I felt almost like a little school- 
 boy by the side of Berlioz. Consequently I was really embar- 
 rassed when Schlesinger, determined to make good use of the 
 success of my short story, told me he was anxious to produce 
 some of my orchestral compositions at a concert arranged by 
 the editor of the Gazette Musicale. I realised that none of my 
 available works would in any way be suitable for such an 
 occasion. I was not quite confident as to my Faust Overture 
 because of its zephyr-like ending, which I presumed could only 
 be appreciated by an audience already familiar with my 
 methods. When, moreover, I learned that I should have only 
 a second-rate orchestra the Valentino from the Casino, Rue 
 St. Honore and, moreover, that there could be only one' 
 rehearsal, my only alternative lay between declining altogether, 
 or making another trial with my Columbus Overture, the work 
 composed in my early days at Magdeburg. I adopted the latter) 
 course. 
 
 When I went to fetch the score of this composition from 
 Habeneck, who had it stored among the archives of the Con- 
 servatoire, he warned me somewhat dryly, though not without 
 kindness, of the danger of presenting this work to the Parisian 
 public, as, to use his own words, it was too ' vague.' One
 
 236 MY LIFE 
 
 great objection was the difficulty of finding capable musicians 
 for the six cornets required, as the music for this instrument, 
 so skilfully played in Germany, could hardly, if ever, be satis- 
 factorily executed in Paris. Herr Schlitz, the corrector of my 
 1 Suites ' for Cornet a piston, offered his assistance. I was 
 compelled to reduce my six cornets to four, and he told me that 
 only two of these could be relied on. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the attempts made at the rehearsal to 
 produce those very passages on which the effect of my work 
 chiefly depended were very discouraging. Not once were the 
 soft high notes played but they were flat or altogether wrong. 
 In addition to this, as I was not going to be allowed to conduct 
 the work myself, I had to rely upon a conductor who, as I was 
 well aware, had fully convinced himself that my composition 
 was the most utter rubbish an opinion that seemed to be 
 shared by the whole orchestra. Berlioz, who was present all 
 the rehearsal, remained silent throughout. - He gave me no 
 encouragement, though he did not dissuade me. He merely 1 
 said afterwards, with a weary smile, l that it was very difficult! 
 to get on in Paris.' 
 
 On the night of the performance (4th February 1841) the 
 audience, which was largely composed of subscribers to the 
 Gazette Musicale, and to whom, therefore, my literary successes 
 were not unknown, seemed rather favourably disposed towards 
 me. I was told later on that my overture, however wearisome 
 it had been, would certainly have been applauded if those 
 unfortunate cornet players, by continually failing to produce 
 the effective passages, had not excited the public almost to 
 the point of hostility; for Parisians, for the most part, care 
 only for the skilful parts of performances, as, for instance, for 
 the faultless production of difficult tones. I was clearly con- ' 
 scious of my complete failure. After this misfortune Paris 
 no longer existed for me, and all I had to do was to go back 
 to my miserable bedroom and resume my work of arranging 
 Donizetti's operas. 
 
 So great was my renunciation of the world that, like a 
 penitent, I no longer shaved, and to my wife's annoyance, for 
 the first and only time in my life allowed my beard to grow 
 quite long. I tried to bear everything patiently, and the only
 
 LIFE AT RUE DU HELDER 237 
 
 thing that threatened really to drive me to despair was a 
 pianist in the room adjoining ours who during the livelong day 
 practised Liszt's fantasy on Lucia di Lammermoor. I had 
 to put a stop to this torture, so, to give him an idea of what he 
 made us endure, one day I moved our own piano, which was 
 terribly out of tune, close up to the party wall. Then Brix 
 with his piccolo-flute played the piano-and-violin (or flute) 
 arrangement of the Favorita Overture I had just completed, 
 while I accompanied him on the piano. The effect on our 
 neighbour, a young piano-teacher, must have been appalling. 
 The concierge told me the next day that the poor fellow was 
 leaving, and, after all, I felt rather sorry. 
 
 The wife of our concierge had entered into a sort of arrange- 
 ment with us. At first we had occasionally availed ourselves 
 of her services, especially in the kitchen, also for brushing 
 clothes, cleaning boots, and so on; but even the slight outlay 
 that this involved was eventually too heavy for us, and after 
 having dispensed with her services, Minna had to suffer the 
 humiliation of doing the whole work of the household, even the 
 most menial part of it, herself. As we did not like to mention 
 this to Brix, Minna was obliged, not only to do all the cooking 
 and washing up, but even to clean our lodger's boots as well. 
 What we felt most, however, was the thought of what the 
 concierge and his wife would think of us ; but we were mistaken, 
 for they only respected us the more, though of course we could 
 not avoid a little familiarity at times. Now and then, there- 
 fore, the man would have a chat with me on politics. When 
 the Quadruple Alliance against France had been concluded, 
 and the situation under Thiers' ministry was regarded as very 
 critical, my concierge tried to reassure me one day by saying: 
 1 Monsieur, il y a quatre Tiommes en Europe qui s'appellent: le roi 
 Louis Philippe, I'empereur d'Autriche, I'empereur de Russie, 
 le roi de Prusse; eh bien, ces quaire sont des c . . .; et nous 
 n'aurons pas la guerre/ 
 
 Of an evening I very seldom lacked entertainment; but the 
 few faithful friends who came to see me had to put up with my 
 going on scribbling music till late in the night. Once they 
 prepared a touching surprise for me in the form of a little 
 party which they arranged for New Year's Eve (1840). Lehrs
 
 238 MY LIFE 
 
 arrived at dusk, rang the bell, and brought a leg of veal ; Kietz 
 brought some rum, sugar, and a lemon ; Pecht supplied a goose ; 
 and Anders two bottles of the champagne with which he had 
 been presented by a musical instrument-maker in return for a 
 flattering article he had written about his pianos. Bottles 
 from that stock were produced only on very great occasions. 
 I soon threw the confounded Favorita aside, therefore, and 
 entered enthusiastically into the fun. 
 
 We all had to assist in the preparations, to light the fire in 
 the salon, give a hand to my wife in the kitchen, and get what 
 was wanted from the grocer. The supper developed into a 
 dithyrambic orgy. When the champagne was drunk, and the 
 punch began to produce its effects, I delivered a fiery speech 
 which so provoked the hilarity of the company that it seemed 
 as though it would never end. I became so excited that I first 
 mounted a chair, and then, by way of heightening the effect, 
 at last stood on the table, thence to preach the maddest gospel 
 of the contempt of life together with a eulogy on the South 
 American Free States. My charmed listeners eventually broke 
 into such fits of sobs and laughter, and were so overcome, that 
 we had to give them all shelter for the night their condition 
 making it impossible for them to reach their own homes in 
 safety. On New Year's Day (1841) I was again busy with my 
 Favorita. 
 
 I remember another similar though far less boisterous feast, 
 on the occasion of a visit paid us by the famous violinist Vieux- 
 temps, an old schoolfellow of Kietz's. We had the great 
 pleasure of hearing the young virtuoso, who was then greatly 
 feted in Paris, play to us charmingly for a whole evening a 
 performance which lent my little salon an unusual touch of 
 ' fashion.' Kietz rewarded him for his kindness by carrying 
 him on his shoulders to his hotel close by. 
 
 We were hard hit in the early part of this year by a mistake 
 I made owing to my ignorance of Paris customs. It seemed 
 to us quite a matter of course that we should wait until the 
 proper quarter-day to give notice to our landlady. So I called 
 on the proprietress of the house, a rich young widow living in 
 one of her own houses in the Marias quarter. She received me, 
 but seemed much embarrassed, and said she would speak to
 
 DEPARTURE FOR MEUDON (1841) 239 
 
 her agent about the matter, and eventually referred me to 
 him. The next day I was informed by letter that my notice 
 would have been valid had it been given two days earlier. 
 By this omission I had rendered myself liable, according to the 
 agreement, for another year's rent. Horrified by this news, 
 I went to see the agent himself, and after having been kept 
 waiting for a long time as a matter of fact they would not let 
 me in at all I found an elderly gentleman, apparently crippled 
 by some very painful malady, lying motionless before me. I 
 frankly told him my position, and begged him most earnestly 
 to release me from my agreement, but I was merely told that 
 the fault was mine, and not his, that I had given notice a day 
 too late, and consequently that I must find the rent for the 
 next year. My concierge, to whom, with some emotion, I 
 related the story of this occurrence, tried to soothe me by 
 saying: ' J'aurais pu vous dire cela, car voyez, monsieur, cet 
 homme ne vaut pas I'eau qu'il boit/ 
 
 This entirely unforeseen misfortune destroyed our last hopes 
 of getting out of our disastrous position. We consoled our- 
 selves for awhile with the hope of finding another lodger, but 
 the fates were once more against us. Easter came, the new 
 term began, and our prospects were as hopeless as ever. At 
 last our concierge recommended us to a family who were willing 
 to take the whole of our apartment, furniture included, off our 
 hands for a few months. We gladly accepted this offer; for, 
 at any rate, it ensured the payment of the rent for the ensuing 
 quarter. We thought if only we could get away from this 
 unfortunate place we should find some way of getting rid of 
 it altogether. We therefore decided to find a cheap summer 
 residence for ourselves in the outskirts of Paris. 
 
 Meudon had been mentioned to us as an inexpensive summer 
 resort, and we selected an apartment in the avenue which 
 joins Meudon to the neighbouring village of Bellevme. We 
 left full authority with our concierge as to our rooms in Rue du 
 Helder, and settled down in our new temporary abode as well 
 as we could. Old Brix, the good-natured flutist, had to stay 
 with us again, for, owing to the fact that his usual receipts 
 had been delayed, he would have been in great straits had 
 we refused to give him shelter. The removal of our scanty
 
 240 MY LIFE 
 
 possessions took place on the 29th of April, and was, after all, 
 no more than a flight from the impossible into the unknown, for 
 how we were going to live during the following summer we had 
 not the faintest idea. Schlesinger had no work for me, and no 
 other sources were available. 
 
 The only help we could hope for seemed to lie in journalistic 
 work which, though rather unremunerative, had indeed given 
 me^the opportunity of making a little success. During the 
 previous winter I had written a long article on Weber's 
 Freischiitz for the Gazette Musicale. This was intended to 
 prepare the way for the forthcoming first performance of this 
 opera, after recitatives from the pen of Berlioz had been added 
 to it. The latter was apparently far from pleased at my article. 
 In the article I could not help referring to Berlioz's absurd 
 idea of polishing up this old-fashioned musical work by adding 
 ingredients that spoiled its original characteristics, merely in 
 order to give it an appearance suited to the luxurious repertoire 
 of Opera House. The fact that the result fully justified my 
 forecasts did not in the least tend to diminish the ill-feeling I 
 had roused among all those concerned in the production; but 
 I had the satisfaction of hearing that the famous George Sand 
 had noticed my article. She commenced the introduction to 
 a legendary story of French provincial life by repudiating 
 certain doubts as to the ability of the French people to under- 
 stand the mystic, fabulous element which, as I had shown, 
 was displayed in such a masterly manner in Freischiitz, and 
 she pointed to my article as clearly explaining the characteristics 
 of that opera. 
 
 Another journalistic opportunity arose out of my endeavours 
 to secure the acceptance of my Rienzi by the Court Theatre 
 at Dresden. Herr Winkler, the secretary of that theatre, 
 whom I have already mentioned, regularly reported progress; 
 but as editor of the Abendzeitung, a paper then rather on the 
 wane, he seized the opportunity presented by our negotiations 
 in order to ask me to send him frequent and gratuitous con- 
 tributions. The consequence was, that whenever I wanted 
 to know anything concerning the fate of my opera, I had to 
 oblige him by enclosing an article for his paper. Now, as 
 these negotiations with the Court Theatre lasted a very long
 
 GROWING DISLIKE OF PAKIS 241 
 
 time, and involved a large number of contributions from me, 
 I often got into the most extraordinary fixes simply owing to 
 the fact that I was now once more a prisoner in my room, and 
 had been so for some time, and therefore knew nothing of what 
 was going on in Paris. 
 
 I had serious reasons for thus withdrawing from the artistic 
 and social life of Paris. My own painful experiences and my 
 disgust at all the mockery of that kind of life, once so attractive : 
 to me and yet so alien to my education, had quickly driven me I 
 away from everything connected with it. It is true that the \ 
 production of the Huguenots, for instance, which I then heard 
 for the first time, dazzled me very much indeed. Its beautiful 
 orchestral execution, and the extremely careful and effective 
 mise en scene, gave me a grand idea of the great possibilities 
 of such perfect and definite artistic means. But, strange to 
 say, I never felt inclined to hear the same opera again. I 
 soon became tired of the ^xtravagant execution of the vocalists, 
 and I often amused my friends exceedingly by imitating the 
 latest Parisian methods and the vulgar exaggerations with 
 which the performances teemed. Those composers, moreover, 
 who aimed at achieving success by adopting the style which 
 was then in vogue, could not help, either, incurring my sarcastic 
 criticism. The last shred of esteem which I still tried to 
 retain for the ' first lyrical theatre in the world ' was at last 
 rudely destroyed when I saw how such an empty, altogether 
 un-French work as Donizetti's Favorita could secure so long 
 and important a run at this theatre. 
 
 During the whole time of my stay in Paris I do not think , 
 I went to the opera more than four times. The cold produc- 
 tions at the Opera Comique, and the degenerate quality of the 
 music produced there, had repelled me from the start ; and the 
 same lack of enthusiasm displayed by the singers also drove 
 me from Italian opera. The names, often very famous ones, 
 of these artists who sang the same four operas for years could 
 not compensate me for the complete absence of sentiment 
 which characterised their performance, so unlike that of 
 Schroder-Devrient, which I so thoroughly enjoyed. I clearly 
 saw that everything was on the down grade, and yet I cherished 
 no hope or desire to see this state of decline superseded by a
 
 242 MY LIFE 
 
 period of newer and fresher life. I preferred the small theatres, 
 where French talent was shown in its true light; and yet, as 
 the result of my own longings, I was too intent upon finding 
 points of relationship in them which would excite my sym- 
 pathy, for it to be possible for me to realise those peculiar 
 excellences in them which did not happen to interest me at all. 
 Besides, from the very beginning my own troubles had proved 
 so trying, and the consciousness of the failure of my Paris 
 schemes had become so cruelly apparent, that, either out of 
 indifference or annoyance, I declined all invitations to the 
 theatres. Again and again, much to Minna's regret, I returned 
 tickets for performances in which Rachel was to appear at the 
 Theatre Frangais, and, in fact, saw that famous theatre only 
 once, when, some time later, I had to go there on business for 
 my Dresden patron, who wanted some more articles. 
 
 I adopted the most shameful means for filling the columns 
 of the Abendzeitung ; I just strung together whatever I 
 happened to hear in the evening from Anders and Lehrs. But 
 as they had no very exciting adventures either, they simply 
 told me all they had picked up from papers and table-talk, and 
 this I tried to render with as much piquancy as possible in 
 accordance with the journalistic style created by Heine, which 
 was all the rage at the time. My one fear was lest old Hofrath 
 Winkler should some day discover the secret of my wide know- 
 ledge of Paris. Among other things which I sent to his declin- 
 ing paper was a long account of the production of Freischiitz. 
 He was particularly interested in it, as he was the guardian of 
 Weber's children ; and when in one of his letters he assured me 
 that he would not rest until he had got the definite assurance 
 that Rienzi had been accepted, I sent him, with my most 
 profuse thanks, the German manuscript of my ' Beethoven ' 
 story for his paper. The 1841 edition of this gazette, then 
 published by Arnold, but now no longer in existence, contains 
 the only print of this manuscript. 
 
 My occasional journalistic work was increased by a request 
 from Lewald, the editor of Europa, a literary monthly, asking 
 me to write something for him. This man was the first who, 
 from time to time, had mentioned my name to the public. As 
 he used to publish musical supplements to his elegant and
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO LEWALD'S 'EUROPA' 243 
 
 rather widely read magazine, I sent him two of my composi- 
 tions from Konigsberg for publication. One of these was the 
 music I had set to a melancholy poem by Scheuerlin, entitled 
 Der Kndbe und der Tannenbaum (a work of which even to-day 
 I am still proud), and my beautiful Carnevals Lied out of 
 Liebesverbot. 
 
 When I wanted to publish my little French compositions 
 Dors, mon enfant, and the music to Hugo's Attente an4 
 Ronsard's Mignonne Lewald not only sent me a small fed 
 the first I had ever received for a composition but com- 
 missioned some long articles on my Paris impressions, which 
 he begged me to write as entertainingly as possible. For his 
 paper I wrote Pariser Amusements and Pariser Fatalitaten, 
 in which I gave vent in a humorous style, a la Heine, to all 
 my disappointing experiences in Paris, and to all my contempt 
 for the life led by its inhabitants. In the second I described 
 the existence of a certain Hermann Pfau, a strange good-for- 
 nothing with whom, during my early Leipzig days, I had 
 become more intimately acquainted than was desirable. This 
 man had been wandering about Paris like a vagrant ever since 
 the beginning of the previous winter, and the meagre income 
 I derived from arrangements of La Favorita was often partly 
 consumed in helping this completely broken-down fellow. So 
 it was only fair that I should get back a few francs of the 
 money spent on him in Paris by turning his adventures to 
 some account in Lewald's newspapers. 
 
 When I came into contact with Leon Pillet, the manager of 
 the Opera, my literary work took yet another direction. After 
 numerous inquiries I eventually discovered that he had taken 
 a fancy to my draft of the Fliegender Hollander. He informed 
 me of this, and asked me to sell him the plot, as he was under 
 contract to supply various composers with subjects for oper- 
 ettas. I tried to explain to Pillet, both verbally and in writing, 
 that he could hardly expect that the plot would be properly 
 treated except by myself, as this draft was in fact my own 
 idea, and that it had only come to his knowledge by my having 
 submitted it to him. But it was all to no purpose. He was 
 obliged to admit quite frankly that the expectations I had 
 cherished as to the result of Meyerbeer's recommendation to
 
 244 MY LIFE 
 
 him would not come to anything. He said there was no 
 likelihood of my getting a commission for a composition, even 
 of a light opera, for the next seven years, as his already existing 
 contracts extended over that period. He asked me to be 
 sensible, and to sell him the draft for a small amount, so that 
 he might have the music written by an author to be selected 
 by him ; and he added that if I still wished to try my luck at 
 the Opera House, I had better see the ' ballet-master,' as he 
 might want some music for a certain dance. Seeing that I 
 contemptuously refused this proposal, he left me to my own 
 devices. 
 
 After endless and unsuccessful attempts at getting the 
 matter settled, I at last begged Edouard Monnaie, the Com- 
 missaire for the Royal Theatres, who was not only a friend 
 of mine, but also editor of the Gazette Musicale, to act as 
 mediator. He candidly confessed that he could not understand 
 Fillet's liking for my plot, which he also was acquainted 
 with ; but as Pillet seemed to like it though he would prob- 
 ably lose it he advised me to accept anything for it, as 
 Monsieur Paul Faucher, a brother-in-law of Victor Hugo's, 
 had had an offer to work out the scheme for a similar libretto. 
 This gentleman had, moreover, declared that there was nothing 
 new in my plot, as the story of the Vaisseau Fantome was well 
 known in France. I now saw how I stood, and, in a conversa- 
 tion with Pillet, at which M. Faucher was present, I said I 
 would come to an arrangement. My plot was generously 
 estimated by Pillet at five hundred francs, and I received that 
 amount from the cash office at the theatre, to be subsequently 
 deducted from the author's rights of the future poet. 
 
 Our summer residence in the Avenue de Meudon now 
 assumed quite a definite character. These five hundred francs 
 had to help me to work out the words and music of my 
 Fliegender Hollander for Germany, while I abandoned the 
 French Vaisseau Fantome to its fate. 
 
 The state of my affairs, which was getting ever worse and 
 worse, was slightly improved by the settlement of this matter. 
 May and June had gone by, and during these months our 
 troubles had grown steadily more serious. The lovely season 
 of the year, the stimulating country air, and the sensation of
 
 245 
 
 freedom following upon my deliverance from the wretchedly 
 paid musical hack-work I had had to do all the winter, 
 wrought their beneficial effects on me, and I was inspired to 
 write a small story entitled Ein glucTdicher Abend. This was 
 translated and published in French in the Gazette Musicale. 
 Soon, however, our lack of funds began to make itself felt 
 with a severity that was very discouraging. We felt this all 
 the more keenly when my sister Cecilia and her husband, 
 following our example, moved to a place quite close to us. 
 Though not wealthy, they were fairly well-to-do. They came 
 to see us every day, but we never thought it desirable to 
 let them know how terribly hard-up we were. One day it 
 came to a climax. Being absolutely without money, I started 
 out, early one morning, to walk to Paris for I had not even 
 enough to pay the railway fare thither and I resolved to 
 wander about the whole day, trudging from street to street, 
 even until late in the afternoon, in the hope of raising a five- 
 franc piece; but my errand proved absolutely vain, and I had 
 to walk all the way back to Meudon again, utterly penniless. 
 
 When I told Minna, who came to meet me, of my failure, 
 she informed me in despair that Hermann Pfau, whom I have 
 mentioned before, had also come to us in the most pitiful 
 plight, and actually in want of food, and that she had had to give 
 him the last of the bread delivered by the baker that morning. 
 The only hope that now remained was that, at any rate, my 
 lodger Brix, who by a singular fate was now our companion 
 in misfortune, would return with some success from the expedi- 
 tion to Paris which he also had made that morning. At last 
 he, too, returned bathed in perspiration and exhausted, driven 
 home by the craving for a meal, which he had been unable to 
 procure in the town, as he could not find any of the acquaint- 
 ances he went to see. He begged most piteously for a piece 
 of bread. This climax to the situation at last inspired my wife 
 with heroic resolution ; for she felt it her duty to exert herseli 
 to appease at least the hunger of her menfolk. For the first time 
 during her stay on French soil, she persuaded the baker, the' 
 butcher, and wine-merchant, by plausible arguments, to supply 
 her with the necessaries of life without immediate cash pay- 
 ment, and Minna's eyes beamed when, an hour later, she was
 
 246 MY LIFE 
 
 able to put before us an excellent meal, during whicb, as it 
 happened, we were surprised by the Avenarius family, who 
 were evidently relieved at finding us so well provided for. 
 
 This extreme distress was relieved for a time, at the beginning 
 of July, by the sale of my Vaisseau Fantome, which meant my 
 final renunciation of my success in Paris. As long as the 
 five hundred francs lasted, I had an interval of respite for 
 carrying on my work. The first object on which I spent my 
 money was on the hire of a piano, a thing of which I had been 
 entirely deprived for months. My chief intention in so doing 
 was to revive my faith in myself as a musician, as, ever since 
 the autumn of the previous year, I had exercised my talents as 
 a journalist and adapter of operas only. The libretto of the 
 Fliegender Hollander, which I had hurriedly written during the 
 recent period of distress, aroused considerable interest in Lehrs ; 
 he actually declared I would never write anything better, 
 and that the Fliegender Hollander would be my Don Juan; 
 the only thing now was to find the music for it. As towards 
 the end of the previous winter I still entertained the hopes of 
 being permitted to treat this subject for the French Opera, 
 I had already finished some of the words and music of the lyric 
 parts, and had had the libretto translated by mile Deschamps, 
 intending it for a trial performance, which, alas, never took 
 place. These parts were the ballad of Senta, the song of the 
 Norwegian sailors, and the ' Spectre Song ' of the crew of the 
 Fliegender Hollander. Since that time I had been so violently 
 torn away from the music that, when the piano arrived at my 
 rustic retreat, I did not dare to touch it for a whole day. I 
 was terribly afraid lest I should discover that my insju 
 had left me when suddenly I was seized with the idea that 
 had forgotten to write out the song of the helmsman in the 
 first act, although, as a matter of fact, I could not remember 
 having composed it at all, as I had in reality only just written 
 the lyrics. I succeeded, and was pleased with the result. 
 The same thing occurred with the ' Spinner's Song,' and when 
 I had written out these two pieces, and, on further reflection, 
 could not help admitting that they had really only taken shape 
 in my mind at that moment, I was quite delirious with joy 
 at the discovery. In seven weeks the whole of the music
 
 THE VERSATILE M. JADIN 247 
 
 of the Fliegender Hollander, except the orchestration, was 
 finished. 
 
 Thereupon followed a general revival in our circle; my 
 exuberant good spirits astonished every one, and my Avenarius 
 relations in particular thought I must really be prospering, as 
 I was such good company. I resumed my long walks in the 
 woods of Meudon, frequently even consenting to help Minna 
 gather mushrooms, which, unfortunately, were for her the chief 
 charm of our woodland retreat, though it filled our landlord 
 with terror when he saw us returning with our spoils, as he felt 
 sure we should be poisoned if we ate them. 
 
 My destiny, which almost invariably led me into strange 
 adventures, here once more introduced me to the most eccentric 
 character to be found not only in the neighbourhood of Meudon, 
 but even in Paris. This was M. Jadin, who, though he was 
 old enough to be able to say that he remembered seeing Madame 
 de Pompadour at Versailles, was still vigorous beyond belief. 
 It appeared to be his aim to keep the world in a constant state 
 of conjecture as to his real age ; he made everything for himself 
 with his own hands, including even a quantity of wigs of every 
 shade, ranging in the most comic variety from youthful flaxen 
 to the most venerable white, with intermediate shades of grey ; 
 these he wore alternately, as the fancy pleased him. He 
 dabbled in everything, and I was pleased to find he had a 
 particular fancy for painting. The fact that all the walls of 
 his rooms were hung with the most childish caricatures of animal 
 life, and that he had even embellished the outside of his blinds 
 with the most ridiculous paintings, did not disconcert me in 
 the least; on the contrary, it confirmed my belief that he did 
 not dabble in music, until, to my horror, I discovered that the 
 strangely discordant sounds of a harp which kept reaching my 
 ears from some unknown region were actually proceeding from 
 his basement, where he had two harpsichords of his own inven- 
 tion. He informed me that he had unfortunately neglected 
 playing them for a long time, but that he now meant to begin 
 practising again assiduously in order to give me pleasure. I 
 succeeded in dissuading him from this, by assuring him that the 
 doctor had forbidden me to listen to the harp, as it was bad for 
 my nerves. His figure as I saw him for the last time remains
 
 248 MY LIFE 
 
 impressed on my memory, like an apparition from the world 
 of Hoffmann's fairy-tales. In the late autumn, when we were 
 going back to Paris, he asked us to take with us on our furniture 
 van an enormous stove-pipe, of which he promised to relieve us 
 shortly. One very cold day Jadin actually presented himself 
 at our new abode in Paris, in a most preposterous costume 
 of his own manufacture, consisting of very thin light-yellow 
 trousers, a very short pale-green dress-coat with conspicuously 
 long tails, projecting lace shirt frills and cuffs, a very fair wig, 
 and a hat so small that it was constantly dropping off; he 
 wore in addition a quantity of imitation jewellery and all this 
 on the undisguised assumption that he could not go about in 
 fashionable Paris dressed as simply as in the country. He 
 had come for the stove-pipe; we asked him where the men to 
 carry it were; in reply he simply smiled, and expressed his 
 surprise at our helplessness; and thereupon took the enormous 
 stove-pipe under his arm and absolutely refused to accept our 
 help when we offered to assist him in carrying it down the 
 stairs, though this operation, notwithstanding his vaunted 
 skill, occupied him quite half an hour. Every one in the house 
 assembled to witness this removal, but he was by no means 
 disconcerted, and managed to get the pipe through the street 
 door, and then tripped gracefully along the pavement with it, 
 and disappeared from our sight. 
 
 For this short though eventful period, during which I was 
 quite free to give full scope to my inmost thoughts, I indulged 
 in the consolation of purely artistic creations. I can only say 
 that, when it came to an end, I had made such progress that I 
 could look forward with cheerful composure to the much longer 
 period of trouble and distress I felt was in store for me. This, 
 in fact, duly set in, for I had only just completed the last scene 
 when I found that my five hundred francs were coming to an 
 end, and what was left was not sufficient to secure me the 
 necessary peace and freedom from worry for composing the 
 overture; I had to postpone this until my luck should take 
 another favourable turn, and meanwhile I was forced to engage 
 in the struggle for a bare subsistence, making efforts of all kinds 
 that left me neither leisure nor peace of mind. The concienre 
 from the Rue du Helder brought us the news that the mysterious
 
 'FLIEGENDER HOLLANDER' 249 
 
 J*-*-* 1 *-^*-*'-^* 
 
 family to whom we had let our rooms had left, and that we were 
 now once more responsible for the rent. I had to tell him that 
 I would not under any circumstances trouble about the rooms' 
 any more, and that the landlord might recoup himself by the 
 sale of the furniture we had left there. This was done at a 
 very heavy loss, and the furniture, the greater part of which 
 was still unpaid for, was sacrificed to pay the rent of a dwelling 
 which we no longer occupied. 
 
 Under the stress of the most terrible privations I still en- 
 deavoured to secure sufficient leisure for working out the or- 
 chestration of the score of the Fliegender Hollcmder. The rough 
 autumn weather set in at an exceptionally early date; people 
 were all leaving their country houses for Paris, and, among them, 
 the Avenarius family. We, however, could not dream of doing 
 so, for we could not even raise the funds for the journey. When 
 M. Jadin expressed his surprise at this, I pretended to be so 
 pressed with work that I could not interrupt it, although I felt 
 the cold that penetrated through the thin walls of the house 
 very severely. 
 
 So I waited for help from Ernst Castel, one of my old Konigs- 
 berg friends, a well-to-do young merchant, who a short time be- 
 fore had called on us in Meudon and treated us to a luxurious 
 repast in Paris, promising at the same time to relieve our neces- 
 sities as soon as possible by an advance, which we knew was an 
 easy matter to him. 
 
 By way of cheering us up, Kietz came over to us one day, 
 with a large portfolio and a pillow under his arm ; he intended 
 to amuse us by working at a large caricature representing 
 myself and my unfortunate adventures in Paris, and the pillow 
 was to enable him, after his labours, to get some rest on our 
 hard couch, which he had noticed had no pillows at the head. 
 Knowing that we had a difficulty in procuring fuel, he brought 
 with him some bottles of rum, to t warm ' us with punch during 
 the cold evenings ; under these circumstances I read Hoffmann's 
 Tales to him and my wife. 
 
 At last I had news from Konigsberg, but it only opened my 
 eyes to the fact that the gay young dog had not meant his 
 promise seriously. We now looked forward almost with despair 
 to the chilly mists of approaching winter, but Kietz, declaring
 
 250 MY LIFE 
 
 that it was his place to find help, packed up his portfolio, 
 placed it under his arm with the pillow, and went off to Paris. 
 On the next day he returned with two hundred francs, that he 
 had managed to procure by means of generous self-sacrifice. 
 We at once set off for Paris, and took a small apartment near 
 our friends, in the back part of No. 14 Hue Jacob. I after- 
 wards heard that shortly after we left it was occupied by 
 Proudhon. 
 
 We got back to town on 30th October. Our home was ex- 
 ceedingly small and cold, and its chilliness in particular made it 
 very bad for our health. We furnished it scantily with the little 
 we had saved from the wreck of the Hue du Helder, and awaited 
 the results of my efforts towards getting my works accepted 
 and produced in Germany. The first necessity was at all costs 
 to secure peace and quietness for myself for the short time 
 which I should have to devote to the overture of the Fliegender 
 Hollander; I told Kietz that he would have to procure the 
 money necessary for my household expenses until this work 
 was finished and the full score of the opera sent off. With the 
 aid of a pedantic uncle, who had lived in Paris a long time 
 and who was also a painter, he succeeded in providing me with 
 the necessary assistance, in instalments of five or ten francs 
 at a time. During this period I often pointed with cheerful 
 pride to my boots, which became mere travesties of footgear, 
 as the soles eventually disappeared altogether. 
 
 As long as I was engaged on the Dutchman, and Kietz was 
 looking after me, this made no difference, for I never went out : 
 but when I had despatched my completed score to the manage- 
 ment of the Berlin Court Theatre at the beginning of December, 
 the bitterness of the position could no longer be disguised. It 
 was necessary for me to buckle to and look for help myself. 
 
 What this meant in Paris I learned just about this time from 
 the hapless fate of the worthy Lehrs. Driven by need such as 
 I myself had had to surmount a year before at about the same 
 time, he had been compelled on a broiling hot day in the 
 previous summer to scour the various quarters of the city 
 breathlessly, to get grace for bills he had accepted, and which 
 had fallen due. He foolishly took an iced drink, which he hoped 
 would refresh him in his distressing condition, but it immediately
 
 LEHR'S DEPLORABLE CONDITION 251 
 
 made him lose his voice, and from that day he was the victim 
 of a hoarseness which with terrific rapidity ripened the seeds 
 of consumption, doubtless latent in him, and developed that 
 incurable disease. For months he had been growing weaker 
 and weaker, filling us at last with the gloomiest anxiety: he 
 alone believed the supposed chill would be cured, if he could 
 heat his room better for a time. One day I sought him out in 
 his lodging, where I found him in the icy-cold room, huddled 
 up at his writing-table, and complaining of the difficulty of his 
 work for Didot, which was all the more distressing as his 
 employer was pressing him for advances he had made. 
 
 He declared that if he had not had the consolation in those 
 doleful hours of knowing that I had, at any rate, got my 
 Dutchman finished, and that a prospect of success was thus 
 opened to the little circle of friends, his misery would have 
 been hard indeed to bear. Despite my own great trouble, I 
 begged him to share our fire and work in my room. He smiled 
 at my courage in trying to help others, especially as my quar- 
 ters offered barely space enough for myself and my wife. How- 
 ever, one evening he came to us and silently showed me a letter 
 he had received from Villemain, the Minister of Education at 
 that time, in which the latter expressed in the warmest terms 
 his great regret at having only just learned that so distinguished 
 a scholar, whose able and extensive collaboration in Didot's 
 issue of the Greek classics had made him participator in a work 
 that was the glory of the nation, should be in such bad health 
 and straitened circumstances. Unfortunately, the amount of 
 public money which he had at his disposal at that moment for 
 subsidising literature only allowed of his offering him the sum 
 of five hundred francs, which he enclosed with apologies, asking 
 him to accept it as a recognition of his merits on the part of 
 the French Government, and adding that it was his intention 
 to give earnest consideration as to how he might materially 
 improve his position. 
 
 This filled us with the utmost thankfulness on poor Lehrs' 
 account, and we looked on the incident almost as a miracle. 
 We could not help assuming, however, that M. Villemain had 
 been influenced by Didot, who had been prompted by his own 
 guilty conscience for his despicable exploitation of Lehrs, and
 
 252 MY LIFE 
 
 by the prospect of thus relieving himself of the responsibility 
 of helping him. At the same time, from similar cases within 
 our knowledge, which were fully confirmed by my own subse- 
 quent experience, we were driven to the conclusion that such 
 prompt and considerate sympathy on the part of a minister 
 would have been impossible in Germany. Lehrs would now 
 have a fire to work by, but alas! our fears as to his declining 
 health could not be allayed. When we left Paris in the follow- 
 ing spring, it was the certainty that we should never see our 
 dear friend again that made our parting so painful. 
 
 In my own great distress I was again exposed to the annoy- 
 ance of having to write numerous unpaid articles for the 
 Abendzeitung, as my patron, Hofrath Winkler, was still unable 
 to give me any satisfactory account of the fate of my Rienzi in 
 Dresden. In these circumstances I was obliged to consider it 
 a good thing that Halevy's latest opera was at last a success. 
 Schlesinger came to us radiant with joy at the success of La 
 Eeine de CJiypre, and promised me eternal bliss for the piano 
 score and various other arrangements I had made of this 
 newest rage in the sphere of opera. So I was again forced to 
 pay the penalty for composing my own Fliegender Hollander by 
 having to sit down and write out arrangements of Halevy's 
 opera. Yet this task no longer weighed on me so heavily. 
 Apart from the wellfounded hope of being at last recalled 
 from my exile in Paris, and thus being able, as I thought, to 
 regard this last struggle with poverty as the decisive one, the 
 arrangement of Halevy's score was far and away a more inter- 
 esting piece of hack-work than the shameful labour I had spent 
 on Donizetti's Favorita. 
 
 I paid another visit, the last for a long time to come, to the 
 Grand Opera to hear this Reine de Chypre. There was, in- 
 deed, much for me to smile at. My eyes were no longer shut to 
 the extreme weakness of this class of work, and the caricature 
 of it that was often produced by the method of rendering it. I 
 was sincerely rejoiced to see the better side of Halevy again. 
 I had taken a great fancy to him from the time of his La Juive, 
 and had a very high opinion of his masterly talent 
 
 At the request of Schlesinger I also willingly consented to 
 write for his paper a long article on Halevy's latest work. In
 
 HALEVY'S <REINE DE CHYPRE' 253 
 
 it I laid particular stress on my hope that the French school 
 might not again allow the benefits obtained by studying the 
 German style to be lost by relapsing into the shallowest Italian 
 methods. On that occasion I ventured, by way of encouraging 
 the French school, to point to the peculiar significance of Auber, 
 and particularly to his Stumme von Portici, drawing attention, 
 on the other hand, to the overloaded melodies of Rossini, which 
 often resembled sol-fa exercises. In reading over the proof 
 of my article I saw that this passage about Rossini had been 
 left out, and M. Edouard Monnaie admitted to me that, in 
 his capacity as editor of a musical paper, he had felt himself 
 bound to suppress it. He considered that if I had any adverse 
 criticism to pass on the composer, I could easily get it pub- 
 lished in any other kind of paper, but not in one devoted to 
 the interests of music, simply because such a passage could not 
 be printed there without seeming absurd. It also annoyed him 
 that I had spoken in such high terms of Auber, but he let it 
 stand. I had to listen to much from that quarter which en- 
 lightened me for ever with regard to the decay of operatic 
 music in particular, and artistic taste in general, among French- 
 men of the present day. 
 
 I also wrote a longer article on the same opera for my 
 precious friend Winkler at Dresden, who was still hesitating 
 about accepting my Rienzi. In doing so I intentionally made 
 merry over a mishap that had befallen Lachner the conductor. 
 Kiistner, who was theatrical director at Munich at the time, 
 with a view to giving his friend another chance, ordered a 
 libretto to be written for him by St. Georges in Paris, so that, 
 through his paternal care, the highest bliss which a German 
 composer could dream of might be assured to his protege. 
 Well, it turned out that when Ilalevy's Reine de Chypre ap- 
 peared, it treated the same subject as Lachner's presumably 
 original work, which had been composed in the meantime. It 
 mattered very little that the libretto was a really good one, the 
 value of the bargain lay in the fact that it was to be glorified 
 by Lachner's music. It appeared, however, that St. Georges 
 had, as a matter of fact, to some extent altered the book sent 
 to Munich, but only by the omission of several interesting 
 features. The fury of the Munich manager was great, where-
 
 254: MY LIFE 
 
 upon St. Georges declared his astonishment that the latter could 
 have imagined he would supply a libretto intended solely for 
 the German stage at the paltry price offered by his German 
 customer. As I had formed my own private opinion as to pro- 
 curing French librettos for operas, and as nothing in the world 
 would have induced me to set to music even the most effective 
 piece of writing by Scribe or St. Georges, this occurrence de- 
 lighted me immensely, and in the best of spirits I let myself 
 go on the point for the benefit of the readers of the Abend- 
 zeitung, who, it is to be hoped, did not include my future 
 1 friend ' Lachner. 
 
 In addition, my work on Halevy's opera (Beine de Chypre) 
 brought me into closer contact with that composer, and was the 
 means of procuring me many an enlivening talk with that 
 peculiarly good-hearted and really unassuming man, whose 
 talent, alas, declined all too soon. Schlesinger, in fact, was 
 exasperated at his incorrigible laziness. Halevy, who had looked 
 through my piano score, contemplated several changes with a 
 view to making it easier, but he did not proceed with them: 
 Schlesinger could not get the proof-sheets back; the publi- 
 cation was consequently delayed, and he feared that the popu- 
 larity of the opera would be over before the work was ready 
 for the public. He urged me to get firm hold of Halevy very 
 early in the morning in his rooms, and compel him to set to 
 work at the alterations in my company. 
 
 The first time I reached his house at about ten in the morning, 
 I found him just out of bed, and he informed me that he really 
 must have breakfast first. I accepted his invitation, and sat 
 down with him to a somewhat luxurious meal; my conversa- 
 tion seemed to appeal to him, but friends came in, and at last 
 Schlesinger among the number, who burst into a fury at not 
 finding him at work on the proofs he regarded as so important. 
 Halevy, however, remained quite unmoved. In the best of 
 good tempers he merely complained of his latest success, be- 
 cause he had never had more peace than of late, when his 
 operas, almost without exception, had been failures, and he had 
 not had anything to do with them after the first production. 
 Moreover, he feigned not to understand why this Reine de 
 Chypre in particular should have been a success; he declared
 
 HALEVY AND SCHLESINGER 255 
 
 that Schlesinger had engineered it on purpose to worry him. 
 When he spoke a few words to me in German, one of the visitors 
 was astonished, whereupon Schlesinger said that all Jews 
 could speak German. Thereupon Schlesinger was asked if he 
 also was a Jew. He answered that he had been, but had be- 
 come a Christian for his wife's sake. This freedom of speech 
 was a pleasant surprise to me, because in Germany in such 
 cases we always studiously avoided the point, as discourteous 
 to the person referred to. But as we never got to the proof 
 correcting, Schlesinger made me promise to give Halevy no 
 peace until we had done them. 
 
 The secret of his indifference to success became clear to me 
 in the course of further conversation, as I learned that he 
 was on the point of making a wealthy marriage. At first I 
 was inclined to think that Halevy was simply a man whose 
 youthful talent was only stimulated to achieve one great suc- 
 cess with the object of becoming rich; in his case, however, 
 this was not the only reason, as he was very modest in regard 
 to his own capacity, and had no great opinion of the works 
 of those more fortunate composers who were writing for the 
 French stage at that time. In him I thus, for the first time, 
 met with tie frankly expressed admission of disbelief in the 
 value of all our modern creations in this dubious field of art. 
 I have since come to the conclusion that this incredulity, often 
 expressed with much less modesty, justifies the participation 
 of all Jews in our artistic concerns. Only once did Halevy 
 speak to me with real candour, when, on my tardy departure 
 for Germany, he wished me the success he thought my works 
 deserved. 
 
 In the year 1860 I saw him again. I had learned that, 
 while the Parisian critics were giving vent to the bitterest 
 condemnation of the concerts I was giving at that time, he 
 had expressed his approval, and this determined me to visit - 
 him at the Palais de 1'Institut, of which he had for some time 
 been permanent secretary. He seemed particularly eager to 
 learn from my own lips what my new theory about music 
 really was, of which he had heard such wild rumours. For 
 his own part, he saidjjigjiad, never fo""^ apyf^n'ng but music 
 in my music, but with this difference, that mine had generally
 
 256 MY LIFE 
 
 seemed very good. This gave rise to a lively discussion on my 
 part, to which he good-humouredly agreed, once more wishing 
 me success in Paris. This time, however, he did so with less 
 conviction than when he bade me good-bye for Germany, which 
 I thought was because he doubted whether I could succeed 
 in Paris. From this final visit I carried away a depressing 
 sense of the enervation, both moral and esthetic, which had 
 overcome one of the last great French musicians, while, on 
 the other hand, I could not help feeling that a tendency to a 
 hypocritical or frankly impudent exploitation of the universal 
 degeneracy marked all who could be designated as Halevy's 
 successors. 
 
 ! Throughout this period of constant hack-work my thoughts 
 were entirely bent on my return to Germany, which now pre- 
 sented itself to my mind in a wholly new and ideal light. I 
 endeavoured in various ways to secure all that seemed most 
 attractive about the project, or which filled my soul with long- 
 ing. My intercourse with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a 
 decided spur to my former tendency to grapple seriously with 
 \ my subjects, a tendency which had been counteracted by closer 
 contact with the theatre. This desire now furnished a basis 
 for closer study of philosophical questions. I had been as- 
 tonished at times to hear even the grave and virtuous Lehrs, 
 openly and quite as a matter of course, give expression to 
 grave doubts concerning our individual survival after death. 
 He declared that in many great men this doubt, even though 
 only tacitly held, had been the real incitement to noble deeds. 
 The natural result of such a belief speedily dawned on me 
 without, however, causing me any serious alarm. On the con- 
 trary, I found a fascinating stimulus in the fact that bound- 
 less regions of meditation and knowledge were thereby opened 
 up which hitherto I had merely skimmed in light-hearted 
 levity. 
 
 In my.xenewed-aiifinipts to study the Greek classics in the 
 original, I received no encouragement from Lehrs. He dis- 
 suaded me from doing so with the well-meant consolation, that 
 as I could only be born once, and that with music in me, I 
 should learn to understand this branch of knowledge without 
 the help of grammar or lexicon; whereas if Greek were to be
 
 DRAFT OF 'DIE SARAZENIN' 
 
 studied with real enjoyment, it was no joke, and would not 
 suffer being relegated to a secondary place. 
 
 On the other hand, I felt strongly dra\vn to gain a closer 
 ^aeqaitftRce~of German history than I had secured at school.' 
 I had Raumer's History of the Hohenstaufen within easy reach 
 to start upon. All the great figures in this book lived vividly 
 before my eyes. I was particularly captivated by the per- 
 sonality of that gifted Emperor Frederick II., whose for- 
 tunes aroused my sympathy so keenly that I vainly sought 
 for a fitting artistic setting for them. The fate of his 
 son Manfred, on the other hand, provoked in me an 
 equally well-grounded, but more easily combated, feeling of 
 opposition. 
 
 I accordingly made a plan of a great five-act dramatic poem, 
 which should also be perfectly adapted to a musical setting. 
 My impulse to embellish the story with the central figure of 
 romantic significance was prompted by the fact of Manfred's 
 enthusiastic reception in Luceria by the Saracens, who sup- 
 ported him and carried him on from victory to victory till he 
 reached his final triumph, and this, too, in spite of the fact 
 that he had come to them betrayed on every hand, banned by 
 the Church, and deserted by all his followers during his flight 
 through Apulia and the Abruzzi. 
 
 Even at this time it delighted me to find in the German 
 mind the capacity of appreciating beyond the narrow bounds 
 of nationality all purely human qualities, in however strange 
 a garb they might be presented. For in this I recognised how 
 nearly akin it is to the mind of Greece. In Frederick II. I saw 
 this quality in full flower. A fair-haired German of ancient 
 Swabian stock, heir to the Norman realm of Sicily and Naples, 
 who gave the Italian language its first development, and laid 
 a basis for the evolution of knowledge and art where hitherto 
 ecclesiastical fanaticism and feudal brutality had alone con- 
 tended for power, a monarch who gathered at his court the 
 poets and sages of eastern lands, and surrounded himself with 
 the living products of Arabian and Persian grace and spirit 
 this man I beheld betrayed by the Roman clergy to the infidel 
 foe, yet ending his crusade, to their bitter disappointment, by 
 a pact of peace with the Sultan, from whom he obtained a
 
 MY LIFE 
 
 grant of privileges to Christians in Palestine suck as the 
 bloodiest victory could scarcely have secured. 
 
 In this wonderful Emperor, who finally, under the ban of 
 that same Church, struggled hopelessly and in vain against the 
 savage bigotry of his age, I beheld the German ideal in its 
 highest embodiment. My poem was concerned with the fate 
 of his favourite son Manfred. On the death of an elder brother, 
 Frederick's empire had entirely fallen to pieces, and the young 
 Manfred was left, under papal suzerainty, in nominal possession 
 of the throne of Apulia, We find him at Capua, in surround- 
 ings, and attended by a court, in which the spirit of his great 
 father survives, in a state of almost effeminate degeneration. 
 In despair of ever restoring the imperial power of the Hohen- 
 staufen, he seeks to forget his sadness in romance and song. 
 There now appears upon the scene a young Saracen lady, just 
 arrived from the East, who, by appealing to the alliance between 
 East and West concluded by Manfred's noble father, conjures 
 the desponding son to maintain his imperial heritage. She 
 acts the part of an inspired prophetess, and though the prince 
 is quickly filled with love for her, she succeeds in keeping 
 him at a respectful distance. By a skilfully contrived flight 
 she snatches him, not only from the pursuit of rebellious Apulian 
 nobles, but also from the papal ban which is threatening to 
 depose him from his throne. Accompanied only by a few 
 faithful followers, she guides him through mountain fastnesses, 
 where one night the wearied son beholds the spirit of Frederick 
 II. passing with feudal array through the Abruzzi, and beckon- 
 ing him on to Luceria. 
 
 To this district, situated in the Papal States, Frederick had, 
 by a peaceful compact, transplanted the remnant of hit Saracen 
 retainers, who had previously been wreaking terrible havoc in 
 the mountains of Sicily. To the great annoyance of the Pope, 
 he had handed the town over to them in fee-simple, thus securing 
 for himself a band of faithful allies in the heart of an ever- 
 treacherous and hostile country. 
 
 Fatima, as my heroine is called, has prepared, through the 
 instrumentality of trusty friends, a reception for Manfred in 
 this place. When the papal governor has been expelled by a 
 revolution, he slips through the gateway into the town, is
 
 DRAFT OF 'DIE SARAZENIN' 259 
 
 recognised by the whole population as the son of their beloved 
 Emperor, and, amid wildest enthusiasm, is placed at their head, 
 to lead them against the enemies of their departed benefactor. 
 In the meantime, while Manfred is marching on from victory 
 to victory in his reconquest of the whole kingdom of Apulia, 
 the tragic centre of my action still continues to be the unvoiced 
 longing of the lovelorn victor for the marvellous heroine. 
 
 She is the child of the great Emperor's love for a noble 
 Saracen maiden. Her mother, on her deathbed, had sent her 
 to Manfred, foretelling that she would work wonders for his 
 glory provided she never yielded to his passion. Whether 
 Fatima was to know that she was his sister I left undecided in 
 framing my plot. Meanwhile she is careful to show herself 
 to him only at critical moments, and then always in such a way 
 as to remain unapproachable. When at last she witnesses the 
 completion of her task in his coronation at Naples, she deter- 
 mines, in obedience to her vow, to slip away secretly from the 
 newly anointed king, that she may meditate in the solitude 
 of her distant home upon the success of her enterprise. 
 
 The Saracen Nurreddin, who had been a companion of her 
 youth, and to whose help she had chiefly owed her success in 
 rescuing Manfred, is to be the sole partner of her flight. To 
 this man, who loves her with passionate ardour, she had been 
 promised in her childhood. Before her secret departure she 
 pays a last visit to the slumbering king. This rouses her lover's 
 furious jealousy, as he construes her act into a proof of un- 
 faithfulness on the part of his betrothed. The last look of 
 farewell which Fatima casts from a distance at the young 
 monarch, on his return from his coronation, inflames the jealous 
 lover to wreak instant vengeance for the supposed outrage upon 
 his honour. He strikes the prophetess to the earth, whereupon 
 she thanks him with a smile for having delivered her from 
 an unbearable existence. At the sight of her body Manfred 
 realises that henceforth happiness has deserted him for ever. 
 
 This theme I had adorned with many gorgeous scenes and 
 complicated situations, so that when I had worked it out I 
 could regard it as a fairly suitable, interesting, and effective 
 whole, especially when compared with other well-known sub- 
 jects of a similar nature. Yet I could never rouse myself to 
 

 
 260 MY LIFE 
 
 sufficient enthusiasm over it to give my serious attention to 
 its elaboration, especially as another theme now laid its grip 
 upon me. This was suggested to me by a pamphlet on the 
 ' Venusberg,' which accidentally fell into my hands. 
 
 If all that I regarded as essentially German had hitherto 
 drawn me with ever-increasing force, and compelled me to its 
 eager pursuit, I here found it suddenly presented to mo iii the 
 simple outlines of a legend, based upon the old and well-known 
 ballad of 'Tannhauser.' True, its elements were already familiar 
 to me from Tieck's version in his Phantasus. But his concep- 
 tion of the subject had flung me back into the fantastic regions 
 created in my mind at an earlier period by Hoffmann, and 
 I should certainly never have been tempted to extract the 
 framework of a dramatic work from his elaborate story. The 
 point in this popular pamphlet which had so much weight with 
 me was that it brought ' Tannhauser,' if only by a passing 
 hint, into touch with ' The Minstrel's War on the Wartburg.' 
 I had some knowledge of this also from Hoffmann's account 
 in his Serapionsbriidem. But I felt that the writer had only 
 grasped the old legend in a distorted form, and therefore en- 
 deavoured to gain a closer acquaintance with the true aspect 
 of this attractive story. At this juncture Lehrs brought me 
 the annual report of the proceedings of the Konigsberg German 
 Society, in which the ' Wartburg contest * was criticised with 
 a fair amount of detail by Lukas. Here I also found the, 
 original text. Although I could utilise but little of the real 
 setting for my own purpose, yet the picture it gave me of Ger- 
 many in the Middle Ages was so suggestive that I found I had 
 not previously had the smallest conception of what it was like. 
 
 As a sequel to the Wartburg poem, I also found in the same 
 copy a critical study, ' Lohengrin/ which gave in full detail , 
 the main contents of that widespread epic. 
 
 Thus a whole new world was opened to me, and though as , 
 et I had not found the form in which I might cope with 
 Lohengrin, yet this image also lived imperishably within me. 
 When, therefore, I afterwards made a close acquaintance with 
 the intricacies of this legend, I could visualise the figure of the 
 hero with a distinctness equal to that of my conception of 
 Tannhauser at this time.
 
 DESSAUER < FLIEGEKDER HOLLANDER' 261 
 
 Under these influences my longing for a speedy return to 
 Germany grew ever more intense, for there I hoped to earn a 
 new home for myself where I could enjoy leisure for creative 
 work. But it was not yet possible even to think of occupying 
 myself with such grateful tasks. The sordid necessities of life 
 still bound me to Paris. While thus employed, I found an 
 opportunity of exerting myself in a way more congenial to my 
 desires. When I was a young man at Prague, I had made the 
 acquaintance of a Jewish musician and composer called Dessauer 
 a man who was not devoid of talent, who in fact achieved a 
 certain reputation, but was chiefly known among his intimates 
 on account of his hypochondria. This man, who was now in 
 flourishing circumstances, was so far patronised by Schlesinger 
 that the latter seriously proposed to help him to a commission 
 for Grand Opera. Dessauer had come across my poem of the 
 Fliegender Hollander, and now insisted that I should draft a 
 similar plot for him, as M. Leon Pillet's Vaisseau Fantome 
 had already been given to M. Dietsch, the latter's musical con- 
 ductor, to set to music. From this same conductor Dessauer 
 obtained the promise of a like commission, and he now offeredl 
 me two hundred francs to provide him with a similar plot, and) 
 one congenial to his hypochondriacal temperament. 
 
 To meet this wish I ransacked my brain for recollections of 
 Hoffmann, and quickly decided to work up his Bergwerke von 
 Falun. The moulding of this fascinating and marvellous ma- 
 terial succeeded as admirably as I could wish. Dessauer also 
 felt convinced that the topic was worth his while to set to 
 music. His dismay was accordingly all the greater when 
 Pillet rejected our plot on the ground that the staging would 
 be too difficult, and that the second act especially would entail 
 insurmountable obstacles for the ballet, which had to be given 
 each time. In place of this Dessauer wished me to compose 
 him an oratorio on ' Mary Magdalene.' As on the day that he 
 expressed this wish he appeared to be suffering from acute 
 melancholia, so much so that he declared he had that morning 
 seen his own head lying beside his bed, I thought well not to 
 refuse his request. I asked him, therefore, to give me time, 
 and I regret to say that ever since that day I have continued 
 
 to take it. A 
 
 ft*
 
 262 MY LIFE 
 
 It was amid such distractions as these that this winter at 
 length drew to an end, while my prospects of getting to Germany 
 gradually grew more hopeful, though with a slowness that 
 sorely tried my patience. I had kept up a continuous corre- 
 spondence with Dresden respecting Rienzi, and in the worthy 
 chorus-master Fischer I at last found an honest man who was 
 favourably disposed to me. He sent me reliable and reassuring 
 reports as to the state of my affairs. 
 
 After receiving news, early in January, 1842, of renewed de- 
 
 ' lay, I at last heard that by the end of February the work would 
 be ready for performance. I was seriously uneasy at this, as I 
 
 j was afraid of not being able to accomplish the journey by that 
 date. But this news also was soon contradicted, and the honest 
 Fischer informed me that my opera had had to be postponed till 
 the autumn of that year. I realised fully that it would never 
 be performed if I could not be present in person at Dresden. 
 
 f When eventually in March Count Redern, the director of the 
 Theatre Royal in Berlin, told me that my Fliegender Hollander 
 
 had been accepted for the opera there, I thought I had sufficient 
 reason to return to Germany at all costs as soon as possible. 
 
 I had already had various experiences as to the views of 
 German managers on this work. Relying on the plot, which 
 had pleased the manager of the Paris Opera so much, I had 
 sent the libretto in the first instance to my old acquaintance 
 Ringelhardt, the director of the Leipzig theatre. But the man 
 had cherished an undisguised aversion for me since my Liebes- 
 verbot. As he could not this time possibly object to any 
 levity in my subject, he now found fault with its gloomy sol- 
 emnity and refused to accept it. As I had met Councillor 
 Kiistner, at that time manager of the Munich Court Theatre, 
 when he was making arrangements about La Heine de Chypre 
 in Paris, I now sent him the text of the Dutchman with a 
 similar request. He, too, returned it, with the assurance that 
 it was not suited to German stage conditions, or to the taste 
 of the German public. As he had ordered a French libretto 
 for Munich, I knew what he meant. When the score was 
 finished, I sent it to Meyerbeer in Berlin, with a letter for 
 Count Redern, and begged him, as he had been unable to help 
 me to anything in Paris, in spite of his desire to do so, to be
 
 RETURN TO THE HOME COUNTRY 
 
 263 
 
 kind enough to use his influence in Berlin in favour of my 
 composition. I was genuinely astonished at the truly prompt * 
 acceptance of my work two months later, which was accom- 
 panied by very gratifying assurances from the Count, and I 
 was delighted to see in it a proof of Meyerbeer's sincere and 
 energetic intervention in my favour. Strange to say, on my 
 return to Germany soon afterwards, I was destined to learn 
 that Count Redern had long since retired from the management 
 of the Berlin Opera House, and that Kiistner of Munich had 
 already been appointed his successor: the upshot of this was 
 that Count Redern's consent, though very courteous, could not 
 by any means be taken seriously, as the realisation of it de- 
 pended not on him but on his successor. What the result was 
 remains to be seen. 
 
 A circumstance that eventually facilitated my long-desired 
 return to Germany, which was now justified by my good pros- 
 pects, was the tardily awakened interest taken in my position 
 by the wealthy members of my family. If Didot had had 
 reasons of his own for applying to the Minister Villemain for , 
 support for Lehrs, so also Avenarius, my brother-in-law in 
 Paris, when he heard how I was struggling against poverty, 
 one day took it into his head to surprise me with some quite 
 unexpected help secured by his appeal to my sister Louisa. 
 On 26th December of the fast-waning year 1841 I went home 
 to Minna carrying a goose under my arm, and in the beak o 
 the bird we found a five-hundred-franc note. This note had 
 been given me by Avenarius as the result of a request on my 
 behalf made by my sister Louisa to a friend of hers, a wealthy 
 merchant named Schletter. This welcome addition to our 
 extreniely^jstraitened resources might not in itself have been 
 sufficient to put me~in^an~5xcSedingly good-humour, had I not 
 clearly seen in it the prospect of escaping altogether from my 
 position in Paris. As the leading German managers had now 
 consented to the performance of two of my compositions, I 
 thought I might seriously approach my brother-in-law, Friedrich 
 Brockhaus, who had repulsed me the year before when I applied 
 to him in great distress, on the ground that he ' disapproved of 
 my profession.' This time I might be more successful in secur- 
 ing the wherewithal for my return. I was not mistaken, and
 
 264: MY LIFE 
 
 when the time came I was supplied from this source with" tHe 
 necessary travelling expenses. 
 
 With these prospects, and my position thus improved, I 
 found myself spending the second half of the winter 1841-42 in 
 high spirits, and affording constant entertainment to the small 
 circle of friends which my relationship to Avenarius had created 
 around me. Minna and I frequently spent our evenings with 
 this family and others, amongst whom I have pleasant recol- 
 lections of a certain Herr Kiihne, the head of a private school, 
 and his wife. I contributed so greatly to the success of their 
 little soirees, and was always so willjjjgJ^Jjaaproyis^jlaaces 
 on the piano for them to dance to, that I soon ran the risk of 
 enjoying an almost burdensome popularity. 
 
 At length the hour struck for my deliverance ; the day came 
 on which, as I devoutly hoped, I might turn my back on Paris 
 for ever. It was the 7th of April, and Paris was already gay 
 with the first luxuriant buddings of spring. In front of our 
 windows, which all the winter had looked upon a bleak and 
 desolate garden, the trees were burgeoning, and the birds sang. 
 Our emotion at parting from our dear friends Anders, Lehrs, 
 and Kietz, however, was great, almost overwhelming. The 
 first seemed already doomed to an early death, for his health 
 was exceedingly bad, and he was advanced in years. About 
 Lehrs' condition, as I have already said, there could no longer 
 be any doubt, and it was dreadful, after so short an experience 
 as the two and a half years which I had spent in Paris, to see 
 the ravages that want had wrought among good, noble, and 
 sometimes even distinguished men. Kietz, for whose future 
 I was concerned, less on grounds of health than of morals, 
 touched our hearts once more by his boundless and almost 
 childlike good-nature. Fancying, for instance, that I might 
 not have enough money for the journey, he forced me, in spite 
 of all resistance, to accept another five-franc piece, which was 
 about all that remained of his own fortune at the moment: 
 he also stuffed a packet of good French snuff for me into the 
 pocket of the coach, in which we at last rumbled through the 
 boulevards to the barriers, which we passed but were unable 
 to see this time, because our eyes were blinded with tears.
 
 PAKT II 
 1842-1850 
 
 THE journey from Paris to Dresden at that time took five days 
 and nights. On the German frontier, near Forbach, we met 
 with stormy weather and snow, a greeting which seemed in- 
 hospitable after the spring we had already enjoyed in Paris. 
 And, indeed, as we continued our journey through our native 
 land once more, we found much to dishearten us, and I could 
 not help thinking that the Frenchmen who on leaving Germany 
 breathed more freely on reaching French soil, and unbuttoned 
 their coats, as though passing from winter into summer, were 
 not so very foolish after all, seeing that we, for our part, were 
 now compelled to seek protection against this conspicuous change 
 of temperature by being very careful to put on sufficient cloth- 
 ing. The unkindness of the elements became perfect torture 
 when, later on, between Frankfort and Leipzig, we were swept 
 into the stream of visitors to the Great Easter Fair. 
 
 The pressure on the mail-coaches was so great, that for two 
 days and a night, amid ceaseless storm, snow and rain, we 
 were continually changing from one wretched ' substitute ' to 
 another, thus turning our journey into an adventure of almost 
 the same type as our former voyage at sea. 
 
 One solitary flash of brightness was afforded by our view of 
 the Wartburg, which we passed during the only sunlit hour 
 of this journey. The sight of this mountain fastness, which, 
 from the Fulda side, is clearly visible for a long time, affected 
 me deeply. A neighbouring ridge further on I at once chris- 
 tened the Hb'rselberg, and as we drove through the valley, pic- 
 tured to myself the scenery for the third act of my Tannhauser. 
 This scene remained so vividly in my mind, that long after- 
 wards I was able to give Desplechin, the Parisian scene-painter, 
 exact details when he was working out the scenery under my
 
 266 MY LIFE 
 
 direction. If I had already been impressed by the signifi- 
 cance of the fact that my first journey through the German 
 Khine district, so famous in legend, should have been made 
 on my way home from Paris, it seemed an even more omi- 
 nous coincidence that my first sight of Wartburg, which was 
 so rich in historical and mythical associations, should come 
 just at this moment. The view so warmed my heart against 
 wind and weather, Jews and the Leipzig Fair, that in the 
 end I arrived, on 12th April, 1842, safe and sound, with my 
 poor, battered, half-frozen wife, in that selfsame city of Dres- 
 den which I had last seen on the occasion of my sad separa- 
 tion from my Minna, and my departure for my northern place 
 of exile. 
 
 We put up at the l Stadt Gotha ' inn. The city, in which 
 such momentous years of my childhood and boyhood had been 
 spent, seemed cold and dead beneath the influences of the wild, 
 gloomy weather. Indeed, everything there that could remind 
 me of my youth seemed dead. No hospitable house received 
 us. We found my wife's parents living in cramped and dingy 
 lodgings in very straitened circumstances, and were obliged 
 at once to look about for a small abode for ourselves. This we 
 found in the Topfergasse for twenty-one marks a month. After 
 paying the necessary business visits in connection with Rlcnzi, 
 and making arrangements for Minna during my brief absence, 
 I set out on 15th April direct for Leipzig, where I saw my 
 mother and family for the first time in six years. 
 
 During this period, which had been so eventful for my own 
 life, my mother had undergone a great change in her domestic 
 position through the death of Rosalie. She was living in a 
 pleasant roomy flat near the Brockhaus family, where she was 
 free from all those household cares to which, owing to her 
 large family, she had devoted so many years of anxious thought. 
 Her bustling energy, which had almost amounted to hardness, 
 had entirely given place to a natural cheerfulness and interest 
 in the family prosperity of her married daughters. For the 
 blissful calm of this happy old age she was mainly indebted to 
 the affectionate care of her son-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, 
 to whom I expressed my heartfelt thanks for his goodness. 
 She was exceedingly astonished and pleased to see me unex-
 
 IN BERLIN WITH MEYERBEER 267 
 
 pectedly enter her room. Any bitterness that ever existed 
 between us had utterly vanished, and her only complaint was 
 that she could not put me up in her house, instead of my 
 brother Julius, the unfortunate goldsmith, who had none of 
 the qualities that could make him a suitable companion for her. 
 She was full of hope for the success of my undertaking, and 
 felt this confidence strengthened by the favourable prophecy 
 which our dear _Rosalie had made about me shortly before her 
 sad death. 
 
 For the present, however, I only stayed a few days in Leipzig, 
 as I had first to visit Berlin in order to make definite arrange- 
 ments with Count Redern for the performance of the Fliegender 
 Hollander. As I have already observed, I was here at once 
 destined to learn that the Count was on the point of retiring 
 from the directorship, and he accordingly referred me for all 
 further decisions to the new director, Kiistner, \vho had not 
 yet arrived in Berlin. I now suddenly realised what this strange 
 circumstance meant, and knew that, so far as the Berlin negoti- 
 ations went, I might as well have remained in Paris. This 
 impression was in the main confirmed by a visit to Meyerbeer, 
 who, I found, regarded my coming to Berlin as over hasty. 
 Nevertheless, he behaved in a kind and friendly manner, only 
 regretting that he was just on the point of ( going away,' a 
 state in which I always found him whenever I visited him 
 again in Berlin. 
 
 Mendelssohn was also in the capital about this time, having 
 been appointed one of the General Musical Directors to the 
 King of Prussia. I also sought him out, having been previ- 
 ously introduced to him in Leipzig. He informed me that he 
 did not believe his work would prosper in Berlin, and that he 
 would rather go back to Leipzig. I made no inquiry about 
 the fate of the score of my great symphony performed at 
 Leipzig in earlier days, which I had more or less forced upon 
 him so many years ago. On the other hand, he did not betray 
 to me any signs of remembering that strange offering. In 
 the midst of the lavish comforts of his home he struck me as 
 cold, yet it was not so much that he repelled me as that I 
 recoiled from him. I also paid a visit to Rellstab, to whom 
 I had a letter of introduction from his trusty publisher, my
 
 268 . MY LIFE 
 
 brother-in-law Brockhaus. Here it was not so much smug 
 ease that I encountered ; I doubtless felt repulsed more by the 
 fact that he showed no inclination whatever to interest himself 
 in my affairs. 
 
 I grew very low spirited in Berlin. I could almost have 
 wished Commissioner Cerf back again. Miserable as had been 
 the time I had spent here years before, I had then, at any 
 rate, met one man, who, for all the bluntness of his exterior, 
 had treated me with true friendliness and consideration. In 
 vain did I try to call to mind the Berlin through whose streets 
 I had walked, with all the ardour of youth, by the side of Laube. 
 After my acquaintance with London, and still more with Paris, 
 this city, with its sordid spaces and pretensions to greatness, 
 depressed _me deeply, and I breathed a hope that, should no 
 luck crown my life, it might at least be spent in Paris rather 
 than in Berlin. 
 
 On my return from this wholly fruitless expedition, I first 
 went to Leipzig for a few days, where, on this occasion, I 
 stayed with my brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus, who was 
 now Professor of Oriental Languages at the University. His 
 family had been increased by the birth of two daughters, and 
 the atmosphere of unruffled content, illuminated by mental 
 activity and a quiet but vivid interest in all things relating 
 to the higher aspects of life, greatly moved my homeless and 
 vagabond soul. One evening, after my sister had seen to her 
 children, whom she had brought up very well, and had sent 
 them with gentle words to bed, we gathered in the large richly 
 stocked library for our evening meal and a long confidential 
 chat. Here I broke out into_a jvJolent^ fit of weeping, and it 
 seemed as though the tender sister, who 'five years before had 
 known me during the bitterest straits of my early married life 
 in Dresden, now really understood me. At the express sug- 
 gestion of my brother-in-law Hermann, my family tendered me 
 a loan, to help me to tide over the time of waiting for the per- 
 formance of my Rienzi in Dresden. This, they said, they re- 
 garded merely as a duty, and assured me that I need have no 
 hesitation whatever in accepting it. It consisted of a sum of six 
 hundred marks, which was to be paid me in monthly instal- 
 ments for six months. As I had no prospect of being able
 
 RETURN TO DRESDEN 269 
 
 to rely on any other source of income, there was every chance 
 of Minna's talent for management being put severely to the 
 test, if this were to carry us through; it could be done, how- 
 ever, and I was able to return to Dresden with a great sense of 
 relief. 
 
 While I was staying with my relatives I played and sang 
 them the Fliegender Hollander for the first time connectedly, 
 and seemed to arouse considerable interest by my perform- 
 ance, for when, later on, my sister Louisa heard the opera in 
 Dresden, she complained that much of the effect previously 
 produced by my rendering did not come back to her. I also 
 sought out my old friend Apel again. The poor man had 
 gone stone blind, but he astonished me by his cheeriness and 
 contentment, and thereby once and for all deprived me of any 
 reason for pitying him. As he declared that he knew the blue 
 coat I was wearing very well, though it was really a brown one, 
 I thought it best not to argue the point, and I left Leipzig 
 in a state of wonder at finding every one there so happy and 
 contented. 
 
 When I reached Dresden, on 26th April, I found occasion 
 to grapple more vigorously with my lot. Here I was enlivened 
 by closer intercourse with the people on whom I had to rely 
 for a successful production of Rienzi. It is true that the re- 
 sults of my interviews with Liittichau, the general manager, 
 and Reissiger, the musical conductor, left me cold and incredu- 
 lous. Both were sincerely astonished at my arrival in Dresden ; 
 and the same might even be said of my frequent correspondent 
 and patron, Hofrath Winkler, who also would have preferred my 
 remaining in Paris. But, as has been my constant experience 
 both before and since, help and encouragement have always 
 come to me from humbler and never from the more exalted 
 ranks of life. 
 
 So in this case, too, I met my first agreeable sensation 
 in the overwhelmingly cordial reception I received from the 
 old chorus-master, Wilhelm Fischer. I had had no previous 
 acquaintance with him, yet he was the only person who had 
 taken the trouble to read my score carefully, and had not 
 only conceived serious hopes for the success of my opera, but 
 had worked energetically to secure its being accepted and
 
 
 270 MY LIFE 
 
 practised. The moment I entered his room and told him my 
 name, he rushed to embrace me with a loud cry, and in a second 
 I was translated to an atmosphere of hope. Besides this man, 
 I met in the actor Ferdinand Heine and his family another 
 sure foundation for hearty and, indeed, deep-rooted friendship. 
 It is true that I had known him from childhood, for at that 
 time he was one of the few young people whom my stepfather 
 Geyer liked to see about him. In addition to a fairly decided 
 talent for drawing, it was chiefly his pleasant social gifts that 
 had won him an entrance into our more intimate family circle. 
 As he was very small and slight, my stepfather nicknamed 
 him DavidcAen, and under this appellation he used to take 
 part with great affability and good-humour in our little festivi- 
 ties, and above all in our friendly excursions into the neigh- 
 bouring country, in which, as I mentioned in its place, even 
 Carl Maria von Weber used to join. Belonging to the good 
 old school, he had become a useful, if not prominent, member 
 of the Dresden stage. He possessed all the knowledge and 
 qualities for a good stage manager, but never succeeded in 
 inducing the committee to give him that appointment. It 
 was only as a designer of costumes that he found further scope 
 for his talents, and in this capacity he was included in the 
 consultations over the staging of Rienzi. 
 
 Thus it came about that he had the opportunity of busying 
 himself with the work of a member, now grown to man's estate, 
 of the very family with whom he had spent such pleasant days 
 in his youth. He greeted me at once as a child of the house, 
 and we two homeless creatures found in our memories of this 
 long-lost home the first common basis to our friendship. We 
 generally spent our evenings with old Fischer at Heine's, where, 
 amid hopeful conversation, we regaled ourselves on potatoes 
 and herrings, of which the meal chiefly consisted. Schroder- 
 Devrient was away on a holiday; Tichatschek, who was also 
 on the point of going away, I had just time to see, and with 
 him I went quickly through a part of his role in Rienzi. His 
 brisk and lively nature, his glorious voice and great musical 
 talent, gave special weight to his encouraging assurance that 
 he delighted in the role of Rienzi. Heine also told me that the 
 mere prospect of having many new costumes, and especially
 
 PREPARATION TOE RIENZI 271 
 
 new silver armour, had inspired Tichatschek with the liveliest 
 desire to play this part, so that I might rely on him under any 
 circumstances. Thus I could at once give closer attention to 
 the preparations for practice, which was fixed to begin in the 
 late summer, after the principal singers had returned from 
 their holiday. 
 
 I had to make special efforts to pacify my friend Fischer by 
 my readiness to abbreviate the score, which was excessively 
 lengthy. His intentions in the matter were so honest that I 
 gladly sat down with him to the wearisome task. I played and 
 sang my score to the astonished man on an old grand piano in the 
 rehearsing-room of the Court Theatre, with such frantic vigour 
 that, although he did not mind if the instrument came to grief, 
 he grew concerned about my chest. Finally, amid hearty 
 laughter, he ceased to argue about cutting down passages, as 
 precisely where he thought something might be omitted I proved . 
 to him with headlong eloquence that it was precisely here that 
 the main point lay. He plunged with me head over heels into ' 
 the vast chaos of sound, against which he could raise no objec- 
 tion, beyond the testimony of his watch, whose correctness I 
 also ended by disputing. As sops I light-heartedly flung him 
 the big pantomime and most of the ballet in the second act, 
 whereby I reckoned we might save a whole half-hour. Thus, 
 thank goodness, the whole monster was at last handed over to 
 the clerks to make a fair copy of, and the rest was left for time 
 to accomplish. 
 
 We next discussed what we should do in che summer, and 
 I decided upon a stay of several months at Toplitz, the scene 
 of my first youthful flights, whose fine air and baths, I hoped, 
 would also benefit Minna^s health. But before we could carry 
 out this intention I had to pay several more visits to Leipzig 
 to settle the fate of my Dutchman. On 5th May I proceeded 
 thither to have an interview with Kiistner, the new director 
 of the Berlin Opera, who I had been told had just arrived there. 
 He was now placed in the awkward position of being about 
 to produce in Berlin the very opera which he had before de- 
 clined in Munich, as it had been accepted by his predecessor 
 in office. He promised me to consider what steps he would 
 take in this predicament. In order to learn the result of
 
 MY LIFE 
 
 Kiistner's deliberations, I determined, on 2nd June, to seek 
 him out, and this time in Berlin itself. But at Leipzig I found 
 a letter in which he begged me to wait patiently a little longer 
 for his final verdict. I took advantage of being in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Halle to pay a visit to my eldest brother Albert. 
 I was very much grieved and depressed to find the poor fellow, 
 whom I must give the credit of having the greatest perseverance 
 and a quite remarkable talent for dramatic song, living in the 
 unworthy and mean circumstances which the Halle Theatre 
 offered to him and his family. The realisation of conditions 
 into which I myself had once nearly sunk now filled me with 
 indescribable abhorrence. Still more harrowing was it to hear 
 my brother speak of this state in tones which showed, alas, only 
 too plainly, the hopeless submission with which he had already 
 resigned himself to its horrors. The only consolation I could 
 find was the personality and childlike nature of his step- 
 daughter Johanna, who was then fifteen, and who sang me 
 Spohr's Rose, wie hist du so schon with great expression and 
 in a voice of an extraordinarily beautiful quality. 
 
 Then I returned to Dresden, and at last, in wonderful 
 weather, undertook the pleasant journey to Toplitz with Minna 
 and one of her sisters, reaching that place on 9th June, where 
 we took up our quarters at a second-class inn, the Eiche, at 
 Schonau. Here we were soon joined by my mother, who paid 
 her usual yearly visit to the warm baths all the more gladly 
 this time because she knew she would find me there. If she 
 had before had any prejudice against Minna because of my 
 premature marriage to her, a closer acquaintance with her 
 domestic gifts soon changed it into respect, and she quickly 
 learned to love the partner of my doleful days in Paris. Al- 
 though my mother's vagaries demanded no small considera- 
 tion, yet what particularly delighted me about her was the 
 astonishing vivacity of her almost childlike imagination, a 
 faculty she retained to such a degree that one morning she 
 complained that my relation of the Tannhduser legend on the 
 previous evening had given her a whole night of pleasant but 
 most tiring sleeplessness. 
 
 By dint of appealing letters to Schletter, a wealthy patron 
 of art in Leipzig, I managed to do something for Kietz, who,
 
 DRAFT OF THE 'VENUSBERG' 273 
 
 had remained behind in misery in Paris, and also to provide 
 Minna with medical treatment. I also succeeded to a certain 
 extent in ameliorating my own woeful financial position. 
 Scarcely were these tasks accomplished, when I started off in 
 my old boyish way on a ramble of several days on foot through 
 the Bohemian mountains, in order that I might mentally work 
 out my plan of the * Venusberg ' amid the pleasant associations 
 of such a trip. Here I took the fancy of engaging quarters 
 in Aussig on the romantic Schreckenstein, where for several 
 days I occupied the little public room, in which straw was 
 laid down for me to sleep on at night. I found recreation in 
 daily ascents of the Wostrai, the highest peak in the neighbour- 
 hood, and so keenly did the fantastic solitude quicken my 
 youthful spirit, that I clambered about the ruins of the 
 Schreckenstein the whole of one moonlit night, wrapped only 
 in a blanket, in order myself to provide the ghost that was 
 lacking, and delighted myself with the hope of scaring some 
 passing wayfarer. 
 
 Here I drew up in my pocket-book the detailed plan of a 
 three-act opera on the l Venusberg,' and subsequently carried 
 out the composition of this work in strict accordance with the 
 sketch I then made. 
 
 One day, when climbing the Wostrai, I was astonished, on 
 turning the corner of a valley, to hear a merry dance tune 
 whistled by a goatherd perched up on a crag. I seemed 
 immediately to stand among the chorus of pilgrims filing past 
 the goatherd in the valley; but I could not afterwards recall 
 the goatherd's tune, so I was obliged to help myself out of the 
 matter in the usual way. 
 
 Enriched by these spoils, I returned to Toplitz in a wonder- 
 fully cheerful frame of mind and robust health, but on receiving 
 the interesting news that Tichatschek and Schroder-Devrient 
 were on the point of returning, I was impelled to set off once 
 more for Dresden. I took this step, not so much to avoid 
 missing any of the early rehearsals of Rienzi, as because I 
 wanted to prevent the management replacing it by something 
 else. I left Minna for a time with my mother, and reached 
 Dresden on 18th July. 
 
 I hired a small lodging in a queer house, since pulled down,
 
 274 MY LIFE 
 
 facing the Maximilian Avenue, and entered into a fairly lively 
 intercourse with our operatic stars who had just returned. 
 My old enthusiasm for Schrb'der-Devrient revived when I saw 
 her again more frequently in opera. Strange was the effect 
 produced upon me when I heard her for the first time in 
 Gretry's Blaubart, for I could not help remembering that this 
 was the first opera I had ever seen. I had been taken to it 
 as a boy of five (also in Dresden), and I still retained my 
 wondrous first impressions of it. All my earliest childish 
 memories were revived, and I recollected how frequently and 
 with what emphasis I had myself sung Bluebeard's song: 
 Ha, die Falsche! Die Thiire off en! to the amusement of the 
 whole house, with a paper helmet of my own making on my 
 head. My friend Heine still remembered it well. 
 
 In other respects the operatic performances were not such 
 as to impress me very favourably: I particularly missed the 
 rolling sound of the fully equipped Parisian orchestra of string 
 instruments. I also noticed that, when opening the fine new 
 theatre, they had quite forgotten to increase the number of 
 these instruments in proportion to the enlarged space. In 
 this, as well as in the general equipment of the stage, which 
 was materially deficient in many respects, I was impressed by 
 the sense of a certain meanness about theatrical enterprise in 
 Germany, which became most noticeable when reproductions 
 were given, often with wretched translations of the text, of the 
 Paris opera repertoire. If even in Paris my dissatisfaction 
 with this treatment of opera had been great, the feeling which 
 once drove me thither from the German theatres now returned 
 with redoubled energy. I actually felt degraded again, and 
 nourished within my breast a contempt so deep that for a time 
 I could hardly endure the thought of signing a lasting contract, 
 even with one of the most up-to-date of German opera houses, 
 but sadly wondered what steps I could take to hold my ground 
 between disgust and desire in this strange world. 
 
 Nothing but the sympathy inspired by communion with 
 persons endowed with exceptional gifts enabled me to triumph 
 over my scruples. This statement applies above all to my 
 great ideal, Schroder-Devrient, in whose artistic triumphs it 
 had once been my most burning desire to be associated. It is
 
 SCHKODER-DEVRIENT 275 
 
 true that many years had elapsed since my first youthful im- 
 pressions of her were formed. As regards her looks, the ver- 
 dict which, in the following winter, was sent to Paris by 
 Berlioz during his stay in Dresden, was so far correct that her 
 somewhat ' maternal ' stoutness was unsuited to youthful parts, 
 especially in male attire, which, as in Rienzi, made too great 
 a demand upon the imagination. Her voice, which in point 
 of quality had never been an exceptionally good medium 
 for song, often landed her in difficulties, and in particular 
 she was forced, when singing, to drag the time a little all 
 through. But her achievements were less hampered now by 
 these material hindrances than by the fact that her reper^- 
 toire consisted of a limited number of leading parts, which 
 she had sung so frequently that a certain monotony in the 
 conscious calculation of effect often developed into a manner- 
 ism which, from her tendency to exaggeration, was at times 
 almost painful. 
 
 Although these defects could not escape me, yet I, more 
 than any one, was especially qualified to overlook such minor 
 weaknesses, and realise with enthusiasm the incomparable 
 greatness of her performances. Indeed, it only needed the 
 stimulus of excitement, which this actress's exceptionally event- 
 ful life still procured, fully to restore the creative power of 
 her prime, a fact of which I was subsequently to receive strik- 
 ing demonstrations. But I was seriously troubled and de- 
 pressed at seeing how strong was the disintegrating effect of 
 theatrical life upon the character of this singer, who had 
 originally been endowed with such great and noble qualities. 
 From the very mouth through which the great actress's in- 
 spired musical utterances reached me, I was compelled to hear 
 at other times very similar language to that in which, with 
 but few exceptions, nearly all heroines of the stage indulge. 
 The possession of a naturally fine voice, or even mere physical 
 advantages, which might place her rivals on the same footing 
 as herself in public favour, was more than she could endure ; 
 and so far was she from acquiring the dignified resignation 
 worthy of a great artist, that her jealousy increased to a painful 
 extent as years went on. I noticed this all the more because 
 I had reason to suffer from it. A fact which caused me even
 
 276 MY LIFE 
 
 greater trouble, however, was that she did not grasp music 
 easily, and the study of a new part involved difficulties which 
 meant many a painful hour for the composer who had to make 
 her master his work. Her difficulty in learning new parts, and 
 particularly that of Adriano in Rienzi, entailed disappoint- 
 ments for her which caused me a good deal of trouble. 
 
 If, in her case, I had to handle a great and sensitive nature 
 very tenderly, I had, on the other hand, a very easy task with 
 Tichatschek, with his childish limitations and superficial, but 
 exceptionally brilliant, talents. He did not trouble to learn 
 his parts by heart, as he was so musical that he could sing the 
 most difficult music at sight, and thought all further study 
 needless, whereas with most other singers the work consisted 
 in mastering the score. Hence, if he sang through a part at 
 rehearsals often enough to impress it on his memory, the rest, 
 that is to say, everything pertaining to vocal art and dra- 
 matic delivery, would follow naturally. In this way he picked 
 up any clerical errors there might be in the libretto, and that 
 with such incorrigible pertinacity, that he uttered the wrong 
 words with just the same expression as if they were correct. 
 He waved aside good-humouredly any expostulations or hints 
 as to the sense with the remark, ' Ah ! that will be all right 
 soon.' And, in fact, I very soon resigned myself and quite 
 gave up trying to get the singer to use his intelligence in the 
 interpretation of the part of the hero, for which I was very 
 agreeably compensated by the light-hearted enthusiasm with 
 which he flung himself into his congenial role, and the irresist- 
 ible effect of his brilliant voice. 
 
 With the exception of these two actors who played the lead- 
 ing parts, I had only very moderate material at my disposal. 
 But there was plenty of goodwill, and I had recourse to an 
 ingenious device to induce Reissiger the conductor to hold 
 frequent piano rehearsals. He had complained to me of the 
 difficulty he had always found in securing a well-written 
 libretto, and thought it was very sensible of me to have acquired 
 the habit of writing my own. In his youth he had unfortu- 
 nately neglected to do this for himself, and yet this was all he 
 lacked to make a successful dramatic composer. I feel bound 
 to confess that he possessed ' a good deal of melody ' ; but
 
 TEXT OF THE <HOHE BEAUT' 277 
 
 this, he added, did not seem sufficient to inspire the singers 
 with the requisite enthusiasm. His experience was that 
 Schroder-Devrient, in his Adele de Foix, would render very 
 indifferently the same final passage with which, in Bellini's 
 Romeo and Juliet, she would put the audience into an ecstasy. 
 The reason for this, he presumed, must lie in the subject-matter. 
 I at once promised him that I would supply him with a libretto 
 in which he would be able to introduce these and similar 
 melodies to the greatest advantage. To this he gladly agreed, 
 and I therefore set aside for versification, as a suitable text 
 for Reissiger, my Hohe Braut, founded on Konig's romance, 
 which I had once before submitted to Scribe. I promised to 
 bring Reissiger a page of verse for every piano rehearsal, and 
 this I faithfully did until the whole book was done. I was 
 much surprised to learn some time later that Reissiger had had 
 a new libretto written for him by an actor named Kriethe. 
 This was called the Wreck of the Medusa. I then learned that 
 the wife of the conductor, who was a suspicious woman, had 
 been filled with the greatest concern at my readiness to give 
 up a libretto to her husband. They both thought the book 
 was good and full of striking effects, but they suspected some 
 sort of trap in the background, to escape from which they 
 must certainly exercise the greatest caution. The result was 
 that I regained possession of my libretto and was able, later on, 
 to help my old friend Kittl with it in Prague; he set it to 
 music of his own, and entitled it Die Franzosen vor Nizza. 
 I heard that it was frequently performed in Prague with great 
 success, though I never saw it myself; and I was also told at 
 the same time by a local critic that this text was a proof of my 
 real aptitude as a librettist, and that it was a mistake for me to 
 devote myself to composition. As regards my Tannhauser, on 
 the other hand, Laube used to declare it was a misfortune that^ 
 I had not got an experienced dramatist to supply me with a 
 decent text for my music. 
 
 For the time being, however, this work of versification had 
 the desired result, and Reissiger kept steadily to the study of 
 Rienzi. But what encouraged him even more than my verses 
 was the growing interest of the singers, and above all the 
 genuine enthusiasm of Tichatschek, This man, who had been
 
 278 MY LIFE 
 
 so ready to leave the delights of the theatre piano for a shooting 
 party, now looked upon the rehearsals of Rienzi as a genuine 
 treat He always attended them with radiant eyes and boister- 
 ous good-humour. I soon felt myself in a state of constant ex- 
 hilaration : favourite passages were greeted with acclamation by 
 the singers at every rehearsal, and a concerted number of the 
 third finale, which unfortunately had afterwards to be omitted 
 owing to its length, actually became on that occasion a source 
 of profit to me. For Tichatschek maintained that this B minor 
 was so lovely that something ought to be paid for it every 
 time, and he put down a silver penny, inviting the others to 
 do the same, to which they all responded merrily. From that 
 day forward, whenever we came to this passage at rehearsals, 
 the cry was raised, ' Here comes the silver penny part,' and 
 Schroder-Devrient, as she took out her purse, remarked that 
 these rehearsals would ruin her. This gratuity was conscien- 
 tiously handed to me each time, and no one suspected that 
 these contributions, which were given as a joke, were often a 
 very welcome help towards defraying the cost of our daily food. 
 For Minna had returned from Toplitz, at the beginning of 
 August, accompanied by my mother. 
 
 We lived very frugally in chilly lodgings, hopefully awaiting 
 the tardy day of our deliverance. The months of August 
 and September passed, in preparation for my work, amid 
 frequent disturbances caused by the fluctuating and scanty 
 repertoire of a German opera house, and not until October 
 did the combined rehearsals assume such a character as to 
 promise the certainty of a speedy production. From the 
 very beginning of the general rehearsals with the orchestra 
 we all shared the conviction that the opera would, without 
 doubt, be a great success. Finally, the full dress rehearsals 
 produced a perfectly intoxicating effect. When we tried the 
 first scene of the second act with the scenery complete, and 
 the messengers of peace entered, there was a general outburst 
 of emotion, and even Schroder-Devrient, who was bitterly 
 prejudiced against her part, as it was not the role of the 
 heroine, could only answer my questions in a voice stifled 
 with tears. I believe the whole theatrical body, down to its 
 humblest officials, loved me as though I were a real prodigy,
 
 GROWING ENTHUSIASM IN 'RIENZI' 279 
 
 and I am probably not far wrong in saying that much of this 
 arose from sympathy and lively fellow-feeling for a young man, 
 whose exceptional difficulties were not unknown to them, and 
 who now suddenly stepped out of perfect obscurity into splen- 
 dour. During the interval at the full dress rehearsal, while 
 other members had dispersed to revive their jaded nerves 
 with lunch, I remained seated on a pile of boards on the stage, 
 in order that no one might realise that I was in the quan- 
 dary of being unable to obtain similar refreshment. An in- 
 valid Italian singer, who was taking a small part in the opera, 
 seemed to notice this, and kindly brought me a glass of wine 
 and a piece of bread. I was sorry that I was obliged to deprive 
 him of even his small part in the course of the year, for its 
 loss provoked such ill-treatment from his wife, that by conjugal 
 tyranny he was driven into the ranks of my enemies. When, 
 after my flight from Dresden in 1849, I learned that I had 
 been denounced to the police by this same singer for supposed 
 complicity in the rising which took place in that town, I be- 
 thought me of this breakfast during the Eienzi rehearsal, and 
 felt I was being punished for my ingratitude, for I knew I was 
 guilty of having brought him into trouble with his wife. 
 
 The frame of mind in which I looked forward to the first 
 performance of my work was a unique experience which I 
 have never felt either before or since. My kind sister Clara 
 fully shared my feelings. She had been living a wretched 
 middle-class life at Chemnitz, which, just about this time, she 
 had left to come and share my fate in Dresden. The poor 
 woman, whose undoubted artistic gifts had faded so early, was 
 laboriously dragging out a commonplace bourgeois existence 
 as a wife and mother; but now, under the influence of my 
 growing success, she began joyously to breathe a new life. She 
 and I and the worthy chorus-master Fischer used to spend our 
 evenings with the Heine family, still over potatoes and herrings, 
 and often in a wonderfully elated frame of mind. The even- 
 ing before our first performance I was able to crown our hap- 
 piness by myself ladling out a bowl of punch. With mingled 
 tears and laughter we skipped about like happy children, and 
 then in sleep prepared ourselves for the triumphant day to 
 which we looked forward with such confidence.
 
 280 
 
 Although on the morning of 20th October, 1842 I had re- 
 solved not to disturb any of my singers by a visit, yet I hap- 
 pened to come across one of them, a stiff Philistine called 
 Risse, who was playing a minor bass part in a dull but respect- 
 able way. The day was rather cool, but wonderfully bright 
 and sunshiny, after the gloomy weather we had just been 
 having. Without a word this curious creature saluted me and 
 then remained standing, as though bewitched. He simply 
 gazed into my face with wonder and rapture, in order to find 
 out, so he at last managed to tell me in strange confusion, how 
 a man looked who that very day was to face such an exceptional 
 fate. I smiled and reflected that it was indeed a day of crisis, 
 and promised him that I would soon drink a glass with him, at 
 the Stadt Hamburg inn, of the excellent wine he had recom- 
 mended to me with so much agitation. 
 
 No subsequent experience of mine can be compared with 
 the sensations which marked the day of the first production of 
 Rienzi. At all the first performances of my works in later days, 
 I have been so absorbed by an only too well-founded anxiety 
 as to their success, that I could neither enjoy the opera nor 
 form any real estimate of its reception by the public. As for 
 my subsequent experiences at the general rehearsal of Tristan 
 und Isolde, this took place under such exceptional circum- 
 stances, and its effect upon me differed so fundamentally from 
 that produced by the first performance of Rienzi, that no com- 
 parison can possibly be drawn between the two. 
 
 The immediate success of Rienzi was no doubt assured before- 
 hand. But the emphatic way in which the audience declared 
 their appreciation was thus far exceptional, that in cities like 
 Dresden the spectators are never in a position to decide con- 
 clusively upon a work of importance on the first night, and 
 consequently assume an attitude of chilling restraint towards 
 the works of unknown authors. But this was, in the nature 
 of things, an exceptional case, for the numerous staff of the 
 theatre and the body of musicians had inundated the city be- 
 forehand with such glowing reports of my opera, that the 
 whole population awaited the promised miracle in feverish ex- 
 pectation. I sat with Minna, my sister Clara, and the Heine 
 family in a pit-box, and when I try to recall my condition
 
 THE SUCCESS OF 'RIENZI' 281 
 
 during that evening, I can only picture it with all the para- 
 phernalia of a dream. Of real pleasure or agitation I felt none 
 at all: I seemed to stand quite aloof from my work; whereas 
 the sight of the thickly crowded auditorium agitated me so 
 much, that I was unable even to glance at the body of the 
 audience, whose presence merely affected me like some natural 
 phenomenon something like a continuous downpour of rain 
 from which I sought shelter in the farthest corner of my box 
 as under a protecting roof. I was quite unconscious of applause, 
 and when at the end of the acts I was tempestuously called for, 
 I had every time to be forcibly reminded by Heine and driven 
 on to the stage. On the other hand, one great anxiety filled 
 me with growing alarm: I noticed that the first two acts had 
 taken as long as the whole of Freischiitz, for instance. On 
 account of its warlike calls to arms the third act begins with an 
 exceptional uproar, and when at its close the clock pointed to 
 ten, which meant that the performance had already lasted full 
 four hours, I became perfectly desperate. The fact that after 
 this act, also, I was again loudly called, I regarded merely 
 as a final courtesy on the part of the audience, who wished to 
 signify that they had had quite enough for one evening, and 
 would now leave the house in a body. As we had still two acts 
 before us, I thought it settled that we should not be able to 
 finish the piece, and apologised for my lack of wisdom in not 
 having previously effected the necessary curtailments. Now, 
 thanks to my folly, I found myself in the unheard-of predica- 
 ment of being unable to finish an opera, otherwise extremely 
 well received, simply because it was absurdly long. I could 
 only explain the undiminished zeal of the singers, and particu- 
 larly of Tichatschek, who seemed to grow lustier and cheerier 
 the longer it lasted, as an amiable trick to conceal from me 
 the inevitable catastrophe. But my astonishment at finding 
 the audience still there in full muster, even in the last act 
 towards midnight filled me with unbounded perplexity. I 
 could no longer trust my eyes or ears, and regarded the whole 
 events of the evening as a nightmare. It was past midnight 
 when, for the last time, I had to obey the thunderous calls of 
 the audience, side by side with my trusty singers. 
 
 My feeling of desperation at the unparalleled length of my
 
 282 MY LIFE 
 
 opera was augmented by the temper of my relatives, whom 
 I saw for a short time after the performance. Friedrich 
 Brockhaus and his family had come over with some friends 
 from Leipzig, and had invited us to the inn, hoping to celebrate 
 an agreeable success over a pleasant supper, and possibly to 
 drink my health. But on arriving, kitehen and cellar were 
 closed, and every one was so worn out that nothing was to be 
 heard but outcries at the unparalleled case of an opera lasting 
 from six o'clock till past twelve. No further remarks were 
 exchanged, and we stole away feeling quite stupefied. 
 
 About eight the next morning I put in an appearance at the 
 clerks' office, in order that in case there should be a second 
 performance I might arrange the necessary curtailment of the 
 parts. If, during the previous summer, I had contested every 
 beat with the faithful chorus-master Fischer, and proved them 
 all to be indispensable, I was now possessed by a blind rage 
 for striking out. There was not a single part of my score which 
 seemed any longer necessary what the audience had been 
 made to swallow the previous evening now appeared but a chaos 
 of sheer impossibilities, each and all of which might be omitted 
 without the slightest damage or risk of being unintelligible. 
 My one thought now was how to reduce my convolution of 
 monstrosities to decent limits. By dint of unsparing and ruth- 
 less abbreviations handed over to the copyist, I hoped to avert 
 a catastrophe, for I expected nothing less than that the general 
 manager, together with the city and the theatre, would that very 
 day give me to understand that such a thing as the performance 
 of my Last of the Tribunes might perhaps be permitted 
 once as a curiosity, but not oftener. All day long, there- 
 fore, I carefully avoided going near the theatre, so as to 
 give time for my heroic abbreviations to do their salutary work, 
 and for news of them to spread through the city. But at mid- 
 day I looked in again upon the copyists, to assure myself that 
 all had been duly performed as I had ordered. I then learned 
 that Tichatschek had also been there, and, after inspecting 
 the omissions that I had arranged, had forbidden their 
 being carried out. Fischer, the chorus-master, also wished 
 to speak to me about them: wjbrk was suspended, and I 
 foresaw great confusion. I could not understand what it all
 
 SECOND PEKFOKMANCE OF 'KIENZI' 283 
 
 meant, and feared mischief if the arduous task were delayed. 
 At length, towards evening, I sought out Tichatschek at the 
 theatre. Without giving him a chance to speak, I brusquely 
 asked him why he had interrupted the coypists' work. In a 
 half-choked voice he curtly and defiantly rejoined, ' I will have 
 none of my part cut out it is too heavenly.' I stared at him 
 blankly, and then felt as though I had been suddenly bewitched : 
 such an unheard-of testimony to my success could not but shake 
 me out of my strange anxiety. Others joined him, Fischer 
 radiant with delight and bubbling with laughter. Every one 
 spoke of the enthusiastic emotion which thrilled the whole 
 city. Next came a letter of thanks from the Commissioner 
 acknowledging my splendid work. Nothing now remained for 
 me but to embrace Tichatschek and Fischer, and go on my 
 way to inform Minna and Clara how matters stood. 
 
 After a few days' rest for the actors, the second performance 
 took place on 26th October, but with various curtailments, for 
 which I had great difficulty in obtaining Tichatschek's con- 
 sent. Although it was still of much more than average length, 
 I heard no particular complaints, and at last adopted Tichat- 
 schek's view that, if he could stand it, so could the audience. 
 For six performances therefore, all of which continued to re- 
 ceive a similar avalanche of applause, I let the matter run its 
 course. 
 
 My opera, however, had also excited interest among the 
 elder princesses of the royal family. They thought its exhaust- 
 ing length a drawback, but were nevertheless unwilling to misa 
 any of it. Liittichau consequently proposed that I should give 
 the piece at full length, but half of it at a time on two successive 
 evenings. This suited me very well, and after an interval of 
 a few weeks we announced Rienzi's Greatness for the first day, 
 and His Fall for the second. The first evening we gave two 
 acts, and on the second three, and for the latter I composed 
 a special introductory prelude. This met with the entire ap- 
 proval of our august patrons, and especially of the two eldest, 
 Princesses Amalie and Augusta. The public, on the contrary, 
 simply regarded this in the light of now being asked to pay 
 two entrance fees for one opera, and pronounced the new 
 arrangement a decided fraud. Its annoyance at the change
 
 284 MY LIFE 
 
 was so great that it actually threatened to be fatal to the at- 
 tendance, and after three performances of the divided Rienzi 
 the management was obliged to go back to the old arrangement, 
 which I willingly made possible by introducing my cuttings 
 again. 
 
 From this time forward the piece used to fill the house to 
 overflowing as often as it could be presented, and the perma- 
 nence of its success became still more obvious when I began to 
 realise the envy it drew upon me from many different quarters. 
 My first experience of this was truly painful, and came from 
 the hands of the poet, Julius Mosen, on the very day after the 
 first performance. When I first reached Dresden in the sum- 
 mer I had sought him out, and, having a really high opinion 
 of his talent, our intercourse soon became more intimate, and 
 was the means of giving me much pleasure and instruction. 
 He had shown me a volume of his plays, which on the whole 
 appealed to me exceptionally. Among these was a tragedy, 
 Cola Rienzi, dealing with the same subject as my opera, and 
 in a manner partly new to me, and which I thought effec- 
 tive. With reference to this poem, I had begged him to take 
 no notice of my libretto, as in the quality of its poetry it 
 could not possibly bear comparison with his own; and it cost 
 him little sacrifice to grant the request. It happened that 
 just before the first performance of my Rienzi, he had pro- 
 duced in Dresden Bemhard von Weimar, one of his least 
 happy pieces, the result of which had brought him little 
 pleasure. Dramatically it was a thing with no life in it, aim- 
 ing only at political harangue, and had shared the inevitable 
 fate of all such aberrations. He had therefore awaited the 
 appearance of my Rienzi with some vexation, and confessed 
 to me his bitter chagrin at not being able to procure the ac- 
 ceptance of his tragedy of the same name in Dresden. This, 
 he presumed, arose from its somewhat pronounced political 
 tendency, which, certainly in a spoken play on a similar 
 subject, would be more noticeable than in an opera, where 
 from the very start no one pays any heed to the words. I 
 had genially confirmed him in this depreciation of the subject 
 matter in opera; and was therefore the more startled when, 
 on finding him at my sister Louisa's the day after the first
 
 THE CBITICS 285 
 
 performance, he straightway overwhelmed me with a scornful 
 outburst of irritation at my success. But he found in me a 
 strange sense of the essential unreality in opera of such a 
 subject as that which I had just illustrated with so much 
 success in Rienzi, so that, oppressed by a secret sense of shame, 
 I had no serious rejoinder to offer to his candidly poisonous 
 abuse. My line of defence was not yet sufficiently clear in 
 my own mind to be available offhand, nor was it yet backed 
 by so obvious a jjrodurt oJLmy ow_n_^eculiar genius that I could 
 venture to quote it. Moreover, my first impulse was only one 
 of pity for the unlucky playwright, which I felt all the more 
 constrained to express, because his burst of fury gave me the 
 inward satisfaction of knowing that he recognised my great 
 success, of which I was not yet quite clear myself. 
 
 But this first performance of Rienzi did far more than this. 
 It gave occasion for controversy, and made an ever-widening 
 breach between myself and the newspaper critics. Herr Karl 
 Bank, who for some time had been the chief musical critic in 
 Dresden, had been known to me before at Magdeburg, where he 
 once visited me and listened with delight to my playing of 
 several fairly long passages from my Liebesverbot. When we 
 met again in Dresden, this man could not forgive me for having 
 been unable to procure him tickets for the first performance 
 of Rienzi. The same thing happened with a certain Herr 
 Julius Schladebach, who likewise settled in Dresden about that 
 time as a critic. Though I was always anxious to be gracious 
 to everybody, yet I felt just then an invincible repugnance 
 for showing special deference to any man because he was a 
 critic. As time went on, I carried this rule to the point of 
 almost systematic rudeness, and was consequently all my life 
 through the victim of unprecedented persecution from tho 
 jDress. As yet, however, this ill-will had not become pro- 
 nounced, for at that time journalism had not begun to give 
 itself airs in Dresden. There were so few contributions sent 
 from there to the outside press that our artistic doings excited 
 very little notice elsewhere, a fact which was certainly not 
 without its disadvantages for me. Thus for the present the 
 unpleasant side of my success scarcely affected me at all, and 
 for a brief space I felt myself, for the first and only time in in y
 
 286 MY LIFE 
 
 life, so pleasantly borne along on the breath of general good- 
 will, that all my former troubles seemed amply requited. 
 
 For further and quite unexpected fruits of my success now 
 appeared with astonishing rapidity, though not so much in 
 the form of material profit, which for the present resolved 
 itself into nine hundred marks, paid me by the General Board 
 as an exceptional fee instead of the usual twenty golden louis. 
 Nor did I dare x to cherish the hope of selling my work advan- 
 tageously to a publisher, until it had been performed in some 
 other important towns. But fate willed it, that by the sudden 
 death of Kastrelli, royal director of music, which occurred 
 shortly after the first production of Elcnzi, an office should 
 unexpectedly become vacant, for the filling of which all eyes 
 at once turned to me. 
 
 While the negotiations over this matter were slowly proceed- 
 ing, the General Board gave proof in another direction of an 
 almost passionate interest in my talents. They insisted that 
 the first performance of the Fliegender Hollander should on 
 no account be conceded to the Berlin opera, but reserved as 
 an honour for Dresden. As the Berlin authorities raised no 
 obstacle, I very gladly handed over my latest work also to the 
 Dresden theatre. If in this I had to dispense with Tichat- 
 schek's assistance, as there was no leading tenor part in the 
 play, I could count all the more surely on the helpful co- 
 operation of Schroder-Devrient, to whom a worthier task was 
 assigned in the leading female part than that which she had had 
 in Rienzi. I was glad to be able thus to rely entirely upon her, 
 as she had grown strangely out of humour with me, owing to 
 her scanty share in the success of Rienzi. The completeness 
 of my faith in her I proved with an exaggeration by no means 
 advantageous to my own work, by simply forcing the leading 
 male part on Wachter, a once capable, but now somewhat 
 delicate baritone. He was in every respect wholly unsuited 
 to the task, and only accepted it with unfeigned hesitation. 
 On submitting my play to my adored prima donna, I was much 
 relieved to find that its poetry made a special appeal to her. 
 Thanks to the genuine personal interest awakened in me under 
 very peculiar circumstances by the character and fate of this 
 exceptional woman, our study of the part of Senta, which often
 
 CONCERT IN LEIPZIG 287 
 
 brought us into close contact, became one of the most thrilling 
 and momentously instructive periods of my life. 
 
 It is true that the great actress, especially when under the 
 influence of her famous mother, Sophie Schroder, who was just 
 then with her on a visit, showed undisguised vexation at my 
 having composed so brilliant a work as Rienzi for Dresden 
 without having specifically reserved the principal part for her. 
 Yet the magnanimity of her disposition triumphed even over 
 this selfish impulse : she loudly proclaimed me ' a genius,' 
 and honoured me with that special confidence which, she said, 
 none but a genius should enjoy. But when she invited me to 
 become both the accomplice and adviser in her really dreadful 
 love affairs, this confidence certainly began to have its risky 
 side ; nevertheless there were at first occasions on which she 
 openly proclaimed herself before all the world as my friend, 
 making most flattering distinctions in my favour. 
 
 First of all I had to accompany her on a trip to Leipzig, 
 where she was giving a concert for her mother's benefit, which 
 she thought to make particularly attractive by including in 
 its programme two selections from Rienzi the aria of Adriano 
 and the hero's prayer (the latter sung by Tichatschek), and 
 both under my personal conductorship. Mendelssohn^ who was,!* vJL*l 
 also on very friendly terms with her, had been enticed to this ' 
 concert too, and produced his overture to Ruy Bias, then quite 
 new. It was during the two busy days spent on this occasion 
 in Leipzig that I first came into close contact with him, all 
 my previous knowledge of him having been limited to a few 
 rare and altogether profitless visits. At the house of my 
 brother-in-law, Fritz Brockhaus, he and Devrient gave us a 
 good deal of music, he playing her accompaniment to a num- 
 ber of Schubert's songs. I here became conscious of the pecu- 
 liar unrest and excitement with which this master of music, 
 who, though still young, had already reached the zenith of 
 his fame and life's work, observed or rather watched me. I 
 could see clearly that he thought but little of a success in\ 
 opera, and that merely in Dresden. Doubtless I seemed in 
 his eyes one of a class of musicians to whom he attached no 
 value, and with whom he proposed to have no intercourse. 
 Nevertheless my success had certain characteristic features,
 
 288 MY LIFE 
 
 which gave it a more or less alarming aspect Mendelssohn's 
 most ardent desire for a long time past had been to write a 
 successful opera, and it was possible he now felt annoyed that, 
 before he had succeeded in doing so, a triumph of this nature 
 should suddenly be thrust into his face with blunt brutality, 
 and based upon a style of music which he might feel justified 
 in regarding as poor. He probably found it no less exasperat- 
 ing that Devrient, whose gifts he acknowledged, and who was his 
 own devoted admirer, should now so openly and loudly sound 
 my praises. These thoughts were dimly shaping themselves 
 in my mind, when Mendelssohn, by a very remarkable state- 
 ment, drove me, almost with violence, to adopt this interpre- 
 tation. On our way home together, after the joint concert 
 rehearsal, I was talking very warmly on the subject of music. 
 Although by no means a talkative man, he suddenly inter- 
 rupted me with curiously hasty excitement by the assertion 
 that music had but one great fault, namely, that more than 
 any other art it stimulated not only our good, but also our 
 evil qualities, such, for instance, as jealousy. I blushed 
 with shame to have to apply this speech to his own feelings 
 towards me; for I was profoundly conscious of my innocence 
 of ever having dreamed, even in the remotest degree, of placing 
 my own talents or performances as a musician in comparison 
 with his. Yet, strange to say, at this very concert he showed 
 himself in a light by no means calculated to place him beyond 
 all possibility of comparison with myself. A rendering of his 
 Hebrides Overture would have placed him so immeasurably 
 above my two operatic airs, that all shyness at having to stand 
 beside him would have been spared me, as the gulf between our 
 two productions was impassable. But in his choice of the Ruy 
 Bias Overture he appears to have been prompted by a desire 
 to place himself on this occasion so close to the operatic style 
 that its effectiveness might be reflected upon his own work. 
 The overture was evidently calculated for a Parisian audience, 
 and the astonishment Mendelssohn caused by appearing in such 
 a connection was shown by Robert Schumann in his own 
 ungainly fashion at its close. Approaching the musician in 
 the orchestra, he blandly, and with a genial smile, expressed 
 his admiration of the ' brilliant orchestral piece ' just played.
 
 BERLIN. MEETING WITH LISZT 289 
 
 But in the interests of veracity let me not forget that neither 
 he nor I scored the real success of that evening. We were 
 both wholly eclipsed by the tremendous effect produced by 
 the grey-haired Sophie Schroder in a recitation of Burger's 
 Lenore. While the daughter had been taunted in the news- 
 papers with unfairly employing all sorts of musical attractions 
 to cozen a benefit concert out of the music lovers of Leipzig 
 for a mother who never had anything to do with that art, we, 
 who were there as her musical aiders and abettors, had to stand 
 like so many idle conjurers, while this aged and almost tooth- 
 less dame declaimed Burger's poem with truly terrifying 
 beauty and grandeur. This episode, like so much else that I 
 saw during these few days, gave me abundant food for thought 
 and meditation. 
 
 A second excursion, also undertaken with Devrient, took me 
 in the December of that year to Berlin, where the singer had 
 been invited to appear at a grand state concert. I for my 
 part wanted an interview with Director Kiistner about the 
 Fliegender Hollander. Although I arrived at no definite result 
 regarding my own personal business, this short visit to Berlin 
 was memorable for my meeting with Tjanr Linnt, which after- 
 wards proved of great importance. It took place under singular 
 circumstances, which placed both him and me in a situation 
 of peculiar embarrassment, brought about in the most wanton 
 fashion by Devrient's exasperating caprice. 
 
 I had already told my patroness the story of my earlier 
 meeting with Liszt. During that fateful second winter of my 
 stay in Paris, when I had at last been driven to be grateful 
 for Schlesinger's hack-work, I one day received word from 
 Laube, who always bore me in mind, that F. Liszt was coming 
 to Paris. He had mentioned and recommended me to him 
 when he was in Germany, and advised me to lose no time in 
 looking him up, as he was ' generous,' and would certainly 
 find means of helping me. As soon as I heard that he had 
 really arrived, I presented myself at the hotel to see him. It 
 was early in the morning. On my entrance I found several 
 strange gentlemen waiting in the drawing-room, where, after 
 some time, we were joined by Liszt himself, pleasant and affable, 
 and wearing his indoor coat. The conversation was carried on
 
 290 MY LIFE 
 
 in French, and turned upon his experiences during his last 
 professional journey in Hungary. As I was unable to take 
 part, on account of the language, I listened for some time, 
 feeling heartily bored, until at last he asked me pleasantly 
 what he could do for me. He seemed unable to recall Laube's 
 recommendation, and all the answer I could give was that I 
 desired to make his acquaintance. To this he had evidently 
 no objection, and informed me he would take care to have a 
 ticket sent me for his great matinee, which was to take place 
 shortly. My sole attempt to introduce an artistic theme of 
 conversation was a question as to whether he knew Lowe's 
 Erlkonig as well as Schubert's. His reply in the negative 
 frustrated this somewhat awkward attempt, and I ended my 
 visit by giving him my address. Thither his secretary, 
 Belloni, presently sent me, with a few polite words, a card of 
 admission to a concert to be given entirely by the master him- 
 self in the Salle Erard. I duly wended my way to the over- 
 crowded hall, and beheld the platform on which the grand piano 
 stood, closely beleaguered by the cream of Parisian female 
 society, and witnessed their enthusiastic ovations of this virtuoso, 
 who was at that time the wonder of the world. Moreover, 
 I heard several of his most brilliant pieces, such as ' Variations 
 on Robert le Diable' but carried away with me no real im- 
 pression beyond that of being stunned. This took place just 
 at the time when I abandoned a path which had been contrary 
 to my truer nature, and had led me astray, and on which I 
 now emphatically turned my back in silent bitterness. I was 
 therefore in no fitting mood for a just appreciation of this 
 prodigy, who at that time was shining in the blazing light 
 of day, but from whom I had turned my face to the night. I 
 went to see Liszt no more. 
 
 As already mentioned, I had given Devrient a bare outline 
 of this story, but she had noted it with particular attention, 
 for I happened to have touched her weak point of professional 
 jealousy. As Liszt had also been commanded by the King of 
 Prussia to appear at the grand state concert at Berlin, it so 
 happened that the first time they met Liszt questioned her 
 with great interest about the success of Rienzi. She thereupon 
 observed that the composer of that opera was an altogether
 
 SCHRODER-DEVRIENT AND LISZT 291 
 
 unknown man, and proceeded with curious malice to taunt him 
 with his apparent lack of penetration, as proved by the fact 
 that the said composer, who now so keenly excited his interest, 
 was the very same poor musician whom he had lately * turned 
 away so contemptuously ' in Paris. All this she told me with 
 an air of triumph, which distressed me very much, and I at 
 once set to work to correct the false impression conveyed by 
 my former account. As we were still debating this point in 
 her room, we were startled by hearing from the next the 
 famous bass part in the ' Revenge ' air from Donna Anna, 
 rapidly executed in octaves on the piano. ' That 's Liszt 
 himself,' she cried. Liszt then entered the room to fetch her 
 for the rehearsal. To my great embarrassment she introduced 
 me to him with malicious delight as the composer of Rienzi, 
 the man whose acquaintance he now wished to make after 
 having previously shown him the door in his glorious Paris. 
 My solemn asseverations that my patroness no doubt only 
 in fun was deliberately distorting my account of my former 
 visit to him, apparently pacified him so far as I was concerned, 
 and, on the other hand, he had no doubt already formed his 
 own opinion of the impulsive singer. He certainly regretted 
 that he could not remember my visit in Paris, but it never- 
 theless shocked and alarmed him to learn that any one should 
 have had reason to complain of such treatment at his hands. 
 The hearty sincerity of Listz's simple words to me about this 
 misunderstanding, as contrasted with the strangely passionate 
 raillery of the incorrigible lady, made a most pleasing and 
 captivating impression upon me. The whole bearing of the 
 man, and the way in which he tried to ward off the pitiless 
 scorn of her attacks, was something new to me, and gave me a 
 deep insight into his character, so firm in its amiability and 
 boundless good-nature. Finally, she teased him about the 
 Doctor's degree which had just been conferred on him by the 
 University of Konigsberg, and pretended to mistake him for a 
 chemist. At last he stretched himself out flat on the floor, 
 and implored her mercy, declaring himself quite defenceless 
 against the storm of her invective. Then turning to me with 
 a hearty assurance that he would make it his business to hear 
 Ricnzi, and would in any case endeavour to give me a better
 
 292 MY LIFE 
 
 opinion of himself than his evil star had hitherto permitted, 
 we parted for that occasion. 
 
 The almost nai've simplicity and naturalness of his every 
 phrase and word, and particularly his emphatic manner, left 
 a most profound impression upon me. No one could fail to 
 be equally affected by these qualities, and I now realised for 
 the first time the almost magic power exerted by Liszt over 
 all who came in close contact with him, and saw how erroneous 
 had been my former opinion as to its cause. 
 
 These two excursions to Leipzig and Berlin found but brief 
 interruptions of the period devoted at home to our study of 
 the Fliegender Hollander. It was therefore, of paramount im- 
 portance to me to maintain Schroder-Devrient's keen interest 
 in her part, since, in view of the weakness of the rest of the 
 cast, I was convinced that it was from her alone I could expect 
 any adequate interpretation of the spirit of my work. 
 
 The part of Senta was essentially suited to her, and there 
 were just at that moment peculiar circumstances in her life 
 which brought her naturally emotional temperament to a high 
 pitch of tension. I was amazed when she confided to me that 
 she was on the point of breaking off a regular liaison of many 
 years' standing, to form, in passionate haste, another much 
 less desirable one. The forsaken lover, who was tenderly 
 devoted to her, was a young lieutenant in the Royal Guards, 
 and the son of Miiller, the ex-Minister of Education; her new 
 choice, whose acquaintance she had formed on a recent visit 
 to Berlin, was Herr von Miinchhausen. He was a tall, slim 
 young man, and her predilection for him was easily explained 
 when I became more closely acquainted with her love affairs. 
 It seemed to me that the bestowal of her confidence on me in 
 this matter arose from her guilty conscience; she was aware 
 that Miiller, whom I liked on account of his excellent disposi- 
 tion, had loved her with the earnestness of a first love, and also 
 that she was now betraying him in the most faithless way on 
 a trivial pretext. She must have known that her new lover 
 was entirely unworthy of her, and that his intentions were 
 frivolous and selfish. She knew, too, that no one, and certainly 
 none of her older friends who knew her best, would approve 
 of her behaviour. She told me candidly that she had felt
 
 THE < FLIEGENDER HOLLANDER' 293 
 
 impelled to confide in me because I was a genius, and would 
 understand the demands of her temperament. I hardly 
 knew what to think. I was repelled alike by her passion and 
 the circumstances attending it; but to my astonishment I 
 had to confess that the infatuation, so repulsive to me, held 
 this strange woman in so powerful a grasp that I could 
 not refuse her a certain amount of pity, nay, even real 
 sympathy. 
 
 She was pale and distraught, ate hardly anything, and her 
 faculties were subjected to a strain so extraordinary that I 
 thought she would not escape a serious, perhaps a fatal illness. 
 Sleep had long since deserted her, and whenever I brought 
 her my unlucky Fliegender Hollander, her looks so alarmed me 
 that the proposed rehearsal was the last thing I thought of. 
 But in this matter she insisted ; she made me sit down at the 
 piano, and then plunged into the study of her role as if it were 
 a matter of life and death. She found the actual learning of 
 the part very difficult, and it was only by repeated and perse- 
 vering rehearsal that she mastered her task. She would sing 
 for hours at a time with such passion that I often sprang up 
 in terror and begged her to spare herself ; then she would point 
 smiling to her chest, and expand the muscles of her still magnifi- 
 cent person, to assure me that she was doing herself no harm. 
 Her voice really acquired at that time a youthful freshness and 
 power of endurance. I had to confess that which often aston- 
 ished me: this infatuation for an insipid nobody was very 
 much to the advantage of my Senta. Her courage under this 
 intense strain was so great that, as time pressed, she consented 
 to have the general rehearsal on the very day of the first 
 performance, and a delay which would have been greatly to 
 my disadvantage was thus avoided. 
 
 The performance took place on 2nd January, in the year 
 1843. Its result was extremely instructive to me, and led to 
 the turning-point of my career. The ill-success of the perform- . 
 ance taught me how much care and forethought were essential 
 to secure the adequate dramatic interpretation of my latest 
 works. I realised that I had more or less believed that my 
 score would explain itself, and that my singers would arrive 
 at the right interpretation of their own accord. My good old
 
 294 MY LIFE 
 
 friend Wachter, who at the time of Henriette Sontag's first 
 success was a favourite ' Barber of Seville/ had from the first 
 discreetly thought otherwise. Unfortunately, even Schroder- 
 Devrient only saw when the rehearsals were too far advanced 
 how utterly incapable Wachter was of realising the horror and 
 supreme suffering of my Mariner. His distressing corpulence, 
 his broad fat face, the extraordinary movements of his arms 
 and legs, which he managed to make look like mere stumps, 
 drove my passionate Senta to despair. At one rehearsal, 
 when in the great scene in Act ii. she comes to him in the guise 
 of a guardian angel to bring the message of salvation, she broke 
 off to whisper despairingly in my ear, ' How can I say it when 
 I look into those beady eyes ? Good God, Wagner, what a 
 muddle you have made ! ' I consoled her as well as I could, 
 and secretly placed my dependence on Herr von Munchhausen, 
 who promised faithfully to sit that evening in the front row of 
 the stalls, so that Devrient's eyes must fall on him. And the 
 magnificent performance of my great artiste, although she 
 stood horribly alone on the stage, did succeed in rousing 
 enthusiasm in the second act. The first act offered the 
 audience nothing but a dull conversation between Herr 
 Wachter and that Herr Eisse who had invited me to an 
 excellent glass of wine on the first night of Rienzi, and in the 
 third the loudest raging of the orchestra did not rouse the sea 
 from its dead calm nor the phantom ship in its cautious 
 rocking. The audience fell to wondering how I could have 
 produced this crude, meagre, and gloomy work after Rienzi, 
 in every act of which incident abounded, and Tichatschek 
 shone in an endless variety of costumes. 
 
 As Schrb'der-Devrient soon left Dresden for a considerable 
 time, the Fliegender Hollander saw only four performances, at 
 which the diminishing audiences made it plain that I had not 
 pleased Dresden taste with it. The management was com- 
 pelled to revive Rienzi in order to maintain my prestige ; and 
 the triumph of this opera compared with the failure of the 
 Dutchman gave me food for reflection. I had to admit, with 
 some misgivings, that the success of my Rienzi was not entirely 
 due to the cast and staging, although I was fully alive to the 
 defects from which the Fliegender Hollander suffered in this
 
 SEASONS OF SUCCESS OF 'RIENZI' 295 
 
 respect. Although Wachter was far from realising ray con- 
 ception of the Fliegender Holltmdcr I could not conceal from 
 myself the fact that Tichatschek was quite as far removed 
 from the ideal Rienzi. His abominable errors and deficiencies 
 in his presentation of the part had never escaped me; he had 
 never been able to lay aside his brilliant and heroic leading- 
 tenor manners in order to render that gloomy demonic 
 strain in Rienzi's temperament on which I had laid unmis- 
 takable stress at the critical points of the drama. In the 
 fourth act, after the pronouncement of the curse, he fell on his 
 knees in the most melancholy fashion and abandoned himself 
 to bewailing his fate in piteous tones. When I suggested to 
 him that Rienzi, though inwardly despairing, must take up 
 an attitude of statuesque firmness before the world, he pointed 
 out to me the great popularity which the end of this very 
 act had won as interpreted by himself, with an intimation that 
 he intended making no change in it. 
 
 And when I considered the real causes of the success of 
 Rienzi, I found that it rested on the brilliant and extraordin- 
 arily fresh voice of the soaring, happy singer, in the refreshing 
 effect of the chorus and the gay movement and colouring on 
 the stage. I received a still more convincing proof of this 
 when we divided the opera into two, and found that the second 
 part, which was the more important from both the dramatic 
 and the musical point of view, was noticeably less well attended 
 than the first, for the very obvious reason, as I thought, that 
 the ballet occurred in the first part. My brother Julius, who 
 had come over from Leipzig for one of the performances of 
 Rienzi, gave me a still more naive testimony as to the real 
 point of interest in the opera. I was sitting with him in an 
 open box, in full sight of the audience, and had therefore 
 begged him to desist from giving any applause, even if directed 
 only to the efforts of the singers; he restrained himself all 
 through the evening, but his enthusiasm at a certain figure 
 of the ballet was too much for him, and he clapped loudly, 
 to the great amusement of the audience, telling me that he 
 could not hold himself in any longer. Curiously enough, this 
 same ballet secured for Rienzi, which was otherwise received 
 with indifference, the enduring preference of the present King
 
 296 MY LIFE 
 
 of Prussia, 1 who many years afterwards ordered the revival of 
 this opera, although it had utterly failed in arousing public 
 interest by its merits as a drama. 
 
 I found, when I had to be present later on at a representation 
 of the same opera at Darmstadt, that while wholesale cuts 
 had to be made in its best parts, it had been found necessary 
 to expand the ballets by additions and repetitions. This ballet 
 music, which I had put together with contemptuous haste at 
 Riga in a few days without any inspiration, seemed to me, 
 moreover, so strikingly weak that I was thoroughly ashamed 
 of it even in those days at Dresden, when I had found myself 
 compelled to suppress its best feature, the tragic pantomime. 
 Further, the resources of the ballet in Dresden did not even 
 admit of the execution of my stage directions for the combat 
 in the arena, nor for the very significant round dances, both 
 admirably carried out at a later date in Berlin. I had to be 
 content with the humiliating substitution of a long, foolish 
 step-dance by two insignificant dancers, which was ended by 
 a company of soldiers marching on, bearing their shields on 
 high so as to form a roof and remind the audience of the Roman 
 testudo; then the ballet-master with his assistant, in flesh- 
 coloured tights, leaped on to the shields and turned somer- 
 saults, a proceeding which they thought was reminiscent of the 
 gladiatorial games. It was at this point that the house was 
 always moved to resounding applause, and I had to own that 
 this moment marked the climax of my success. 
 
 I thus had my doubts as to the intrinsic divergence between 
 my inner aims and my outward success; at the same time a 
 decisive and fatal change in my fortunes was brought about 
 by my acceptance of the conductorship at Dresden, under 
 circumstances as perplexing in their way as those preceding 
 my marriage. I had met the negotiations which led up to 
 this appointment with a hesitation and a coolness by no means 
 affected. I felt nothing but scorn for theatrical life; a scorn 
 that was by no means lessened by a closer acquaintance with 
 the apparently distinguished ruling body of a court theatre, 
 the splendours of which only conceal, with arrogant ignorance, 
 the humiliating conditions appertaining to it and to the modern 
 
 1 William the First.
 
 DISINCLINATION TO ACCEPT POST 297 
 
 theatre in general. I saw every noble impulse stifled in those 
 occupied with theatrical matters, and a combination of the 
 vainest and most frivolous interests maintained by a ridicu- 
 lously rigid and bureaucratic system; I was now fully con- 
 vinced that the necessity of handling the business of the theatre 
 would be the most distasteful thing I could imagine. Now 
 that, through Rastrelli's death, the temptation to be false to 
 my inner conviction came to me in Dresden, I explained to my 
 old and trusted friends that I did not think I should accept the 
 vacant post. 
 
 But everything calculated to shake human resolution com- 
 bined against this decision. The prospect of securing the 
 means of livelihood through a permanent position with a fixed 
 salary was an irresistible attraction. I combated the tempta- 
 tion by reminding myself of my success as an operatic com- 
 poser, which might reasonably be expected to bring in enough 
 to supply my moderate requirements in a lodging of two 
 rooms, where I could proceed undisturbed with fresh com- 
 positions. I was told in answer to this that my work itself 
 would be better served by a fixed position without arduous 
 duties, as for a whole year since the completion of the Fliegen- 
 der Hollander I had not, under existing circumstances, found 
 any leisure at all for composition. I still remained convinced 
 that Eastrelli's post of musical director, in subordination 
 to the conductor, was unworthy of me, and I declined to enter- 
 tain the proposal, thus leaving the management to look elsewhere 
 for some one to fill the vacancy. 
 
 There was therefore no further question of this particular 
 post, but I was then informed that the death of Morlacchi had 
 left vacant a court conductorship, and it was thought that the 
 King would be willing to offer me the post. My wife was very 
 much excited at this prospect, for in Germany the greatest 
 value is laid on these court appointments, which are tenable 
 for life, and the dazzling respectability pertaining to them is 
 held out to German musicians as the acme of earthly happiness. 
 The offer opened up for us in many directions the prospect of 
 friendly relations in a society which had hitherto been outside 
 our experience. Domestic comfort and social prestige were 
 very alluring to the homeless wanderers who, in bygone days
 
 298 MY LIFE 
 
 of misery, had often longed for the comfort and security of an 
 assured and permanent position such as was now open to them 
 under the august protection of the court. The influence of 
 Caroline von Weber did much in the long-run to weaken my 
 opposition. I was often at her house, and took great pleasure 
 in her society, which brought back to my mind very vividly the 
 personality of my still dearly beloved master. She begged me 
 with really touching tenderness not to withstand this obvious 
 command of fate, and asserted her right to ask me to settle 
 in Dresden, to fill the place left sadly empty by her husband's 
 death. ' Just think,' she said, ' how can I look Weber in the 
 face again when I join him if I have to tell him that the 
 work for which he made such devoted sacrifices in Dresden is 
 neglected; just imagine my feelings when I see that indolent 
 Reissiger stand in my noble Weber's place, and when I hear 
 his operas produced more mechanically every year. If you 
 loved Weber, you owe it to his memory to step into his place 
 and to continue his work.' As an experienced woman of the 
 world she also pointed out energetically and prudently the 
 practical side of the matter, impressing on me the duty of 
 thinking of my wife, who would, in case of my death, be 
 sufficiently provided for if I accepted the post 
 
 The promptings of affection, prudence and good sense, 
 however, had less weight with me than the enthusiastic con- 
 viction, never at any period of my life entirely destroyed, that 
 wherever fate led me, whether to Dresden or elsewhere, I 
 should find the opportunity which would convert my dreams 
 into reality through currents set in motion by some change 
 in the everyday order of events. All that was needed for this 
 was the advent of an ardent and aspiring soul who, with good 
 luck to back him, might make up for lost time, and by his 
 ennobling influence achieve the deliverance of art from her 
 shameful bonds. The wonderful and rapid change which had 
 taken place in my fortunes could not fail to encourage such a 
 hope, and I was seduced on perceiving the marked alteration 
 that had taken place in the whole attitude of Liittichau, the 
 general director, towards me. This strange individual showed 
 me a kindliness of which no one would hitherto have thought 
 him capable, and that he was prompted by a genuine feeling
 
 KOYAL CONDUCTOR OF SAXONY (1843) 299 
 
 of personal benevolence towards me I could not help being 
 absolutely convinced, even at the time of my subsequent cease- 
 less differences with him. 
 
 Nevertheless, the decision came as a kind of surprise. On 
 2nd February 1843 I was very politely invited to the director's 
 office, and there met the general staff of the royal orchestra, 
 in whose presence Liittichau, through the medium of my 
 never-to-be-forgotten friend Winkler, solemnly read out to me a 
 royal rescript appointing me forthwith conductor to his Majesty, 
 with a life salary of four thousand five hundred marks a year. 
 Liittichau followed the reading of this document by a more 
 or less ceremonious speech, in which he assumed that I should 
 gratefully accept the King's favour. At this polite ceremony 
 it did not escape my notice that all possibility of future negotia- 
 tions over the figure of the salary was cut off ; on the other hand, 
 a substantial exemption in my favour, the omission of the 
 condition, enforced even on Weber in his time, of serving a 
 year's probation under the title of mere musical director, was 
 calculated to secure my unconditional acceptance. My new 
 colleagues congratulated me, and Liittichau accompanied me 
 with the politest phrases to my own door, where I fell into the 
 arms of my poor wife, who was giddy with delight. There- 
 fore I fully realised that I must put the best face I could on 
 the matter, and unless I wished to give unheard-of offence, I 
 must even congratulate myself on my appointment as royal 
 conductor. 
 
 A iew days after taking the oath' as a servant of the King 
 in solemn session, and undergoing the ceremony of presenta- 
 tion to the assembled orchestra by means of an enthusiastic 
 speech from the general director, I was summoned to an 
 audience with his Majesty. When I saw the features of the 
 kind, courteous, and homely monarch, I involuntarily thought 
 of my youthful attempt at a political overture on the theme 
 of Friedrich und Freiheit. Our somewhat embarrassed con- 
 versation brightened with the King's expression of his satis- 
 faction with those two of my operas which had been performed 
 in Dresden. He expressed with polite hesitation his feeling 
 that if my operas left anything to be desired, it was a clearer 
 definition of the various characters in my musical dramas. He
 
 300 MY LIFE 
 
 thought the interest in the persons was overpowered by the 
 elemental forces figuring beside them in Rienzi the mob, in 
 the Fliegender Hollander the sea. I thought I understood his 
 meaning perfectly, and this proof of his sincere sympathy and 
 original judgment pleased me very much. He also made his 
 excuses in advance for a possible rare attendance at my operas 
 on his part, his sole reason for this being that he had a peculiar 
 aversion from theatre-going, as the result of one of the rules of 
 his early training, under which he and his brother John, who 
 had acquired a similar aversion, were for a long time compelled 
 regularly to attend the theatre, when he, to tell the truth, 
 would often have preferred to be left alone to follow his own 
 pursuits independent of etiquette. 
 
 As a characteristic instance of the courtier spirit, I after- 
 wards learned that Liittichau, who had had to wait for me in 
 the anteroom during this audience, had been very much put 
 out by its long duration. In the whole course of my life I was 
 only admitted twice more to personal intercourse and speech 
 with the good King. The first occasion was when I presented 
 him with the dedication copy of the pianoforte score of my 
 Rienzi; and the second was after my very successful arrange- 
 ment and performance of the Iphigenia in Aulis, by Gluck, 
 of whose operas he was particularly fond, when he stopped me 
 in the public promenade and congratulated me on my work. 
 
 That first audience with the King marked the zenith of my 
 hastily adopted career at Dresden; thenceforward anxiety 
 reasserted itself in manifold ways. I very quickly realised the 
 difficulties of my material situation, since it soon became 
 evident that the advantage won by new exertions and my 
 present appointment bore no proportion to the heavy sacrifices 
 and obligations which I incurred as soon as I entered on an 
 independent career. The young musical director of Riga, 
 long since forgotten, suddenly reappeared in an astonishing 
 reincarnation as royal conductor to the King of Saxony. The 
 first-fruits of the universal estimate of my good fortune took 
 the shape of pressing creditors and threats of prosecution; 
 next followed demands from the Konigsberg tradesmen, from 
 whom I had escaped from Riga by means of that horribly 
 wretched and miserable flight. I also heard from people in
 
 MEAGRE SUCCESS OUTSIDE DRESDEN 301 
 
 the most distant parts, who thought they had some claim on 
 me, dating even from my student, nay, my school days, until at 
 last I cried out in my astonishment that I expected to receive 
 a bill next from, the nurse who had suckled me. All this 
 did not amount to any very large sum, and I merely mention 
 it because of the ill-natured rumours which, I learned years 
 later, had been spread abroad about the extent of my debts 
 at that time. Out of three thousand marks, borrowed at 
 interest from Schroder-Devrient, I not only paid these debts, 
 but also fully compensated the sacrifices which Kietz had 
 made on my behalf, without ever expecting any return, in the 
 days of my poverty in Paris. I was, moreover, able to be of 
 practical use to him. But where was I to find even this sum, 
 as my distress had hitherto been so great that I was obliged 
 to urge Schroder-Devrient to hurry on the rehearsals of the 
 Fliegender Hollander by pointing out to her the enormous 
 importance to me of the fee for the performance ? I had no 
 allowance for the expenses of my establishment in Dresden, 
 though it had to be suitable for my position as royal conductor, 
 nor even for the purchase of a ridiculous and expensive court 
 uniform, so that there would have been no possibility of my 
 making a start at all, as I had no private means, unless I 
 borrowed money at interest. 
 
 But no one who knew of the extraordinary success of Rienzi 
 at Dresden could help believing in an immediate and remunera- 
 tive rage for my operas on the German stage. My own relatives, 
 even the prudent Ottilie, were so convinced of it that they 
 thought I might safely count on at least doubling my salary 
 by the receipts from my operas. At the very beginning the 
 prospects did indeed seem bright; the score of my Fliegender 
 Hollander was ordered by the Royal Theatre at Cassel and by 
 the Riga theatre, which I had known so well in the old days, 
 because they were anxious to perform something of mine at an 
 early date, and had heard that this opera was on a smaller 
 scale, and made smaller demands on the stage management, 
 than Rienzi. In May, 1843 I heard good reports of the success 
 of the performances from both those places. But this was all 
 for the time being, and a whole year went by without the 
 smallest inquiry for any of my scores. An attempt was made
 
 302 MY LIFE 
 
 to secure me some benefit by the publication of the pianoforte 
 score of the Fliegender Hollander, as I wanted to reserve Rienzi, 
 after the successes it had gained, as useful capital for a more 
 favourable opportunity; but the plan was spoilt by the 
 opposition of Messrs. Hartel of Leipzig, who, although ready 
 enough to publish my opera, would only do so on the condition 
 that I abstained from asking any payment for it. 
 
 So I had, for the present, to content myself with the moral 
 satisfaction of my successes, of which my unmistakable 
 popularity with the Dresden public, and the respect and atten- 
 tion paid to me, formed part. But even in this respect my 
 Utopian dreams were destined to be disturbed. I think that 
 my appearance at Dresden marked the beginning of a new era 
 in journalism and criticism, which found food for its hitherto 
 but slightly developed vitality in its vexation at my success. 
 The two gentlemen I have already mentioned, C. Bank and 
 J. Schladebach, had, as I now know, first taken up their regular 
 abode in Dresden at that time; I know that when difficulties 
 were raised about the permanence of Bank's appointment, 
 they were waived, owing to the testimonials and recommenda- 
 tion of my present colleague Reissiger. The success of my 
 Rienzi had been the source of great annoyance to these gentle- 
 men, who were now established as musical critics to the Dresden 
 press, because I made no effort to win their favour ; they were 
 not ill-pleased, therefore, to find an opportunity of pouring out 
 the vitriol of their hatred over the universally popular young 
 musician who had won the sympathy of the kindly public, 
 partly on account of the poverty and ill-luck which had hitherto 
 been his lot. The need for any kind of human consideration 
 had suddenly vanished with my ' unheard-of ' appointment to 
 the royal conductorship. Now ' all was well with me,' ' too 
 well,' in fact; and envy found its congenial food; this pro- 
 vided a perfectly clear and comprehensible point of attack ; and 
 soon there spread through the German press, in the columns 
 given to Dresden news, an estimate of me which has never 
 fundamentally changed, except in one point, to this day. 
 This single modification, which was purely temporary and 
 confined to papers of one political colour, occurred on my 
 first settlement as a political refugee in Switzerland, but lasted
 
 LAUBE FOR THE DEFENCE 303 
 
 only until, through Liszt's exertions, my operas began to be 
 produced all over Germany, in spite of my exile. The orders 
 from two theatres, immediately after the Dresden performance, 
 for one of my scores, were merely due to the fact that up to 
 that time the activity of my journalistic critics was still 
 limited. I put down the cessation of all inquiries, certainly 
 not without due justification, mainly to the effect of the false 
 and calumnious reports in the papers. 
 
 My old friend Laube tried, indeed, to undertake my defence 
 in the press. On New Year's Day, 1843 he resumed the 
 editorship of the Zeitung fur die Elegante Welt, and asked me 
 to provide him with a biographical notice of myself for the 
 first number. It evidently gave him great pleasure to present 
 me thus in triumph to the literary world, and in order to give 
 the subject more prominence he added a supplement to that 
 number in the shape of a lithograph reproduction of my 
 portrait by Kietz. But after a time even he became anxious 
 and confused in his judgment of my works, when he saw the 
 systematic and increasingly virulent detraction, depreciation, 
 and scorn to which they were subjected. He confessed to me 
 later that he had never imagined such a desperate position 
 as mine against the united forces of journalism could possibly 
 exist, and when he heard my view of the question, he smiled 
 and gave me his blessing, as though I were a lost soul. 
 
 Moreover, a change was observable in the attitude of those 
 immediately connected with me in my work, and this provided 
 very acceptable material for the journalistic campaign. I had 
 been led, though by no ambitious impulse, to ask to be allowed 
 to conduct the performances of my own works. I found that 
 at every performance of Rienzi Reissiger became more negligent 
 in his conducting, and that the whole production was slipping 
 back into the old familiar, expressionless, and humdrum per- 
 formance; and as my appointment was already mooted, I had 
 asked permission to conduct the sixth performance of my 
 work in person. I conducted without having held a single 
 rehearsal, and without any previous experience, at the head 
 of the Dresden orchestra. The performance went splendidly; 
 singers and orchestra were inspired with new life, and every- 
 body was obliged to admit that this was the finest performance
 
 304 MY LIFE 
 
 of Rienzi that had yet been given. The rehearsing and con- 
 ducting of the Fliegender Hollander were willingly handed over 
 to me, because Reissiger was overwhelmed with work, in conse- 
 quence of the death of the musical director, Rastrelli. In 
 addition to this I was asked to conduct Weber's Euryanthe, 
 by way of providing a direct proof of my capacity to inter- 
 pret scores other than my own. Apparently everybody was 
 pleased, and it was the tone of this performance that made 
 Weber's widow so anxious that I should accept the Dresden 
 conductorship ; she declared that for the first time since her 
 husband's death she had heard his work correctly interpreted, 
 both in expression and time. 
 
 Thereupon, Reissiger, who would have preferred to have a 
 musical director under him, but had received instead a colleague 
 on an equal footing, felt himself aggrieved by my appointment. 
 Though his own indolence would have inclined him to the side 
 of peace and a good understanding with me, his ambitious wife 
 took care to stir up his fear of me. This never led to an openly 
 hostile attitude on his part, but I noticed certain indiscretions 
 in the press from that time onwards, which showed me that 
 the friendliness of my colleague, who never talked to me 
 without first embracing me, was not of the most honourable 
 type. 
 
 I also received a quite unexpected proof that I had attracted 
 the bitter envy of another man whose sentiments I had no 
 reason to suspect. This was Karl Lipinsky, a celebrated 
 violinist in his day, who had for many years led the Dresden 
 orchestra. He was a man of ardent temperament and original 
 talent, but of incredible vanity, which his emotional, suspicious 
 Polish temperament rendered dangerous. I always found him 
 annoying, because however inspiring and instructive his playing 
 was as to the technical execution of the violinists, he was cer- 
 tainly ill-fitted to be the leader of a first-class orchestra. This 
 extraordinary person tried to justify Director Liittichau's praise 
 of his playing, which could always be heard above the rest of 
 the orchestra; he came in a little before the other violins; he 
 was a leader in a double sense, as he was always a little ahead. 
 He acted in much the same way with regard to expression, 
 marking his slight variations in the piano passages with fanatical
 
 LIPINSKY'S TREACHERY 305 
 
 precision. It was useless to talk to him about it, as nothing 
 but the most skilful flattery had any effect on him. So I had 
 to endure it as best I could, and to think out ways and means 
 of diminishing its ill effects on the orchestral performances as 
 a whole by having recourse to the most polite circumlocutions. 
 Even so he could not endure the higher estimation in which the 
 performances of the orchestra under my conductorship were 
 held, because he thought that the playing of an orchestra in 
 which he was the leader must invariably be excellent, whoever 
 stood at the conductor's desk. Now it happened, as is always 
 the case when a new man with fresh ideas is installed in office, 
 that the members of the orchestra came to me with the most 
 varied suggestions for improvements which had hitherto been 
 neglected; and Lipinsky, who was already annoyed about this, 
 turned a certain case of this kind to a peculiarly treacherous use. 
 One of the oldest contrabassists had died. Lipinsky urged 
 me to arrange that the post should not be filled in the usual 
 way by promotion from the ranks of our own orchestra, but 
 should be given, on his recommendation, to a distinguished 
 and skilful contrabassist from Darmstadt named Miiller. 
 When the musician whose rights of seniority were thus 
 threatened, appealed to me, I kept my promise to Lipinsky, 
 explained my views about the abuses of promotion by 
 seniority, and declared that, in accordance with my sworn 
 oath to the King, I held it my paramount duty to consider the 
 maintenance of the artistic interests of the institution before 
 everything else. I then found to my great astonishment, 
 though it was foolish of me to be surprised, that the whole of 
 the orchestra turned upon me as one man, and when the occasion 
 arose for a discussion between Lipinsky and myself as 
 to his own numerous grievances, he actually accused me of 
 having threatened, by my remarks in the contrabassist case, 
 to undermine the well-established rights of the members of the 
 orchestra, whose welfare it was my duty to protect. Liittichau, 
 who was on the point of absenting himself from Dresden for 
 some time, was extremely uneasy, as Reissiger was away on 
 his holiday, at leaving musical affairs in such a dangerous 
 state of unrest. The deceit and impudence of which I had been 
 the victim was a revelation to me, and I gathered from this
 
 306 MY LIFE 
 
 experience the calm sense necessary to set the harassed director 
 at ease by the most conclusive assurances that I understood 
 the people with whom I had to deal, and would act accordingly. 
 I faithfully kept my word, and never again came into collision 
 either with Lipinsky or any other member of the orchestra. 
 On the contrary, all the musicians were soon so firmly attached 
 to me that I could always pride myself on their devotion. 
 
 From that day forward, however, one thing at least was 
 certain, namely, that I should not die as conductor at Dresden. 
 My post and my work at Dresden thenceforward became a 
 burden, of which the occasionally excellent results of my efforts 
 made me all the more sensible. 
 
 My position at Dresden, however, brought me one friend 
 whose intimate relations with me long survived our artistic 
 collaboration in Dresden. A musical director was assigned to 
 each conductor; he had to be a musician of repute, a hard 
 worker, adaptable, and, above all, a Catholic, for the two 
 conductors were Protestants, a cause of much annoyance to the 
 clergy of the Catholic cathedral, numerous positions in which 
 had to be filled from the orchestra. August Rockel, a nephew 
 of Hummel, who sent in his application for this position from 
 Weimar, furnished evidence of his suitability under all these 
 heads. He belonged to an old Bavarian family; his father 
 was a singer, and had sung the part of Florestan at the time 
 of the first production of Beethoven's Fidelio, and had himself 
 remained on terms of close intimacy with the Master, many 
 details about whose life have been preserved through his care. 
 His subsequent position as a teacher of singing led him to take 
 up theatrical management, and he introduced German opera 
 to the Parisians with so much success, that the credit for the 
 popularity of Fidelio and Der Freischiitz with French audiences, 
 to whom these works were quite unknown, must be awarded to his 
 admirable enterprise, which was also responsible for Schroder- 
 Devrient's debut in Paris. August Rockel, his son, who was 
 still a young man, by helping his father in these and similar 
 undertakings, had gained practical experience as a musician. 
 As his father's business had for some time even extended to 
 England, August had won practical knowledge of all sorts by 
 contact with many men and things, and in addition had learned
 
 MY INFLUENCE OVER ROCKEL 307 
 
 French and English. But music had remained his chosen 
 vocation, and his great natural talent justified the highest 
 hopes of success. He was an excellent pianist, read scores with 
 the utmost ease, possessed an exceptionally fine ear, and had 
 indeed every qualification for a practical musician. As a com- 
 poser he was actuated, not so much by a strong impulse to 
 create, as the desire to show what he was capable of; the 
 success at which he aimed was to gain the reputation of a clever 
 operatic composer rather than recpgnition as a distinguished 
 musician, and he hoped to obtain his end by the production 
 of popular works. Actuated by this modest ambition he had 
 completed an opera, Farinetti, for which he had also written 
 the libretto, with no other aspiration than that of attaining the 
 same reputation as his brother-in-law Lortzing. 
 
 He brought this score to me, and begged me it was his first 
 visit before he had heard one of my operas in Dresden to play 
 him something from Rienzi and the Fliegender Hollander. His 
 frank, agreeable personality induced me to try and meet his 
 wishes as far as I could, and I am convinced that I soon made 
 such a great and unexpectedly powerful impression on him that 
 from that moment he determined not to bother me further with 
 the score of his opera. It was not until we had become more 
 intimate and had discovered mutual personal interests, that 
 the desire of turning his work to account induced him to ask 
 me to show my practical friendship by turning my attention to 
 his score. I made various suggestions as to how it might be 
 improved, but he was soon so hopelessly disgusted with his 
 own work that he put it absolutely aside, and never again felt 
 seriously moved to undertake a similar task. On making a 
 closer acquaintance with my completed operas and plans for 
 new works, he declared to me that he felt it his vocation to play 
 the part of spectator, to be my faithful helper and the inter- 
 preter of my new ideas, and, as far as in him lay, to remove 
 entirely, and at all events to relieve me as far as possible from, 
 all the unpleasantnesses of my official position and of my 
 dealings with the outside world. He wished, he said, to avoid 
 placing himself in the ridiculous position of composing operas 
 of his own while living on terms of close friendship with me. 
 
 Nevertheless, I tried to urge him to turn his own talent to
 
 308 MY LIFE 
 
 account, and to this end called his attention to several plots 
 which I wished him to work out. Among these was the idea 
 contained in a small French drama entitled Cromwell's Daugh- 
 ter, which was subsequently used as the subject for a sentimental 
 pastoral romance, and for the elaboration of which I presented 
 him with an exhaustive plan. 
 
 But in the end all my efforts remained fruitless, and it became 
 evident that his productive talent was feeble. This perhaps 
 arose partly from his extremely needy and trying domestic 
 circumstances, which were such that the poor fellow wore him- 
 self out to support his wife and numerous growing children. 
 Indeed, he claimed my help and sympathy in quite another 
 fashion than by arousing my interest in his artistic develop- 
 ment. He was unusually clear-headed, and possessed a rare 
 capacity for teaching and educating himself in every branch 
 of knowledge and experience; he was, moreover, so genuinely 
 true and good-hearted that he soon became my intimate friend 
 and comrade. He was, and continued to be, the only person 
 who really appreciated the singular nature of my position 
 towards the surrounding world, and with whom I could fully 
 and sincerely discuss the cares and sorrows arising therefrom. 
 What dreadful trials and experiences, what painful anxie- 
 ties our common fate was to bring upon us, will soon be 
 seen. 
 
 The earlier period of my establishment in Dresden brought 
 me also another devoted and lifelong friend, though his 
 qualities were such that he exerted a less decisive influence 
 upon my career. This was a young physician, named Anton 
 Pusinelli, who lived near me. He seized the occasion of a 
 serenade sung in honour of my thirtieth birthday by the 
 Dresden Glee Club to express to me personally his hearty and 
 sincere attachment. We soon entered upon a quiet friendship 
 from which we derived a mutual benefit. He became my 
 attentive family doctor, and during my residence in Dresden, 
 marked as it wasjjy^ccumulating^ difficulties, he had abun- 
 dant opportunities of helping me. His financial position was 
 very good, and his ready self-sacrifice enabled him to give me 
 substantial succour and bound me to him by many heartfelt 
 obligations.
 
 HENRIETTA SONTAG 309 
 
 A further development of my association with Dresden 
 society was provided by the kindly advances of Chamberlain 
 von Konneritz's family. His wife, Marie von Konneritz (nee 
 Fink), was a friend of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, and expressed 
 her appreciation of my success as a composer with great warmth, 
 I might almost say, with enthusiasm. I was often invited to 
 their house, and seemed likely, through this family, to be 
 brought into touch with the higher aristocracy of Dresden. 
 I merely succeeded in touching the fringe, however, as we 
 really had nothing in common. True, I here made the acquaint- 
 ance of Countess Rossi, the famous Sontag, by whom, 
 to my genuine astonishment, I was most heartily greeted, and 
 I thereby obtained the right of afterwards approaching her 
 in Berlin with a certain degree of familiarity. The curious 
 way in which I was disillusioned about this lady on that 
 occasion will be related in due course. I would only mention 
 here that, through my earlier experiences of the world, I had 
 become fairly impervious to deception, and my desire for 
 closer acquaintance with these circles speedily gave way to a 
 complete hopelessness and an entire lack of ease in their sphere 
 of life. 
 
 Although the Konneritz couple remained friendly during 
 the whole of my prolonged sojourn in Dresden, yet the con- 
 nection had not the least influence either upon my develop- 
 ment or my position. Only once, on the occasion of a quarrel 
 between Liittichau and myself, the former observed that 
 Frau von Konneritz, by her unmeasured praises, had turned 
 my head and made me forget my position towards him. But 
 in making this taunt he forgot that, if any woman in the 
 higher ranks of Dresden society had exerted a real and invigor- 
 ating influence upon my inward pride, that woman was his own 
 wife, Ida von Liittichau (nee von Knobelsdorf ) . 
 
 The power which this cultured, gentle, and distinguished 
 lady exercised over my life was of a kind I now experienced for 
 the first time, and might have become of great importance 
 had I been favoured with more frequent and intimate inter- 
 course. But it was less her position as wife of the general 
 director than her constant ill-health and my own peculiar 
 unwillingness to appear obtrusive, that hindered our meeting,
 
 310 MY LIFE 
 
 except at rare intervals. My recollections of her merge some- 
 what, in my memory, with those of my own sister Rosalie. 
 I remember the tender ambition which inspired me to win 
 the encouraging sympathy of this sensitive woman, who was 
 painfully wasting away amid the coarsest surroundings. My 
 earliest hope for the fulfilment of this ambition arose from her 
 appreciation of my Fliegender Hollander, in spite of the fact 
 that, following close upon Rienzi, it had so puzzled the Dresden 
 public. In this way she was the first, so to speak, who swam 
 against the tide and met me upon my new path. So deeply was I 
 touched by this conquest that, when I afterwards published 
 the opera, I dedicated it to her. In the account of my later 
 years in Dresden I shall have more to record of the warm 
 sympathy for my new development and dearest artistic aims 
 for which I was indebted to her. But of real intercourse we 
 had none, and the character of my Dresden life was not affected 
 by this acquaintance, otherwise so important in itself. 
 
 On the other hand, my theatrical acquaintances thrust 
 themselves with irresistible importunancy into the wide fore- 
 ground of my life, and in fact, after my brilliant successes, I 
 was still restricted to the same limited and familiar sphere in 
 which I had prepared myself for these triumphs. Indeed, the 
 only one who joined my old friends Heine and Gaffer Fischer 
 was Tichatschek, with his strange domestic circle. Any one 
 who lived in Dresden at that time and chanced to know the 
 court lithographer, Fiirstenau, will be astonished to hear that, 
 without really being aware of it myself, I entered into a famili- 
 arity that was to prove a lasting one with this man who was 
 an intimate friend of Tichatschek's. The importance of this 
 singular connection may be judged from the fact that my 
 complete withdrawal from him coincided exactly with the 
 collapse of my civic position in Dresden. 
 
 My good-humoured acceptance of election to the musical 
 committee of the Dresden Glee Club also brought me further 
 chance acquaintances. This club consisted of a limited number 
 of young merchants and officials, who had more taste 
 for any kind of convivial entertainment than for music. But 
 it was seduously kept together by a remarkable and ambitious 
 man, Professor Lowe, who nursed it with special objects in
 
 A CHOKAL FESTIVAL 311 
 
 view, for the attainment of which he felt the need of an 
 authority such as I possessed at that time in Dresden. 
 
 Among other aims he was particularly and chiefly concerned 
 in arranging for the transfer of Weber's remains from London 
 to Dresden. As this project was one which interested me also, 
 I lent him my support, though he was in reality merely follow- 
 ing the voice of personal ambition. He furthermore desired, 
 as head of the Glee Club which, by the way, from the point 
 of view of music was quite worthless to invite all the male 
 choral unions of Saxony to a great gala performance in Dresden. 
 A committee was appointed for the execution of this plan, and 
 as things soon became pretty warm, Lowe turned it into a 
 regular revolutionary tribunal, over which, as the great day of 
 triumph approached, he presided day and night without resting, 
 and by his furious zeal earned from me the nickname of 
 * Robespierre.' 
 
 In spite of the fact that I had been placed at the head of 
 this enterprise, I luckily managed to evade his terrorism, as 
 I was fully occupied with a great composition promised for the 
 festival. The task had been assigned to me of writing an 
 important piece for male voices only, which, if possible, should 
 occupy half an hour. I reflected that the tiresome monotony 
 of male singing, which even the orchestra could only enliven 
 to a slight extent, can only be endured by the introduction of 
 dramatic themes. I therefore designed a great choral scene, 
 selecting the apostolic Pentecost with the outpouring of the 
 Holy Ghost as its subject. I completely avoided any real solos, 
 but worked out the whole in such a way that it should be 
 executed by detached choral masses according to requirement. 
 Out of this composition arose my Liebesmdhl der Apostel ('Love- 
 feast of the Apostles'), which has recently been performed in 
 various places. 
 
 As I was obliged at all costs to finish it within a limited time, - 
 I do not mind including this in the list of my uninspired com- , 
 positions. But I was not displeased with it when it was done, 
 more especially when it was played at the rehearsals given by 
 the Dresden choral societies under my personal supervision. 
 When, therefore, twelve hundred singers from all parts of 
 Saxony gathered around me in the Frauenkirche, where the
 
 312 MY LIFE 
 
 performance took place, I was astonished at the comparatively 
 feeble effect produced upon my ear by this colossal human 
 tangle of sounds. The conclusion at which I arrived was, that 
 these enormous choral undertakings are folly, and I never again 
 felt inclined to repeat the experiment. 
 
 It was with much difficulty that I shook myself free of the 
 Dresden Glee Club, and I only succeeded in doing so by intro- 
 ducing to Professor Lowe another ambitious man in the person 
 of Herr Ferdinand Hiller. My most glorious exploit in con- 
 nection with this association was the transfer of Weber's ashes, 
 of which I will speak later on, though it occurred at an earlier 
 date. I will only refer now to another commissioned com- 
 position which, as royal bandmaster, I was officially com- 
 manded to produce. On the 7th of June of this year (1843) 
 the statue of King Frederick Augustus by Rietschl was 
 unveiled in the Dresden Zwinger * with all due pomp and 
 ceremony. In honour of this event I, in collaboration with 
 Mendelssohn, was commanded to compose a festal song, and to 
 conduct the gala performance. I had written a simple song 
 for male voices of modest design, whereas to Mendelssohn had 
 been assigned the more complicated task of interweaving the 
 National Anthem (the English ' God Save the King,' which 
 in Saxony is called Heil Dir im Rautenkranz) into the male 
 chorus he had to compose. This he had effected by an artistic 
 work in counterpoint, so arranged that from the first eight 
 beats of his original melody the brass instruments simultane- 
 ously played the Anglo-Saxon popular air. My simpler song 
 seems to have sounded very well from a distance, whereas I 
 understood that Mendelssohn's daring combination quite 
 missed its effect, because no one could understand why the 
 vocalists did not sing the same air as the wind instruments 
 were playing. Nevertheless Mendelssohn, who was present, left 
 me a written expression of thanks for the pains I had taken 
 in the production of his composition. I also received a gold 
 snuff-box from the grand gala committee, presumably meant 
 as a reward for my male chorus, but the hunting scene which 
 was engraved on the top was so badly done that I found, to 
 
 1 This is the name by which the famous Dresden Art Galleries are known. 
 EDITOR.
 
 COMPLETION OF 'TANNHAUSEK' 313 
 
 my surprise, that in several places the metal was cut 
 through. 
 
 Amid all the distractions of this new and very different 
 mode of life, I diligently strove to concentrate and steel my 
 soul against these influences, bearing in mind my experiences of 
 success in the past. By May of my thirtieth year I had finished 
 my poem Der Venusberg (' The Mount of Venus '), as I called 
 TannhaMser at that time. I had not yet by any means gained 
 any real knowledge of mediaeval poetry. The classical side of 
 the poetry of the Middle Ages had so far only faintly dawned 
 upon me, partly from my youthful recollections, and partly 
 from the brief acquaintance I had made with it through Lehrs' 
 instruction in Paris. 
 
 Now that I was secure in the possession of a royal appoint- 
 ment that would last my lifetime, the establishment of a 
 permanent domestic hearth began to assume great importance; 
 for I hoped it would enable me to take up my serious studies 
 once more, and in such a way as to make them productive 
 an aim which my theatrical life and the miseries of my years 
 in Paris had rendered impossible. My hope of being able to do 
 this was strengthened by the character of my official employ- 
 ment, which was never very arduous, and in which I met 
 with exceptional consideration from the general management. 
 Though I had only held my appointment for a few months, yet 
 I was given a holiday this first summer, which I spent in a 
 second visit to Toplitz, a place which I had grown to like, and 
 whither I had sent on my wife in advance. 
 
 Keenly indeed did I appreciate the change in my position 
 since the preceding year. I could now engage four spacious 
 and well-appointed rooms in the same house the Eiche at 
 Schonau where I had before lived in such straitened and 
 frugal circumstances. I invited my sister Clara to pay us a 
 visit, and also my good mother, whose gout necessitated her 
 taking the Toplitz baths every year. I also seized the oppor- 
 tunity of drinking the mineral waters, which I hoped might 
 have a beneficial effect on the g; is trie troubles from which I 
 had suffered ever since my vicissitudes in Paris. Unfortu- 
 nately the attempted cure had a contrary effect, and when I 
 complained of the painful irritation produced, I learned that my
 
 314 MY LIFE 
 
 constitution was not adapted for water cures. In fact, on 
 my morning promenade, and while drinking my water, I had 
 been observed to race through the shady alleys of the adjacent 
 Thurn Gardens, and it was pointed out to me that such a cure 
 could only be properly wrought by leisurely calm and easy 
 sauntering. It was also remarked that I usually carried about 
 a fairly stout volume, and that, armed with this and my bottle 
 of mineral water, I used to take rest in lonely places. 
 
 This book was J. Grimm's German Mythology. All who know 
 the work can understand how the unusual wealth of its con- 
 tents, gathered from every side, and meant almost exclusively 
 for the student, would react upon me, whv,se mind was every- 
 where seeking for something definite and distinct. Formed 
 from the scanty fragments of a perished world, of which scarcely 
 any monuments remained recognisable and intact, I here found 
 a heterogeneous building, which at first glance seemed but a 
 rugged rock clothed in straggling brambles. Nothing was 
 finished, only here and there could the slightest resemblance 
 to an architectonic line be traced, so that I often felt tempted 
 to relinquish the thankless task of trying to build from such 
 materials. And yet I was enchained by a wondrous magic. 
 The baldest legend spoke to me of its ancient home, and soon 
 my whole imagination thrilled with images; long-lost forms 
 for which I had sought so eagerly shaped themselves ever more 
 and more clearly into realities that lived again. There 
 rose up soon before my mind a whole world of figures, which 
 revealed themselves as so strangely plastic and primitive, that, 
 when I saw them clearly before me and heard their voices in my 
 heart, I could not account for the almost tangible familiarity 
 and assurance of their demeanour. The effect they produced 
 upon the inner state of my soul I can only describe as 
 an entire rebirth. Just as we feel a tender joy over a child's 
 first bright smile of recognition, so now my own eyes flashed 
 with rapture as I saw a world, revealed, as it were, by miracle, 
 in which I had hitherto moved blindly as the babe in its mother's 
 womb. 
 
 But the result of this reading did not at first do much to help 
 me in my purpose of composing part of the Tannhduser music. 
 I had had a piano put in my room at the Eiche, and though
 
 .J^> OUR NEW HOME 315 
 
 I smashed all -ite strings, nothing satisfactory would emerge. 
 With much pain and toil I sketched the first outlines of my 
 music for the Venusberg, as fortunately I already had its theme 
 in my mind. Meanwhile I was very much troubled by excita- 
 bility and rushes of blood to the brain. I imagined I was ill, 
 and lay for whole days in bed, where I read Grimm's German 
 legends, or tried to master the disagreeable mythology. It 
 was quite a relief when I hit upon the happy thought of freeing 
 myself from the torments of my condition by an excursion to 
 Prague. Meanwhile I had already ascended Mount Millischau 
 once with my wife, and in her company I now made the journey 
 to Prague in an open carriage. There I stayed once more at 
 my favourite inn, the Black Horse, met my friend Kittl, who 
 had now grown fat and rotund, made various excursions, 
 revelled in the curious antiquities of the old city, and learned 
 to my joy that the two lovely friends of my youth, Jenny and 
 Auguste Pachta, had been happily married to members of the 
 highest aristocracy. Thereupon, having reassured myself that 
 everything was in the best possible order, I returned to Dresden 
 and resumed my functions as musical conductor to the King of 
 Saxony. 
 
 We now set to work on the preparations and furnishing 
 of a roomy and well-situated house in the Ostra Alice, with 
 an outlook upon the Zwinger. Everything was good and sub- 
 stantial, as is only right for a man of thirty who is settling 
 down at last for the whole of his life. As I had not received any 
 subsidy towards this outlay, I had naturally to raise the money 
 by loan. But I could look forward to a certain harvest from 
 my operatic successes in Dresden, and what was more natural 
 than for me to expect soon to earn more than enough? The 
 three most valued treasures which adorned my house were a 
 concTBft^gran3~piano Dy 5reitkopf and Hartel, which I had 
 bought with much pride ; a stately writing-desk, now in pos- 
 
 session of Otto Kummer, the chamber-music artist; and the 
 title-page by Cornelius ^or the Nibelungen, in a handsome 
 Gothic frame the only object which 1]pa j-mnfMTipd -faithful to 
 iQg to the present day. Jffut the thing which above all else 
 made my house seem" homelike and attractive was the presence 
 of a library, which I procured in accordance with a systematic
 
 316 MY LIFE 
 
 plan laid down by my proposed line of study. On the failure 
 of my Dresden career this library passed in a curious way into 
 the possession of Herr Heinrich Brockhaus, to whom at that 
 time I owed fifteen hundred marks, and who took it as security 
 for the amount. My wife knew nothing at the time of this 
 obligation, and I never afterwards succeeded in recovering this 
 characteristic collection from his hands. Upon its shelves 
 old German literature was especially well represented, and also 
 
 _the "closely related work of tfrp firman Middle A^s. including 
 many a costly volume, as, for instance, the rare old work, 
 Romans des douze Paris. Beside these stood many excellent 
 historical works on the Middle Ages, as well as on the German 
 people in general. At the same time I made provision for the 
 poetical and classical literature of all times and languages. 
 Among these were the Italian poets, Shakespeare and the Ereach_. 
 writers, <>f whose hminuiire I had a passable knowledge. All 
 these I acquired in the original, hoping some day to find time 
 to master their neglected tongues. As for the Greek and Roman 
 
 ^classics, I had to content myself with standard German trans- 
 lations. Indeed, on looking once more into my Homer whom 
 I secured in the original Greek I soon recognised that I should 
 be presuming on more leisure than my conductorship was likely 
 to leave me, if I hoped to find time for regaining my lost know- 
 ledge of that language. Moreover, I provided most thoroughly 
 for a study of universal history, and to this end did not fail to 
 equip myself with the most voluminous works. Thus armed, 
 I thought I could bid defiance to all the trials which I clearly 
 foresaw would inevitably accompany my calling and position. 
 In hopes, therefore, of long and peaceable enjoyment of this 
 h#rd-earned home, I entered into possession with the best of 
 spirits in October of this year (1843), and though my con- 
 ductor's quarters were by no means magnificent, they were 
 stately and substantial. 
 
 The first leisure in my new home which I could snatch from 
 the claims of my profession and my favourite studies -wa,s 
 * n t 1 " r 11111 ifii lii -ii nf Tannfifiurrr, the first act of which 
 
 was completed in January of the new year, 1844. I have 
 no recollections of any importance regarding my activities in 
 Dresden during this winter. The only memorable events were
 
 'FLIEGENDER HOLLANDER' IN BERLIN 31T. 
 
 two enterprises which took me away from home, the first to 
 Berlin early in the year, for the production of my Fliegender 
 Hollander, and the other in March to Hamburg for Rienzi. 
 
 Of these the former made the greater impression upon my 
 mind. The manager of the Berlin theatre, Kiistner, quite took 
 me by surprise when he announced the first performance of 
 the Fliegender Hollander for an early date. 
 
 As the opera house had been burnt down only about a year 
 before, and could not possibly have been rebuilt, it had not 
 occurred to me to remind them about the production of my 
 opera. It had been performed in Dresden with very poor 
 scenic accessories, and knowing how important a careful and 
 artistic execution of the difficult scenery was for my dramatic 
 sea-scapes, I had relied implicitly on the admirable manage- 
 ment and staging capacities of the Berlin opera house. Conse- 
 quently I was very much annoyed that the Berlin manager 
 should select my opera as a stopgap to be produced at the 
 Comedy Theatre, which was being used as a temporary opera 
 house. All remonstrances proved useless, for I learned that 
 they were not merely thinking about rehearsing the work, but 
 that it was already actually being rehearsed, and would be 
 produced in a few days. It was obvious that this arrangement 
 meant that my opera was to be condemned to quite a short 
 run in their repertoire, as it was not to be expected that they 
 would remount it when the new opera house was opened. On 
 the other hand, they tried to appease me by saying that this 
 first production of the Fliegender Hollander was to be associated 
 with a special engagement of Schrb'der-Devrient, which was to 
 begin in Berlin immediately. They naturally thought I should 
 be delighted to see the great actress in my own work. But this 
 only confirmed me in the suspicion that this opera was simply 
 wanted as a makeshift for the duration of Schrb'der-Devrient's 
 visit. They were evidently in a dilemma with regard to her 
 repertoire, which consisted mainly of so-called grand operas 
 such as Meyerbeer's destined exclusively for the opera house, 
 and which were being specially reserved for the brilliant future 
 of the new building. I therefore realised beforehand that my 
 Fliegender Hollander was to be relegated to the category of con- 
 ductor's operas, and would meet with the usual predestined
 
 318 MY LIFE 
 
 fate of such productions. The whole treatment meted out to 
 me and my works all pointed in the same direction; but in 
 consideration of the expected co-operation of Schroder-Devrient 
 I fought against these vexatious premonitions, and set out for 
 Berlin to do all I could for the success of my opera. I saw at 
 once that my presence was very necessary. I found the con- 
 ductor's desk occupied by a man calling himself Conductor 
 Henning (or Henniger), an official who had won promotion from 
 the ranks of ordinary musicians by an upright observance of 
 the laws of seniority, but who knew precious little about con- 
 ducting an orchestra at all, and about my opera had not the 
 faintest glimmer of an idea. I took my seat at the desk, and 
 conducted one full rehearsal and two performances, in neither 
 of which, however, did Schroder-Devrient take part. Although 
 I found much to complain of in the weakness of the string 
 instruments and the consequent mean sound of the orchestra, 
 yet I was well satisfied with the actors both as regards their 
 capacity and their zeal. The careful staging, moreover, 
 which under the supervision of the really gifted stage manager, 
 Blum, and with the co-operation of his skilful and ingenious 
 mechanics, was truly excellent, gave me a most pleasant 
 surprise. 
 
 I was now very curious to learn what effect these pleasing 
 and encouraging preparations would have upon the Berlin 
 public when the full performance took place. My experiences 
 on this point were very curious. Apparently the only thing 
 that interested the large audience was to discover my weak 
 points. During the first act the prevalent opinion seemed to 
 be that I belonged to the category of bores. Not a single hand 
 was moved, and I was afterwards informed that this was for- 
 tunate, as the slightest attempt at applause would have been 
 ascribed to a paid claque, and would have been energetically 
 opposed. Kiistner alone assured me that the composure with 
 which, on the close of this act, I quitted my desk and appeared 
 before the curtain, had filled him with wonder, considering this 
 entire absence lucky as it appears to have been of all ap- 
 plause. But so long as I myself felt content with the execution, 
 I was not disposed to let the public apathy discourage me, 
 knowing, as I did, that the crucial test was in the second act.
 
 THE 'FLIEGENDER HOLLANDER' IN BERLIN 319 
 
 It lay, therefore, much nearer my heart to do all I could for 
 the success of this than to inquire into the reasons for this 
 attitude on the part of the Berlin public. And here the ice was 
 really broken at last. The audience seemed to abandon all A* 1 
 idea of finding a proper niche for me, and allowed itself to be 
 carried away into giving vent to applause, which at last grew 
 into the most boisterous enthusiasm. At the close of the act, 
 amid a storm of shouts, I led forward my singers on to the stage 
 for the customary bows of thanks. As the third act was too 
 short to be tedious, and as the scenic effects were both new 
 and impressive, we could not help hoping that we had won a 
 veritable triumph, especially as renewed outbursts of applause 
 marked the end of the performance. Mendelssohn, who hap- 
 pened at that time to be in Berlin, with Meyerbeer, on busi- 
 ness relating to the general musical conductorship, was pres- 
 ent in a stage box during this performance. He followed its 
 progress with a pale face, and afterwards came and murmured 
 to me in a weary tone of voice, ' Well, I should think you 
 are satisfied now ! ' I met him several times during my brief 
 stay in Berlin, and also spent an evening with him listening 
 to various pieces of chamber-music. But never did another 
 word concerning the Fliegender Hollander pass his lips, beyond 
 inquiries as to the second performance, and as to whether 
 Devrient or some one else would appear in it. I heard, more- 
 over, that he had responded with equal indifference to the 
 earnest warmth of my allusions to his own music for the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, which was being frequently played 
 at that time, and which I had heard for the first time. The 
 only thing he discussed with any detail was the actor Gern, who 
 was playing in Zettel, and who he considered was overacting 
 his part. 
 
 A few days later came a second performance with the same 
 cast. My experiences on this evening were even more startling 
 than on the former. Evidently the first night had won me a 
 few friends, who were again present, for they began to applaud 
 after the overture. But others responded with hisses, and for 
 the rest of the evening no one again ventured to applaud. My 
 old friend Heine had arrived in the meantime from Dresden^ 
 sent by our own board of directors to study the scenic arrange-
 
 320 MY LIFE 
 
 merits of the Midsummer Night's Dream for our theatre. Ho 
 was present at this second performance, and had persuaded 
 me to accept the invitation from one of his Berlin relatives to 
 have supper after the performance in a wine-bar unter den 
 Linden. Very weary, I followed him to a nasty and badly 
 lighted house, where I gulped down the wine with hasty ill- 
 humour to warm myself, and listened to the embarrassed con- 
 versation of my good-natured friend and his companion, whilst 
 I turned over the day's papers. I now had ample leisure to 
 read the criticisms they contained on the first performance of 
 my Fliegender Hollander. A terrible spasm cut my heart as 
 I realised the contemptible tone and unparalleled shamelessness 
 of their raging ignorance regarding my own name and work. 
 Our Berlin friend and host, a thorough Philistine, said that he 
 had known how things would go in the theatre that night, after 
 having read these criticisms in the morning. The people of 
 Berlin, he added, wait to hear what Rellstab and his mates 
 have to say, and then they know how to behave. The good 
 fellow was anxious to cheer me up, and ordered one wine after 
 another. Heine hunted up his reminiscences of our merry 
 Rienzi times in Dresden, until at last the pair conducted me, 
 staggering along in an addled condition, to my hotel. 
 
 It was already midnight. As I was being lighted by the 
 waiter through its gloomy corridors to my room, a gentleman 
 in black, with a pale refined face, came forward and said he 
 would like to speak to me. He informed me that he had 
 waited there since the close of the play, and as he was deter- 
 mined to see me, had stopped till now. I excused myself on 
 the ground of being quite unfit for business, and added that, 
 although not exactly inclined to merriment, I had, as he might 
 perceive, somewhat foolishly drunk a little too much wine. 
 This I said in a stammering voice; but my strange visitor 
 seemed only the more unwilling to be repulsed. He accom- 
 panied me to my room, declaring that it was all the more im- 
 perative for him to speak with me. We seated ourselves in 
 the cold room, by the meagre light of a single candle, and then 
 he began to talk. In flowing and impressive language he re- 
 lated that he had been present at the performance that night 
 of my Fliegender Hollander, and could well conceive the humour
 
 A MIDNIGHT VISITOR 321 
 
 in which the evening's experiences had left me. For this very 
 reason he felt that nothing should hinder him from speaking 
 to me that night, and telling me that in the Fliegender Hollander 
 I had produced an unrivalled masterpiece. Moreover, the 
 acquaintance he had made with this work had awakened in 
 him a new and unforeseen hope for the future of German art; 
 and that it would be a great pity if I yielded to any sense of 
 discouragement as the result of the unworthy reception accorded 
 to it by the Berlin public. My hair began to stand on end. 
 One of Hoffmann's fantastic creations had entered bodily into 
 my life. I could find nothing to say, except to inquire the name 
 of my visitor, at which he seemed surprised, as I had talked 
 with him the day before at Mendelssohn's house. He said that 
 my conversation and manner had created such an impression 
 upon him there, and had filled him with such sudden regret at 
 not having sufficiently overcome his dislike for opera in general, 
 to be present at the first performance, that he had at once 
 resolved not to miss the second. His name, he added, was 
 Professor Werder. That was no use to me, I said, he must 
 write his name down. Getting paper and ink, he did as I de- 
 sired, and we parted. I flung myself unconsciously on the bed 
 for a deep and invigorating sleep. Xext morning I was fresh 
 and well. I paid a farewell call on Schroder-Devrient, who 
 promised me to do all she could for the Fliegender Hollander as 
 soon as possible, drew my fee of a hundred ducats, and set off 
 for home. On my way through Leipzig I utilised my ducats 
 for the repayment of sundry advances made me by my relatives 
 during the earlier and poverty-stricken period of my sojourn 
 in Dresden, and then continued my journey, to recuperate 
 among my books and meditate upon the deep impression made 
 on me by Werder's midnight visit. 
 
 Before the end of this winter I received a genuine invitation 
 to Hamburg for the performance of Rienzi. The enterprising 
 director, Herr Cornet, through whom it came, confessed that 
 he had many difficulties to contend against in the management 
 of his theatre, and was in need of a great success. This, after 
 the reception with which it had met in Dresden, he thought 
 he could secure by the production of Rienzi. I accordingly 
 betook myself thither in the month of March. The journey
 
 322 MY LIFE 
 
 at that time was not an easy one, as after Hanover one had 
 to proceed by mail-coach, and the crossing of the Elbe, which 
 was full of floating ice, was a risky business. Owing to a great 
 fire that had recently broken out, the town of Hamburg was in 
 process of being rebuilt, and there were still many wide spaces 
 encumbered with ruins. Cold weather and an ever-gloomy 
 eky make my recollections of my somewhat prolonged sojourn 
 in this town anything but agreeable. I was tormented to such 
 an extent by having to rehearse with bad material, fit only 
 for the poorest theatrical trumpery, that, worn out and exposed 
 to constant colds, I spent most of my leisure time in the solitude 
 of my inn chamber. My earlier experiences of ill-arranged and 
 badly managed theatres came back to me afresh. I was 
 particularly depressed when I realised that I had made myself 
 an unconscious accomplice of Director Cornet's basest interests. 
 His one aim was to create a sensation, which he thought 
 should be of great service to me also ; and not only did he put 
 me off with a smaller fee, but even suggested that it should be 
 paid by gradual instalments. The dignity of scenic decoration, 
 of which he had not the smallest idea, was completely sacri- 
 ficed to the most ridiculous and tawdry showiness. He 
 imagined that pageantry was all that was really needed to 
 secure my success. So he hunted out all the old fairy-ballet 
 costumes from his stock, and fancied that if they only looked 
 gay enough, and if plenty of people were bustling about on the 
 stage, I ought to be satisfied. But the most sorry item of all 
 was the singer he provided for the title-role. He was a man of 
 the name of Wurda, an elderly, flabby and voiceless tenor, who 
 sang Rienzi with the expression of a lover like Elvino, for 
 instance, in the Somnambula. He was so dreadful that I 
 conceived the idea of making the Capitol tumble down in the 
 second act, so as to bury him sooner in its ruins, a plan which 
 would have cut out several of the processions, which were so 
 dear to the heart of the director. I found my one ray of light 
 in a lady singer, who delighted me with the fire with which 
 she played the part of Adriano. This was a Mme. Fehringer, 
 who was afterwards engaged by Liszt for the role of Ortrud 
 in the production of Lohengrin at Weimar, but by that time 
 her powers had greatly deteriorated. Nothing could be more
 
 OUR PARROT AND DOG 323 
 
 depressing than my connection with this opera under such 
 dismal circumstances. And yet there were no outward signs 
 of failure. The manager hoped in any case to keep Rienzi in 
 his repertoire until Tichatschek was able to come to Hamburg 
 and give the people of that town a true idea of the play. This 
 actually took place in the following summer. 
 
 My discouragement and ill-humour did not escape the notice 
 of Herr Cornet, and discovering that I wished to present my 
 wife with a parrot, he managed to procure a very fine bird, 
 which he gave me as a parting gift. I carried it with me in 
 its narrow cage on my melancholy journey home, and was 
 touched to find that it quickly repaid my care and became 
 very much attached to me. Minna greeted me with great 
 joy when she saw this beautiful grey parrot, for she regarded 
 it as a self-evident proof that I should do something in life. 
 We already had a pretty little dog, born on the day of the first 
 Rienzi rehearsal in Dresden, which, owing to its passionate 
 devotion to myself, was much petted by all who knew me and 
 visited my house during those years. This sociable bird, 
 which had no vices and was an apt scholar, now formed an 
 addition to our household; and the pair did much to brighten 
 our dwelling JJL the absent^ of cjiildren. My wife soon taught 
 the bird snatches of songs from Rienzi, with which it would 
 good-naturedly greet me from a distance when it heard me 
 coming up the stairs. 
 
 And thus at last my domestic hearth seemed to be estab- 
 lished with every possible prospect of a comfortable competency. 
 
 No further excursions for the performance of any of my 
 operas took place, for the simple reason that no such perform- 
 ances were given. As I saw it was quite clear that the diffu- 
 sion of my works through the theatrical world would be a very 
 slow business, I concluded that this was probably due to the 
 fact that no adaptations of them for the piano existed. I 
 therefore thought that I should do well to press forward such 
 an issue at all costs, and in order to secure the expected profits, 
 I hit upon the idea of publishing at my own expense. I 
 accordingly made arrangements with F. Meser, the court 
 music-dealer, who had hitherto not got beyond the publication 
 of a valse, and signed an agreement with him for his firm to
 
 324 MY LIFE 
 
 appear as the nominal publishers on the understanding that 
 they should receive a commission of ten per cent., whilst I 
 provided the necessary capital. 
 
 As there were two operas to be issued, including Rienzi, a 
 work of exceptional bulk, it was not likely that these publica- 
 tions would prove very profitable unless, in addition to the 
 usual piano selections, I also published adaptations, such as 
 the music without words, for duet or solo. For this a fairly 
 large capital was necessary. I also needed funds for the repay- 
 ment of the loans already mentioned, and for the settlement of 
 old debts, as well as to pay off the remaining expenses of my 
 house-furnishing. I was therefore obliged to try and procure 
 much larger sums. I laid my project and its motive before 
 Schroder-Devrient, who had just returned to Dresden, at Easter, 
 1844, to fulfil a fresh engagement She believed in the future 
 of my works, recognised the peculiarity of my position, as well 
 as the correctness of my calculations, and declared her willing- 
 ness to provide the necessary capital for the publication of 
 my operas, refusing to consider the act as one involving any 
 sacrifice on her part. This money she proposed to get by 
 selling out her investments in Polish state-bonds, and I was 
 to pay the customary rate of interest. The thing was so easily 
 done, and seemed so much a matter of course, that I at once 
 made all needful arrangements with my Leipzig printer, and 
 set to work on the publication of my operas. 
 
 When the amount of work delivered brought with it a 
 demand for considerable payments on account, I approached 
 my friend for a first advance. And here I became confronted 
 with a new phase of that famous lady's life, which placed me 
 in a position which proved as disastrous as it was unexpected. 
 After having broken away from the unlucky Herr von Miinch- 
 hausen some time previously, and returned, as it appeared, 
 with penitential ardour to her former connection with my 
 friend, Hermann Miiller, it now turned out that she had found 
 no real satisfaction in this fresh relationship. On the contrary, 
 the star of her being, whom she had so long and ardently 
 desired, had now at last arisen in the person of another lieu- 
 tenant of the Guards. With a vehemence which made light 
 of her treachery to her old friend, she elected this slim young
 
 FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES 325 
 
 man, whose moral and intellectual weaknesses were patent to 
 every eye, as the chosen keystone of her life's love. He 
 took the good luck that befell him so seriously, that he would 
 brook no jesting, and at once laid hands on the fortune of his 
 future wife, as he considered that it was disadvantageous!, 
 and insecurely invested, and thought that he knew of muc 
 more profitable ways of employing it. My friend therefore 
 explained, with much pain and evident embarrassment, that 
 she had renounced all control over her capital, and was unable 
 to keep her promise to me. 
 
 Owing to this I entered upon a series of entanglements and 
 troubles which henceforth dominated my life, and plunged me 
 into sorrows that left their dismal mark on all my subsequent 
 enterprises. It was clear that I could not now abandon the 
 proposed plan of publication. The only satisfactory solution 
 of my perplexities was to be found in the execution of my 
 project and the success which I hoped would attend it. I was 
 compelled, therefore, to turn all my energies to the raising of 
 the money wherewith to publish my two operas, to which in 
 all probability Tannhomser would shortly have to be added. I 
 first applied to my friends, and in some cases had to pay 
 exorbitant rates of interest, even for short terms. For the 
 present these details are sufficient to prepare the reader 
 for the catastrophe towards which I was now inevitably 
 drifting. 
 
 The hopelessness of my position did not at first reveal itself. 
 There seemed no reason to despair of the eventual spread of my 
 operatic works among the theatres in Germany, though my 
 experience of them indicated that the process would be slow. 
 In spite of the depressing experiences in Berlin and Hamburg, 
 there were many encouraging signs to be seen. Above all, 
 Rienzi maintained its position in favour of the people of 
 Dresden, a place which undoubtedly occupied a position of 
 great importance, especially during the summer months, when 
 so many strangers from all parts of the world pass through it. 
 My opera, which was not to be heard anywhere else, was 
 in great request, both among the Germans and other visitors, 
 and was always received with marked approbation, which 
 surprised me very much. Thus a performance of Rienzi,
 
 326 MY LIFE 
 
 especially in summer, became quite a Dionysian revelry, 
 whose effect upon me could not fail to be encouraging. 
 
 On one occasion Liszt was among the number of these 
 visitors. As Rienzi did not happen to be in the repertoire 
 when he arrived, he induced the management at his earnest 
 request to arrange a special performance. I met him between 
 the acts in Tichatschek's dressing-room, and was heartily 
 encouraged and touched by his almost enthusiastic apprecia- 
 tion, expressed in his most emphatic manner. The kind of 
 life to which Liszt was at that time condemned, and which 
 bound him to a perpetual environment of distracting and 
 exciting elements, debarred us from all more intimate and 
 fruitful intercourse. Yet from this time onward I continued 
 to receive constant testimonies of the profound and lasting 
 impression I had made upon him, as well as of his sympathetic 
 remembrance of me. From various parts of the world, wher- 
 ever his triumphal progress led him, people, chiefly of the 
 upper classes, came to Dresden for the purpose of hearing 
 Rienzi. They had been so interested by Liszt's reports of 
 my work, and by his playing of various selections from it, 
 that they all came expecting something of unparalleled 
 importance. 
 
 Besides these indications of Liszt's enthusiastic and friendly 
 sympathy, other deeply touching testimonies appeared from 
 different quarters. The startling beginning made by Werder, 
 on the occasion of his midnight visit after the second perform- 
 ance of the Fliegender Hollander in Berlin, was shortly after- 
 wards followed by a similarly unsolicited approach in the form 
 of an effusive letter from an equally unknown personage, Alwine 
 Frommann, who afterwards became my faithful friend. After 
 my departure from Berlin she heard Schroder-Devrient twice in 
 the Fliegender Hollander, and the letter in which she described 
 the effect produced upon her by my work conveyed to me 
 for the first time the vigorous and profound sentiments of a 
 deep and confident recognition such as seldom falls to the lot 
 of even the greatest master, and cannot fail to exercise a 
 weighty influence on his mind and spirit, which long for self- 
 confidence. 
 
 I have no very vivid recollections of my own doings during
 
 GLUCK'S 'ARMIDA' 327 
 
 this first year of my position as conductor in a sphere of action 
 which gradually grew more and more familiar. For the anni- 
 versary of my appointment, and to some extent as a personal 
 recognition, I was commissioned to procure Gluck's Armida. 
 This we performed in March, 1843, with the co-operation of 
 Schroder-Devrient, just before her temporary departure from 
 Dresden. Great importance was attached to this production, 
 because, at the same moment, Meyerbeer was inaugurating 
 his general-directorship in Berlin by a performance of the same 
 work. Indeed, it was in Berlin that the extraordinary respect 
 entertained for such a commemoration of Gluck had its origin. 
 I was told that Meyerbeer went to Rellstab with the score of 
 Armida in order to obtain hints as to its correct interpretation. 
 As not long afterwards I also heard a strange story of two 
 silver candlesticks, wherewith the famous composer was said 
 to have enlightened the no less famous critic when showing 
 him the score of his Feldlager in Schlesien, I decided to attach 
 no great importance to the instructions he might have received, 
 but rather to help myself by a careful handling of this difficult 
 score, and by introducing some softness into it through modu- 
 lating the variations in tone as much as possible. I had the 
 gratification later of receiving an exceedingly warm apprecia- 
 tion of my rendering from Herr Eduard Devrient, a great 
 Gluck connoisseur. After hearing this opera as presented 
 by us, and comparing it with the Berlin performance, he 
 heartily praised the tenderly modulated character of our 
 rendering of certain parts, which, he said, had been given in 
 Berlin with the coarsest bluntness. He mentioned, as a striking 
 instance of this, a brief chorus in C major of male and female 
 nymphs in the third act. By the introduction of a more moderate 
 tempo and very soft piano I had tried to free this from the 
 original coarseness with which Devrient had heard it rendered 
 in Berlin presumably with traditional fidelity. My most 
 innocent device, and one which I frequently adopted, for 
 disguising the irritating stiffness or the orchestral movement 
 in the original, was a careful modification of the Bas&o-continuo, 
 which was taken uninterruptedly in common time. This I 
 felt obliged to remedy, partly by legato playing, and partly by 
 pizzicato.
 
 328 MY LIFE 
 
 Our management were lavish in their expenditure on ex- 
 ternals, especially decoration, and as a spectacular opera the 
 piece drew fairly large houses, thus earning me the reputation 
 of being a very suitable conductor for Gluck, and one who was 
 in close sympathy with him. This result was the more con- 
 spicuous from the fact that Iphigenia in Tauris which is a far 
 superior work, and in which Devrient's interpretation of the 
 title-role was admirable had been performed to empty houses. 
 
 I had to live upon this reputation for a long time, as it often 
 happened that I was compelled to give inferior performances 
 of repertoire pieces, including Mozart's operas. The medio- 
 crity of these was particularly disappointing to those who, 
 after my success in Armida, had expected a great deal from 
 my rendering of these pieces, and were much disappointed in 
 consequence. Even sympathetic hearers sought to explain their 
 disappointment on the ground that I did not appreciate Mozart 
 and could not understand him. But they failed to realise 
 how impossible it was for me, as a mere conductor, to exercise 
 any real influence on such desultory performances, which were 
 merely given as stopgaps, and often without rehearsal. In- 
 deed, in this matter I often found myself in a false position, 
 which, as I was powerless to remedy it, contributed not a 
 little to render unbearable both my new office and my de- 
 pendence upon the meanest motives of a paltry theatrical rou- 
 tine, already overweighted with the cares of business. This, 
 in fact, became worse than I had expected, in spite of my 
 previous knowledge of the precariousness of such a life. My 
 colleague Reissiger, to whom from time to time I poured out 
 my woes regarding the scant attention given by the general 
 management to our demands for the maintenance of correct 
 representations in the realm of opera, comforted me by say- 
 ing that I, like himself, would sooner or later relinquish all 
 these fads and submit to the inevitable fate of a conductor. 
 Thereupon he proudly smote his stomach, and hoped that I 
 might soon be able to boast of one as round as his own. 
 
 I received further provocation for my growing dislike of 
 these jog-trot methods from a closer acquaintance with the 
 spirit in which even eminent conductors undertook the repro- 
 duction of our masterpieces. During this first year Mendelssohn
 
 MENDELSSOHN EIGHTH SYMPHONY 329 
 
 was invited to conduct his St. Paul for one of the Palm Sunday 
 concerts in the Dresden chapel, which was famous at that 
 time. The knowledge I thus acquired of this work, under such 
 favourable circumstances, pleased me so much, that I made 
 a fresh attempt to approach the composer with sincere and 
 friendly motives; but a remarkable conversation which I had 
 with him on the evening of this performance quickly and 
 strangely repelled my impulse. After the oratorio Reissiger 
 was to produce Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. I had noticed 
 in the preceding rehearsal that Reissiger had fallen into the 
 error of all the ordinary conductors of this work by taking the 
 tempo di minuetto of the third movement at a meaningless 
 waltz time, whereby not only does the whole piece lose its 
 imposing character, but the trio is rendered absolutely ridiculous 
 by the impossibility of the violoncello part being interpreted 
 at such a speed. I had called Reissiger's attention to this 
 defect, and he acquiesced in my opinion, promising to take 
 the part in question at true minuetto tempo. I related this to 
 Mendelssohn, when he was resting after his own performance 
 in the box beside me, listening to the symphony. He, too, 
 acknowledged that I was right, and thought that it ought to be 
 played as I said. And now the third movement began. Reis- 
 siger, who, it is true, did not possess the needful power suddenly 
 to impress so momentous a change of time upon his orchestra 
 with success, followed the usual custom and took the tempo 
 di minuetto in the same old waltz time. Just as I was about 
 to express my anger, Mendelssohn gave me a friendly nod, as 
 though he thought that this was what I wanted, and that I had 
 understood the music in this way. I was so amazed by this 
 complete absence of feeling on the part of the famous musician, 
 that I was struck dumb, and thenceforth my own particular 
 opinion of Mendelssohn gradually matured, an opinion which 
 was afterwards confirmed by R. Schumann. The latter, in 
 expressing the sincere pleasure he had felt on listening to the 
 time at which I had taken the first movement of Beethoven's 
 Ninth Symphony, told me that he had been compelled to hear 
 it year after year taken by Mendelssohn at a perfectly dis- 
 tracting speed. 
 
 Amid my yearning anxiety to exert some influence upon the
 
 330 MY LIFE 
 
 spirit in which our noblest masterpieces were executed, I had 
 to struggle against the profound dissatisfaction I felt with my 
 employment on the ordinary theatre repertoire. It was not 
 until Palm Sunday of the year 1844, just after my dispiriting 
 expedition to Hamburg, that my desire to conduct the Pastoral 
 Symphony was satisfied. But many faults still remained un- 
 remedied, and for the removal of these I had to adopt indirect 
 methods which gave me much trouble. For instance, at these 
 famous concerts the arrangement of the orchestra, the mem- 
 bers of which were seated in a long, thin, semicircular row 
 round the chorus of singers, was so inconceivably stupid that 
 it required the explanation given by Reissiger to make me 
 understand such folly. He told me that all these arrange- 
 ments dated from the time of the late conductor Morlacchi, 
 who, as an Italian composer of operas, had no true realisa- 
 tion of the importance of the orchestra nor of its necessities. 
 When, therefore, I asked why they had permitted him to 
 meddle with things he did not understand, I learned that the 
 preference shown to this Italian, both by the court and the 
 general management, even in opposition to Carl Maria von 
 Weber, had always been absolute and brooked no contradic- 
 tion. I was warned that, even now, we should experience 
 great difficulty in ridding ourselves of these inherited vices, 
 because the opinion still prevailed in the highest circles that 
 he must have understood best what he was about. 
 
 Once more my childish memories of the eunuch Sassaroli 
 flashed through my mind, and I remembered the warning of 
 Weber's widow as to the significance of my succession to her 
 husband's post of conductor in Dresden. But, in spite of all 
 this, our performance of the Pastoral SyphQny__succeeded 
 beyond expectation, and the incomparable and wonderfully 
 stimulating enjoyment, which I was in future to derive from 
 my intercourse with Beethoven's works, now first enabled me 
 to realise his prolific strength. Rockel shared in this enjoy- 
 ment with heartfelt sympathy; he supported me with eye 
 and ear at every rehearsal, always stood by my side, and was 
 at one with me both in his appreciation and his aims. 
 
 After this encouraging success I was to receive the grati- 
 fication of another triumph in the summer, which, although it
 
 OVATION FOR THE KING OF SAXONY 331 
 
 was of no particular moment from the musical point of view, 
 was of great social importance. The King of Saxony, towards 
 whom, as I have already said, I had felt warmly drawn when 
 he was Prince Friedrich, was expected home from a long visit 
 to England. The reports received of his stay there had greatly 
 rejoiced my patriotic soul. While this homely monarch, who 
 shrank from all pomp and noisy demonstration, was in England, 
 it happened that the Tsar Nicholas arrived quite unexpectedly 
 on a visit to the Queen. In his honour great festivities and 
 military reviews were held, in which our King, much against 
 his will, was obliged to participate, and he was consequently 
 compelled to receive the enthusiastic acclamations of the Eng- 
 lish crowd, who were most demonstrative in showing their 
 preference for him, as compared with the unpopular Tsar. 
 This preference was also reflected in the newspapers, so that a 
 flattering incense floated over from England to our little Saxony 
 which filled us all with a peculiar pride in our King. While I 
 was in this mood, which absorbed me completely, I learned that 
 preparations were being made in Leipzig for a special welcome 
 to the King on his return, which was to be further dignified 
 by a musical festival in the directing of which Mendelssohn 
 was to take part. I made inquiries as to what was going to be 
 done in Dresden, and learned that the King did not propose to 
 call there at all, but was going direct to his summer residence 
 at Pillnitz. 
 
 A moment's reflection showed me that this would only further 
 my desire of preparing a pleasant and hearty reception for his 
 Majesty. As I was a servant of the Crown, any attempt on 
 my part to render an act of homage in Dresden might have 
 had the appearance of an official parade which would not be 
 admissible. I seized the idea, therefore, of hurriedly collecting 
 together all who could either play or sing, so that we might 
 perform a Reception song hastily composed in honour of the 
 event. The obstacle to my plan was that my Director Liitti- 
 chau was away at one of his country seats. To come to an 
 understanding with my colleague Reissiger would, moreover, 
 have involved delay, and given the enterprise the very aspect 
 of an official ovation which I wished to avoid. As no time was 
 to be lost, if anything worthy of the occasion was to be done
 
 332 MY LIFE 
 
 as the King was due to arrive in a few days I availed mysell 
 of my position as conductor of the Glee Club, and summoned all 
 its singers and instrumentalists to my aid. In addition to these, 
 I invited the members of our theatrical company, and also 
 those of the orchestra, to join us. This done, I drove quickly 
 to Pillnitz to arrange matters with the Lord Chamberlain, 
 whom I found favourably disposed towards my project. The 
 only leisure I could snatch for composing the verses of my song 
 and setting them to music was during the rapid drive there 
 and back, for by the time I reached home I had to have every 
 thing ready for the copyist and lithographer. The agreeable 
 sensation of rushing through the warm summer air and lovely 
 country, coupled with the sincere affection with which I was 
 inspired for our German Prince, and which had prompted my 
 effort, elated me and worked me up to a high pitch of tension, 
 in which I now formed a clear conception of the lyrical outlines 
 of the ' Tannhduser March,' which first saw the light of day 
 on the occasion of this royal welcome. I soon afterwards de- 
 veloped this theme, and thus produced the march which became 
 the most popular of the melodies I had hitherto composed. 
 
 On the next day it had to be tried over with a hundred and 
 twenty instrumentalists and three hundred singers. I had 
 taken the liberty of inviting them to meet me on the stage of 
 the Court Theatre, where everything went off capitally. Every 
 one was delighted, and I not the least so, when a messenger 
 arrived from the director, who had just returned to town, 
 requesting an immediate interview. Liittichau was enraged 
 beyond measure at my high-handed proceedings in this matter, 
 of which he had been informed by our good friend Reissiger. 
 If his baronial coronet had been on his head during this inter- 
 view, it would assuredly have tumbled off. The fact that I 
 should have conducted my negotiations in person with the 
 court officials, and could report that my endeavours had met 
 with extraordinarily prompt success, aroused his deepest fury, 
 for the chief importance of his own position consisted in always 
 representing everything which had to be obtained by these 
 means as surrounded by the greatest obstacles, and hedged 
 in by the strictest etiquette. I offered to cancel everything, 
 but that only embarrassed him the more. I thereupon asked
 
 JOURNEY TO PILLNITZ (1844) 333 
 
 him what he wanted me to do, if the plan was still to be carried 
 out. On this point he seemed uncertain, but thought I had 
 shown a great lack of fellow-feeling in having not only ignored 
 him, but Reissiger as well. I answered that I was perfectly 
 ready to hand over my composition and the conducting of the 
 piece to Reissiger. But he could not swallow this, as he really 
 had an exceedingly poor opinion of Reissiger, of which I was 
 very well aware. His real grievance was that I had arranged 
 the whole business with the Lord Chamberlain, Herr von 
 Reizenstein, who was his personal enemy, and he added that I 
 could form no conception of the rudeness he had been obliged 
 to endure from the hands of this official. This outburst of 
 confidence -i - easier for me to exhibit an almost sincere 
 
 emotion, 1 j he responded by a shrug of the shoulders, 
 
 meaning aust resign himself to a disagreeable necessity. 
 
 But IT 'cet was even more seriously threatened by the 
 
 wretchef -r than by this storm with the director; for it 
 
 rained in torrents. If it lasted, which it seemed only 
 
 too lik' ., I could hardly start on the special boat at five 
 
 o'clock morning, as proposed, with my hundreds of 
 
 helpe e an early morning concert at Pilmitz, two hours 
 
 away ticipated such a disaster with genuine dismay. 
 
 But ;onsoled me by saying that I could rely upon it that 
 
 we ? ive glorious weather the next day ; for I was lucky ! 
 
 Th in my luck has followed me ever since, evon down to 
 
 *""** I .. mm ^i-^***^* f 
 
 m\ ays ; and amid the great misfortunes which have so 
 
 of pered my enterprises, I have felt as if this statement 
 
 W 3ked insult to fate. But this time, at least, my friend 
 
 v ; the 12th of August, 1844 was from sunrise till late 
 
 j the most perfect summer day that I can remember in 
 
 ,e life. The sensation of blissful content with which 
 
 ly light-hearted legion of gaily dressed bandsmen and 
 
 gathering through the auspicious morning mists on 
 
 jur steamer, swelled my breast with a fervent faith in 
 
 ' ;ky star. 
 
 my friendly impetuosity I had succeeded in overcoming 
 .ger's smouldering resentment, and had persuaded him 
 are the honour of our undertaking by conducting the per- 
 ance of my composition himself. When we arrived at the
 
 334 MY LIFE 
 
 spot, everything went off splendidly. The King and royal 
 family were visibly touched, and in the evil times that followed 
 the Queen of Saxony spoke of this occasion, I am told, with 
 peculiar emotion, as the fairest day of her life. After Reissiger 
 had wielded his baton with great dignity, and I had sung with 
 the tenors in the choir, we two conductors were summoned to 
 the presence of the royal family. The King warmly expressed 
 his thanks, while the Queen paid us the high compliment of 
 saying that I composed very well and that Reissiger conducted 
 very well. His Majesty asked us to repeat the last three 
 stanzas only, as, owing to a painful ulcejated tooth, he could 
 not remain much longer out of doors. I rapidly devised a 
 combined evolution, the remarkably successful execution of 
 which I am very proud, even to this day. I had the entire song 
 repeated, but, in accordance with the King's wish, only one 
 verse was sung in our original crescent formation. At the 
 beginning of the second verse I made my four hundred un- 
 disciplined bandsmen and singers file off in a mar^Ti through 
 the garden, which, as they gradi arranged 
 
 that the final notes could only rej echoing 
 
 dream-song. Thanks to my u: -id ever- 
 
 present help, this retreat was so steadily carried out that not 
 the slightest faltering was perceptible either in time or delivery, 
 and the whole might have been taken for a carefully rehearsed 
 theatrical manoeuvre. On reaching the castle court we found 
 that, by the Queen's kindly forethought, an ample breakfast 
 had been provided for our party on the lawn, where the tables 
 were already spread. We often saw our royal hostess herself 
 busily supervising the attendants, or moving with excitea de- 
 light about the windows and corridors of the castle. Every 
 eye beamed rapture to my soul, as the successful author of the 
 general happiness, and I almost felt amid the glories of that day 
 as though the millennium had been proclaimed. After roaming 
 in a body through the lovely grounds of the castle, and not 
 omitting to pay a visit to the Keppgrund which had been so dear 
 to me in my youth, we returned late at night, and in the 
 highest spirits, to Dresden. 
 
 Next morning I was again summoned to the presence of thu 
 director. But a change had come over him during the night.
 
 LUTTICHAU DEEPLY AFFECTED 335 
 
 As I began to offer my apologies for the anxiety I had caused 
 him, the tall thin man, with the hard dry face, seized me by 
 the hand and addressed me with a rapturous expression, which 
 I am sure no one else ever saw on his face. He told me to say 
 no more about these anxieties. I was a great man, and soon 
 no one would know anything about him, whereas I should 
 be universally admired and loved. I was deeply moved, and 
 wished only to express my embarrassment at so unexpected an 
 outburst, when he kindly interrupted me and sought an escape 
 from his own emotion in good-humoured confidences. He re- 
 ferred, with a smile, to the self-denial which had yielded the 
 place of honour on so extraordinary an occasion to an unde- 
 serving man like Reissiger. When I assured him that this act 
 had afforded me the liveliest satisfaction, and that I had my- 
 self persuaded my colleague to take the baton, he confessed 
 that at last he began to understand me, but failed altogether 
 to comprehend how the other could accept a position to which 
 he had no right. 
 
 Liittichau's altered attitude towards me was such that for 
 some time our intercourse on matters of business assumed an 
 almost confidential tone. But, unfortunately, in course of time 
 things changed for the worse, so that our relationship be- 
 came one of open enmity; nevertheless, a certain peculiar 
 tenderness towards me on the part of this singular man was 
 always clearly perceptible. Indeed, I might almost say that 
 much of his subsequent abuse of me sounded more like the 
 strangely perverted plaints of a love that met with no response. 
 
 For my holiday this year I went, early in September, to 
 Fischer's vineyard, near Loschwitz, not far from the famous 
 Findlater vineyard, where, somewhat late in the year, I rented 
 a summer residence. Here^ under the kindly and strengthen- 
 ing stimulus of six week of open-air life, I composed my music 
 f or Jhe_.scond act of Tannhauscr, which I completed by the 
 15th of October. During this period a performance of Bienzi 
 was given before an audience of no ordinary importance. For 
 this event I went up to town. Spontini, Meyerbeer, and 
 General Lwoff, the composer of the Russian National Anthem, 
 were seated together in a stage box. I sought no opportunity 
 of learning the impression made by my opera upon these learned
 
 330 KY LIFE 
 
 judges and magnates of the musical world. It was enough for 
 me to have the complacent satisfaction of knowing that they 
 had heard my oft-repeated work performed before a crowded 
 house and amid overwhelming applause. I was delighted at 
 the close of the opera to have my little dog Peps, which had run 
 after me all the way from the country, brought to me; and 
 without waiting to greet the European celebrities, I drove off 
 with it at once to our quiet vineyard, where Minna was greatly 
 relieved to recover her little pet, which for hours she had 
 believed to be lost. 
 
 Here I also received a visit from Werder, the man whose 
 friendship I had made in Berlin under such dramatic circum- 
 stances. But this time he appeared in ordinary human guise, 
 beneath the kindly light of heaven, by which we disputed in 
 a friendly way concerning the true worth of the Fliegender 
 Hollander, my mind having somewhat turned against this work 
 since Tannhcmser had got into my head. It certainly seemed 
 odd to find myself contradicted on this point by my friend, 
 and to receive instruction from him on the significance of my 
 own work. 
 
 When we returned to our winter quarters I tried to avoid 
 allowing so lengthy an interval to elapse between the compo- 
 sition of the second and third acts as had separated that of 
 the first and second. In spite of many absorbing engage- 
 ments I succeeded in my aim. By carefully cultivating a 
 habit of taking solitary walks, and thanks to their soothing 
 influence over me, I managed to finish the music of Act-iii, 
 by the 29th of December, that is to say, before the end of the 
 
 During this period my time was otherwise very seriously 
 occupied by a visit paid us by Spontini with reference to a 
 proposed presentation of his Vestalin, the preparation for which 
 had just begun. The singular episodes and characteristic 
 features of the intercourse which I thus gained with this emi- 
 nent and hoary-headed master are still so vividly imprinted on 
 my memory that they seem worthy of a place in this record. 
 
 Since, with the co-operation of Schroder-Devrient, we could, 
 on the whole, rely upon an admirable presentation of the opera, 
 I had inspired Liittichau with the idea of inviting Spontini to
 
 SPONTINI INVITED TO DKESDEN 337 
 
 undertake the personal superintendence of his justly famous 
 ork. He had just left Berlin for ever, after enduring great 
 i Miuliation there, and such an invitation at this moment 
 would be a well-timed proof of respect. This was accordingly 
 sent, and as I had myself been entrusted with the conductor- 
 ship of the opera, I was given the singular task of deciding this 
 point with the master. My letter, it appears, although written 
 in French, inspired him with a high opinion of my zeal for the 
 enterprise, and in a gracious reply he informed me what his 
 special wishes were regarding the arrangements to be made 
 for his collaboration. As far as the vocalists were concerned, 
 and seeing that a Schroder-Devrient was among the number, 
 he frankly expressed his satisfaction. As for chorus and ballet, 
 he took it for granted that nothing would be lacking to the 
 dignity of the performance; and finally, as regarded the 
 orchestra, he expected that this also would be sure to please 
 him, as he presumed it contained the necessary complement 
 of excellent instruments which, to use his own words, l he 
 hoped would furnish the performance with twelve good contra- 
 bassi ' (le tout garni de douze bonnes centre-basses). This 
 phrase bowled me over, for the proportion thus bluntly stated 
 in figures gave me so logical a conception of his exalted expec- 
 tations, that I hurried away at once to the director to warn 
 him that the enterprise on which we had embarked would not, 
 after all, prove as easy as we thought. His alarm was great, 
 and he said that some plan must at once be devised for breaking 
 off the engagement. 
 
 When Schroder-Devrient heard of our dilemma, knowing 
 Spontini well, she laughed as though she would never stop at 
 the ingenuous impudence with which we had issued our invi- 
 tation. A trifling indisposition from which she then suffered 
 provided a reasonable excuse for a delay, more or less pro- 
 longed, and this she generously placed at our disposal. Spontini 
 had, in fact, urged us to use all possible despatch in the 
 execution of our project, for, as he was impatiently awaited in 
 Paris, he could spare us but little time. It fell to my lot to 
 weave the tissue of innocent deceptions by which we hoped to 
 divert the master from a definite acceptance of our invitation, 
 we could breathe again, and duly began rehearsing. But
 
 338 MY LIFE 
 
 on the very day before we proposed to hold our full-dress 
 rehearsal at our leisure, lo and behold! about noon a carriage 
 drove up to my door, in which, clad in a long blue coat of pilot- 
 cloth, sat no other than the haughty master himself, whose man- 
 ners resembled those of a Spanish grandee. All unattended and 
 greatly excited, he entered my room, showed me my letters, 
 and proved from our correspondence that the invitation had 
 not been declined, but that he had in all points accurately 
 complied with our wishes. Forgetting for the moment all the 
 possible embarrassments which might arise, in my genuine de- 
 light at beholding the wonderful man before me, and hearing 
 his work conducted by himself, I at once undertook to do every- 
 thing I possibly could to meet his desires. This declaration I 
 made with the utmost sincerity of zeal. He smiled with almost 
 childlike kindliness on hearing me, and I at once begged him 
 to conduct the rehearsal arranged for the morrow. He thereupon 
 grew suddenly thoughtful, and began to weigh the numerous 
 disadvantages of such an action on his part. So acute did his 
 agitation become that he had the greatest difficulty in expressing 
 himself clearly on any point, and I found it no easy matter 
 to inquire what arrangements on our part would persuade him 
 to undertake the morrow's rehearsal. After a moment's re- 
 flection he asked what sort of baton I was accustomed to 
 use when conducting. With my hands I indicated the approxi- 
 mate length and thickness of a medium-sized wooden rod, such 
 as our choir-attendant was in the habit of supplying, freshly 
 covered with white paper. He sighed, and asked if I thought 
 it possible to procure him by to-morrow a baton of black ebony, 
 whose very respectable length and thickness he indicated by a 
 gesture, and on each end of which a fairly large knob of ivory 
 was to be affixed. I promised to have one prepared for the next 
 rehearsal, which should at least be similar in appearance to 
 what he desired, and another of the specified materials in time 
 for the actual performance. Visibly relieved, he then passed 
 his hand over his brow, and granted me permission to announce 
 his consent to conduct on the following day. After once more 
 strongly enforcing his instructions as to the baton, he went back 
 to his hotel. 
 
 I seemed to be moving in a dream, and hastened in a whirl-
 
 FIRST REHEARSAL OF THE 'VESTALIN' 339 
 
 wind of excitement to publish the news of what had happened 
 and was to be expected. We were fairly trapped. Schroder- 
 Devrient offered to become our scapegoat, while I entered into 
 precise details with the theatre carpenter concerning the baton. 
 This turned out so far correct that it possessed the requisite 
 length and breadth, was black in its colour, and had two large 
 white knobs. Then came the fateful rehearsal. Spontini was 
 evidently ill at ease on his seat in the orchestra. First of 
 all he wished to have the oboists placed behind him. As this 
 partial change of position just at that moment would have 
 caused much confusion in the disposition of the orchestra, I 
 promised to effect the alteration after the rehearsal. He said 
 no more, and took up his baton. In a moment I understood 
 why he attached such importance to its form and size. He 
 held it, not as other conductors do, by the end, but gripped it 
 about the middle with his clenched fist, waving it so as to make 
 it evident that he wielded his baton like a field-marshal's staff, 
 not for beating time, but for command. 
 
 Confusion arose in the very first scene, which was increased 
 by the fact that the master's instructions, both to orchestra 
 and singers, were rendered almost unintelligible by his confused 
 use of the German language. This much at least we were 
 soon able to grasp, that he was particularly anxious to dis- 
 abuse us of the idea that this was a full-dress rehearsal, and to 
 show us that he was set upon a thorough re-study of the opera 
 from the very beginning. Great, indeed, was the despair of 
 my good old chorus-master and stage manager, Fischer who 
 before had enthusiastically advocated the invitation of Spontini 
 when he recognised that the dislocation of our repertoire 
 was now inevitable. This feeling swelled by degrees to open 
 anger, in the blindness of which every fresh suggestion of 
 Spontini's appeared but frivolous fault-finding, to which he 
 bluntly responded in the coarsest German. After one of the 
 choruses Spontini beckoned me to his side and whispered: 
 ' Mais savez-vous, vos choeurs ne chantent pas mal ' ; whereupon 
 Fischer, regarding this with suspicion, shouted out to me in 
 a rage : ( What does the old hog want now ? ' and I had some 
 trouble to pacify the speedily converted enthusiast. 
 
 But our most serious delay arose, during the first act,
 
 340 MY LIFE 
 
 through th'e evolutions of a triumphal march. With the most 
 vociferous emphasis the master expressed intense dissatisfac- 
 tion with the apathetic demeanour of our populace during the 
 procession of vestal virgins. He was quite unaware of the fact 
 that, in obedience to our stage manager's instructions, they 
 had fallen on their knees upon the appearance of the priest- 
 esses; for he was so excited, and withal so terribly short- 
 sighted, that nothing which appealed to the eye alone was per- 
 ceptible to his senses. What he demanded was that the Roman 
 army should manifest its devout respect in more drastic 
 fashion by flinging themselves as one man to the ground, and 
 marking this by delivering a crashing blow of their spears on 
 their shields. Endless attempts were made, but some one al- 
 ways clattered either too soon or too late. Then he repeated 
 the action himself several times with his baton on the desk, but 
 all to no purpose; the crash was not sufficiently sharp and 
 emphatic. This reminded me of the impression made upon 
 me some years before in Berlin by the wonderful precision and 
 almost alarming effect with which I had seen similar evolutions 
 carried out in the play of Ferdinand Cortez, and I realized that 
 it would require an immediate and tedious accentuation of our 
 customary softness of action in such manreuvres before we 
 could meet the fastidious master's requirements. At the end 
 of the first act Spontini went on the stage himself, in order to 
 give a detailed explanation of his reasons for wishing to defer 
 his opera for a considerable time, so as to prepare by multi- 
 tudinous rehearsals for its production in accordance with his 
 taste. He expected to find the actors of the Dresden Court 
 Theatre gathered there to hear him; but the company had 
 already dispersed. Singers and stage manager had nastily 
 scattered in every direction to give vent, each in his own 
 fashion, to the misery of the situation. None but the work- 
 men, lamp-cleaners, and a few of the chorus gathered in a 
 semicircle around Spontini, in order 'to have a look at that 
 remarkable man, as he held forth with wonderful effect on the 
 requirements of true theatrical art. Turning towards the dis- 
 mal scene, I gently and respectfully pointed out to Spontini 
 the uselessness of his declamation, and promised that every- 
 thing should eventually be done precisely as he desired.
 
 THE REHEAKSALS CONTINUED 341 
 
 Finally, I succeeded in extricating him from the undignified 
 position in which, to my horror, he had been placed, by telling 
 him that Herr Eduard Devrient, who had seen the Vestalin in 
 Berlin, and carried every detail of the performance in his 
 mind, should personally drill our chorus and supers into a 
 becoming solemnity during the reception of the vestals. This 
 pacified him, and we proceeded to settle on a plan for a series 
 of rehearsals according to his wishes. But, in spite of all this, 
 I was the only person to whom this strange turn of affairs was 
 not unwelcome; for through the burlesque extravagances of 
 Spontini, and notwithstanding his extraordinary eccentricities, 
 which, however, I learned in time to understand, I could per- 
 ceive the miraculous energy with which he pursued and attained 
 an ideal of theatrical art such as in our days had become almost 
 unknown. 
 
 We began, therefore, with a pianoforte rehearsal, at which 
 the master made a point of telling the singers what he wanted. 
 He did not tell us anything new, however, for he said little 
 about the details of the rendering; on the other hand, he 
 expatiated upon the general interpretation, and I noticed that 
 in doing this, he had accustomed himself to make the most 
 decided allowances for the great singers, especially Schrb'der- 
 Devrient and Tichatschek. The only thing he did was to forbid 
 the latter to use the word Braut (bride) with which Licinius 
 had to address Julia in the German translation; this word 
 sounded horrible in his ears, and he could not understand how 
 anybody could set such a vulgar sound as that to music. He 
 gave a long lecture, however, to the somewhat coarse and less 
 talented singer who took the part of the high-priest, and ex- 
 plained to him how to understand and interpret this character 
 from the dialogue (in recitative) between him and Haruspex. 
 He told him that he must understand that the whole thing 
 was based upon priestcraft and superstition. Pontifex must 
 make it clear that he does not fear his antagonist at the head 
 of the Roman army, because, should the worst come to the 
 worst, he has his machines ready, which, if necessary, will 
 miraculously rekindle the dead fire of Vesta. In this way, even 
 though Julia should escape the sacrifice, the power of the priest- 
 hood would still be unassailable.
 
 342 MY LIFE 
 
 During one of the rehearsals I asked Spontini why he, who, 
 as a rule, made such very effective use of the trombone, should 
 have left it entirely out in the magnificent triumphal march 
 of the first act. Very much astonished he asked : ' Est-ce que 
 je n'ai pas de trombones?' I showed him the printed score, 
 and he then asked me to add the trombones to the march, so 
 that, if possible, they might be used at the next rehearsal. He 
 also said: ' J'ai entendu dans votre Rienzi un instrument, que 
 vous appelez Basse-tuba; je ne veux pas bannir cet instrument 
 de I'orchestre: faites men une partie pour la Vestale.' It gave 
 me great pleasure to perform this task for him with all the 
 care and good judgment I could dispose of. When at the 
 rehearsal he heard the effect for the first time, he threw me a 
 really grateful glance, and so much appreciated the really simple 
 additions I had made to his score, that a little later on he wrote 
 me a very friendly letter from Paris in which he asked me 
 kindly to send him the extra instrumental parts I had prepared 
 for him. His pride would not allow him, however, to ask 
 outright for something for which I alone had been responsible, 
 so he wrote: ' Envoy ez-moi une partition des trombones pour 
 la marche triomphale et de la Basse-tuba telle qu'elle a ete 
 executee sous ma direction a Dresde/ Apart from this, I also 
 showed how greatly I respected him, in the eagerness with 
 which, at his special request, I regrouped all the instruments 
 in the orchestra. He was forced to this request more by habit 
 than by principle, and how very important it seemed to him 
 not to make the slightest change in his customary arrangements, 
 was proved to me when he explained his method of conducting. 
 He conducted the orchestra, so he said, only with his eyes: 
 1 My left eye is the first violin, my right eye the second, and if 
 the eye is to have power, one must not wear glasses (as so 
 many bad conductors do), even if one is short-sighted. I,' he 
 admitted confidentially, ' cannot see twelve inches in front of 
 me, but all the same I can make them play as I want, merely 
 by fixing them with my eye.' In some respects the arbitrary 
 way in which he used to arrange his orchestra was really very 
 irrational. From his old days in Paris he had retained the 
 habit of placing the two oboists immediately behind him, and 
 although this was a fad which owed its origin to a mere accident,
 
 SPONTINT AND THE ORCHESTRA 343 
 
 it was one to which he always adhered. The consequence was 
 that these players had to avert the mouthpiece of their instru- 
 ments from the audience, and our excellent oboist was so angry 
 about this arrangement, that it was only by dint of great diplo- 
 macy that I succeeded in pacifying him. 
 
 Apart from this, Spontini's method was based upon the ab- 
 solutely correct system (which even at the present time is mis- 
 understood by some German orchestras) of spreading the string 
 quartette over the whole orchestra. This system further con- 
 sisted in preventing the brass and percussion instruments from 
 culminating in one point (and drowning each other) by divid- 
 ing them on both sides, and by placing the more delicate wind 
 instruments at a judicious distance from each other, thus form- 
 ing a chain between the violins. Even some great and cele- 
 brated orchestras of the present day still retain the custom of 
 dividing the mass of instruments into two halves, the string 
 and the wind instruments, an arrangement that denotes rough- 
 ness and a lack of understanding of the sound of the 
 orchestra, which ought to blend harmoniously and be well 
 balanced. 
 
 I was very glad to have the chance of introducing this ex- 
 cellent improvement in Dresden, for now that Spontini himself 
 had initiated it, it was an easy matter to get the King's command 
 to let the alteration stand. Nothing remained after Spontini's 
 departure but to modify and correct certain eccentricities and 
 arbitrary features in his arrangements ; and from that moment 
 I attained a high level of success with my orchestra. 
 
 With all the peculiarities he showed at rehearsals, this excep- 
 tional man fascinated both musicians and singers to such an 
 extent that the production attracted quite an unusual amount 
 of attention. Very characteristic was the energy with which 
 he insisted on exceptionally sharp rhythmic accents; through 
 his association with the Berlin orchestra he had acquired the 
 habit of marking the note that he wished to be brought out 
 with the word diese (this), which at first was quite incompre- 
 hensible to me. The great singer Tichatschek, who had a posi- 
 tive genius for rhythm, was highly pleased by this; for he 
 also had acquired the habit of compelling the chorus to great 
 precision in very important entries, and maintained that if one
 
 344 MY LIFE 
 
 only accentuated tKe first note properly, the rest followed as a 
 matter of course. On the whole, therefore, a spirit of devotion 
 to the master gradually pervaded the orchestra; the violas 
 alone bore him a grudge for a while, and for this reason. In 
 the accompaniment of the lugubrious cantilena of Julia at the 
 end of the second act, he would not put up with the way in 
 which the violas played the horribly sentimental accompani- 
 ment. Suddenly turning towards them he called in a sepulchral 
 tone, l Are the violas dying ? ' The two pale and incurably 
 melancholy old men who held on tenaciously to their posts in 
 the orchestra, notwithstanding their right to a pension, stared 
 at Spontini with real fright, reading a threat in his words, and 
 I had to explain Spontini's wish in sober language in order to 
 call them back to life. 
 
 On the stage Herr Eduard Devrient helped very materially 
 in bringing about wonderfully distinct ensembles; he also knew 
 how to gratify a certain wish of Spontini's, which threw us 
 all into tremendous confusion. In accordance with the cuts 
 adopted by all the German theatres, we too ended the opera 
 with the fiery duet, supported by the chorus, between Licinius 
 and Julia after their rescue. The master, however, insisted on 
 adding a lively chorus and ballet to the finale, according to the 
 antiquated method of ending common to French opera seria. 
 He was absolutely against finishing his work with a dismal 
 churchyard episode; consequently the whole scene had to be 
 altered. Venus was to shine resplendent in a rose bower, and 
 the long-suffering lovers were to be wedded at her altar, amid 
 lively dancing and singing, by rose-bedecked priests and priest- 
 esses. We performed it like this, but unluckily not with the 
 success we had all hoped for. 
 
 In the course of the production, which was proceeding with 
 wonderful accuracy and verve, we came across a difficulty with 
 regard to the principal part for which none of us had been 
 prepared. Our great Schroder-Devrient was obviously no longer 
 of an age to give the desired effect as the youngest of the vestal 
 virgins; she had acquired matronly contours, and her age 
 was moreover accentuated by the extremely girlish-looking high- 
 priestess with whom she had to act, and whose youth it 
 was difficult to dissimulate. This was my niece, Johanna
 
 SCANT SUCCESS 345 
 
 Wagner, who, because of her marvellous voice and great talent 
 as an actress, made every one in the audience long to see the 
 parts of the two women reversed. Schroder-Devrient, who 
 was well aware of this fact, tried by every effective means in 
 her power to overcome her most difficult position; this effort, 
 however, resulted not infrequently in great exaggeration and 
 straining of the voice, and in one very important place her 
 part was sadly overacted. When, after the great trio in the 
 second act, she had to gasp the words, ' er ist frei ' (' he is free '), 
 and to move away from her rescued lover towards the front of 
 the stage, she made the mistake of speaking the words instead 
 of singing them. 
 
 She had often proved the effect of a decisive word uttered 
 with an exaggerated and yet careful imitation of the ordinary 
 accents of the spoken language, by exciting the audience's 
 wildest enthusiasm when she almost whispered the words, 
 ' Noch einen Schritt und du bist todt! ' (' Just one more step and 
 thou art dead! ') in Fidelia. This terrific effect, which I too 
 had felt, was produced by the shock like unto the blow of an 
 executioner's axe which I received on suddenly coming down 
 from the ideal sphere to which music itself can exalt the most 
 awful situations, to the naked surface of dreadful reality. This 
 sensation was due simply to the knowledge of the utmost 
 height of the sublime, and the memory of the impression I 
 received led me to call that particular moment the moment 
 of lightning; for it was as if two different worlds that meet, 
 and yet are divided, were suddenly illumined and revealed 
 as by a flash. Thoroughly to understand such a moment, and 
 not to treat it wrongly, was the whole secret, and this I fully 
 realised on that day from the absolute failure on the great 
 singer's part to produce the right effect. The toneless, hoarse 
 way in which she uttered the words was like throwing cold 
 water over the audience and myself, and not one of those 
 present could see any more in the incident than a botched 
 theatrical effect. It is possible that the public had expected 
 too much, for they were curious to see Spontini conduct, and 
 the prices had been raised accordingly ; it may also have been 
 that the whole style of the work, with its antiquated French 
 plot, seemed rather obsolete in spite of the majestic beauty
 
 346 MY LIFE 
 
 of the music; or, perhaps, the very tame end left the same 
 cold impression as Devrient's dramatic failure. In any case 
 there was no real enthusiasm, and the only sign of approval 
 was a rather lukewarm call for the celebrated master, who, 
 covered with numerous decorations, made a sad impression on 
 me as he bowed his thanks to the audience for their very 
 moderate applause. 
 
 Nobody was less blind to the somewhat disappointing result 
 than Spontini himself. He decided, however, to defy fate, and 
 to this end had recourse to means which he had often employed 
 in Berlin, in order to get packed houses for his operatic pro- 
 ductions. Thus, he always gave Sunday performances, for 
 experience had taught him that he could always have a full 
 house on that day. As the next Sunday on which his Vestalin 
 was to be produced was still some time ahead, his prolonged 
 stay gave us several more chances of enjoying his interesting 
 company. I have such a vivid recollection of .the hours spent 
 with him either at Madame Devrient's or at my house, that 
 I shall be pleased to quote a few reminiscences. 
 
 I shall never forget a dinner at Schrb'der-Devrient's house 
 at which we had a charming conversation with Spontini and 
 his wife (a sister of the celebrated pianoforte maker, Erard). 
 Spontini generally listened deferentially to what the others had 
 to say, his attitude being that of a man who expected to be 
 asked for his opinion. When he did speak in the end it was 
 with a sort of rhetorical solemnity, in sharp and precise sen- 
 tences, categorical and well accentuated, which forbade con- 
 tradiction from the outset. Herr Ferdinand Hiller was among 
 the invited guests, and he began to speak about Liszt. After 
 some time Spontini gave his opinion in his characteristic fashion, 
 but in a spirit which showed only too clearly, that from the 
 heights of his Berlin throne he had not judged the affairs 
 of the world either with impartiality or goodwill. While he 
 was laying down the law in this style he could not brook any 
 interruption. When, therefore, during the dessert, the general 
 conversation became livelier, and Madame Devrient happened 
 to laugh with her neighbour at the table in the middle of a 
 long harangue of Spontini's, he shot an extremely angry glance 
 at his wife. Madame Devrient apologised for her at once by
 
 SPONTINI 347 
 
 saying that it was she (Madame Devrient) who had been laugh- 
 ing about some lines on a bonbonniere, whereupon Spontini 
 retorted : ' Pourtant je suis sur que c'est ma femme qui a 
 suscite ce rire; je ne veux pas que I' on rie devant moi, je ne rie 
 jamais moi, j'aime le serieux.' In spite of that he sometimes 
 succeeded in being jovial. For instance, it amused him to set 
 us all wondering at the way in which he crunched enormous 
 lumps of sugar with his marvellous teeth. After dinner, when 
 we drew our chairs closer together, he usually became very 
 excited. 
 
 As far as he was capable of affection he seemed really to like 
 me; he declared openly that he loved me, and said that he 
 would prove this best by trying to keep me from the misfortune 
 of proceeding in my career as a dramatic composer. He said 
 he knew it would be difficult to convince me of the value of this 
 friendly service, but as he felt it his sacred duty to look after 
 my happiness in this particular line, he was prepared to stay in 
 Dresden for another half-year, during which period he sug- 
 gested that we should produce his other operas, and especially 
 Agnes von Hohenstaufen, under his direction. To explain his 
 views about the fatal mistake of trying to succeed as a dramatic 
 composer l after Spontini,' he began by praising me in these 
 terms : ' Quand j'ai entendu votre Rienzi, j'ai dit, c'est un 
 homme de genie, mais deja il a plus fait qu'il ne pent faire.' 
 In order to show me what he meant by this paradox, he pro- 
 ceeded as follows : ' Apres Gluck c'est moi qui ai fait la grande 
 revolution avec la Vestale ; j'ai introduit le Vorhalt de la sexte ' 
 (the suspension of the sixth) ' dans I'harmonie et la grosse caisse 
 dans I'orchestre; avec Cortez j'ai fait un pas de plus en avant; 
 puis j'ai fait trois pas avec Olympie. Nurmahal, Alcidor et tout 
 ce que j'ai fait dans les premiers temps a Berlin, je vous les lime, 
 c'etaient des ceuvres occasionnelles ; mais depuis j'ai fait cent pas 
 en avant avec Agnes de Hohenstaufen, ou j'ai imagine un emploi 
 de I'orchestre remplagant parfaitement I'orgue.' 
 
 Since then he had tried his hand at a new work, Les Atheni- 
 
 ennes; the Crown Prince (now King of Prussia 1 ) had urged 
 
 him to finish this work, and to testify to the truth of his words, 
 
 he took several letters which he had received from this monarch 
 
 1 William the First.
 
 348 MY LIFE 
 
 out of his pocket-book, and handed them to us for inspection. 
 Not until he had insisted upon our reading them carefully 
 through did he continue by saying that, in spite of this natter- 
 ing invitation, he had given up the idea of setting this excellent 
 subject to music, because he felt sure he could never surpass 
 his Agnes von Hohenstaufen, nor invent anything new. In 
 conclusion he said : i Or, comment voulez-vous que quiconque 
 puisse inventer quelque chose de nouveau, moi Spontini declarant 
 ne pouvoir en aucune fagon surpasser mes ceuvres precedentes, 
 d'autre part etant avise que depuis la Vestale il n'a point ete 
 ecrit une note qui ne fut volee de mes partitions' 
 
 To prove that this assertion was not merely talk, but that it 
 was based on scientific investigations, he quoted his wife, who 
 was supposed to have read with him an elaborate discussion on 
 the subject by a celebrated member of the French academy, 
 and he added that the essay in question had, for some mysterious 
 reason, never been printed. In this very important and sci- 
 entific treatise it was proved that without Spontini's inven- 
 tion of the suspension of the sixth in his Vestalin, the whole of 
 modern melody would not have existed, and that any and 
 every form of melody that had been used since had been bor- 
 rowed from his compositions. I was thunderstruck, but hoped 
 all the same to bring the inexorable master to a better frame 
 of mind, especially in regard to certain reservations he had 
 made. I acknowledged that the academician in question was 
 right in many ways, but I asked him if he did not believe that 
 if somebody brought him a dramatic poem full of an abso- 
 lutely new and hitherto unknown spirit, it would not inspire 
 him to invent new musical combinations ? With a ring of com- 
 passion in his voice, he replied that my question was wholly 
 mistaken ; in what would the novelty consist ? * Dans la Ves- 
 tale j'ai compose un sujet romain, dans Ferdinand Cortez 
 un sujet espagnol-mexicain, dans Olympic un sujet greco- 
 macedonien, enfin dans Agnes de Hohenstaufen un sujet alle- 
 mand: tout le reste ne vaut rien! ' He hoped that I was not 
 thinking of the so-called romantic style a la Freischutz? With 
 such childish stuff no serious man could have anything to do; 
 for art was a serious thing, and he had exhausted serious art! 
 And, after all, what nation could produce the composer who
 
 SPONTINI 349 
 
 could surpass him? Surely not the Italians, whom he char- 
 acterised simply as cochons; certainly not the French, who had 
 only imitated the Italians; nor the Germans, who would never 
 get beyond their childhood in music, and who, if they had ever 
 possessed any talent, had had it all spoilt for them by the 
 Jews ? ' Oh, croyez-moi, il y avait de I'espoir pour I'Allemagne 
 lorsque j'etais empereur de la musique a Berlin; mais depuis 
 que le roi de Prusse a livre sa musique au desordre occasionne 
 par les deux juifs er rants qu'il a attires, tout espoir est perdu.' 
 
 Our charming hostess now thought it time to change the sub- 
 ject, and to divert the master's thoughts. The theatre was 
 situated quite near to her house; she invited him to go across 
 with our friend Heine, who was amongst the guests, and to 
 have a look at Antigone, which was then being given, and which 
 was sure to interest him on account of the antique equipment 
 of the stage, which had been carried out according to Semper's 
 excellent plans. At first he wanted to refuse, on the plea that 
 he had seen all this so much better when his Olympia had 
 been performed. After a while he consented; but in a very 
 short time he returned to his original opinion, and, smiling 
 scornfully, assured us that he had seen and heard enough to 
 strengthen him in his verdict. Heine told us that shortly after 
 he and Spontini had taken their seats in the almost empty 
 amphitheatre, and as soon as the Bacchus chorus had started, 
 Spontini had said to him : ' C'est de la Berliner Sing-Academie, 
 allons-nous-en.' Through an open door a streak of light had 
 fallen on a lonely figure behind one of the columns ; Heine had 
 recognised Mendelssohn, and concluded that he had overheard 
 Spontini's remark. 
 
 From the master's very excited conversations we soon realised 
 very distinctly that he intended to stay longer in Dresden, so 
 as to get all his operas performed. It was Schrb'der-Devrient's 
 idea to save Spontini, in his own interest, from the mortifying 
 disappointment of finding all his enthusiastic hopes in regard 
 to a second performance of Vestalin unfounded, and, if possible, 
 to prevent this second performance during his stay in Dresden. 
 She pretended to be ill, and the director requested me to 
 inform Spontini of the fact that his production would have 
 to be indefinitely postponed. This visit was so distasteful to
 
 350 MY LIFE 
 
 me, that I was glad to make it in Rockel's company. He was 
 also a friend of Spontini's, and his French was moreover much 
 better than mine. As we were quite prepared for a bad re- 
 ception, we were really frightened to enter. Imagine, therefore, 
 our astonishment when we found the master, who had already 
 been informed of the news in a letter from Devrient, in the 
 very brightest spirits. 
 
 He told us that he had to leave immediately for Paris, and 
 that from there he was to travel to Rome, the Holy Father 
 having commanded him to come in order to receive the title 
 of ' Count of San Andrea.' Then he showed us a second docu- 
 ment, in which the King of Denmark was supposed to have 
 raised him to the Danish nobility. This meant, however, only 
 that the title of ' Hitter ' of the ( Elephanten-Order ' had been 
 conferred upon him; and although this was indeed a high 
 honour, in speaking about it he only mentioned the word 
 * Hitter ' without referring to the particular order, because this 
 seemed to him too ordinary for a person of his dignity. He 
 was, however, childishly pleased over the affair, and felt that 
 he had been miraculously rescued from the narrow sphere of 
 his Dresden Vestalin production to find himself suddenly trans- 
 ported into regions of glory, from which he looked down upon 
 the distressing ( opera ' world with sublime self -content. 
 
 Meanwhile Rb'ckel and I silently thanked the Holy Father 
 and the King of Denmark from the bottom of our hearts. We 
 hide an affectionate farewell to the strange master, and to 
 cheer him I promised him seriously to think over his friendly 
 advice with regard to my career as a composer of opera. 
 
 Later on I heard what Spontini had said about me, on hear- 
 ing that I had fled from Dresden for political reasons, and had 
 sought refuge in Switzerland. He thought that this was in 
 consequence of my share in a plot of high treason against the 
 King of Saxony, whom he looked upon as my benefactor, be- 
 cause I had been nominated conductor of the royal orchestra, 
 and he expressed his opinion about me by ejaculating in tones 
 of the deepest anguish : ' Quelle ingratitude ! ' 
 
 From Berlioz, who was at Spontini's deathbed until the end, 
 I he a .rd that the master had struggled most determinedly 
 against death, and had cried repeatedly, ' Je ne veux pas
 
 SPONTINI. CONCLUSION 351 
 
 mourir, je ne veux pas mourir!' When Berlioz tried to com- 
 fort him by saying, ' Comment pouvez-vous penser mourir vous, 
 mon maitre, qui etes immortel! ' Spontini retorted angrily, 
 ' Ne faites pas de mauvaises plaisanteries ! ' In spite of all 
 the extraordinary experiences I had had with him, the news 
 of his death, which I received in Zurich, touched me very deeply. 
 Later on I expressed my feelings towards him, and my opinion 
 of him as an artist, in a somewhat condensed form in the 
 Eidgenossischen Zeitung, and in this article the quality I ex- 
 tolled more particularly in him was that, unlike Meyerbeer, 
 who was then the rage, and the very aged Rossini, he believed 
 absolutely in himself and his art. All the same, and somewhat 
 to my disgust, I could not but see that this belief in himself 
 had deteriorated into a veritable superstition. 
 
 I do not remember in those days having gone deeply into 
 my feelings about Spontini's exceedingly strange individuality, 
 nor do I recollect having troubled to discover how far they 
 were consistent with the high opinion I formed of him after 
 I had got to know him more intimately. Obviously I had only 
 seen the caricature of the man, although the tendency towards 
 such plainly overweening self-confidence may, at all events, 
 have manifested itself earlier in life. At the same time, one 
 could trace in all this the influence of the decay of the musical 
 and dramatic life of the period, which Spontini, situated as he 
 was in Berlin, was well able to witness. The surprising fact 
 that he saw his chief merit in unessential details showed plainly 
 that his judgment had become childish; in my opinion this 
 did not detract from the great value of his works, however much 
 he might exaggerate their value. In a sense I could justify his 
 boundless self-confidence, which was principally the outcome 
 of the comparison between himself and the great composers 
 who were now replacing him; for in my heart of hearts I 
 shared the contempt which he felt for these artists, although 
 I did not dare to say so openly. And thus it came about that, 
 in spite of his many somewhat absurd idiosyncrasies, I learned 
 during this meeting at Dresden to feel a deep sympathy for this 
 man, the like of whom I was never again to meet. 
 
 My next experiences of important musical celebrities of this 
 age were of quite a different character. Amongst the more
 
 MY LIFE 
 
 distinguished of these was Heinrich Marschner^who, as a very 
 young man, had been nominated musical director of" the Dresden 
 orchestra by Weber. After Weber's death he seemed to have 
 hoped that he would take his place entirely, and it was due 
 less to the fact that his talent was still unknown, than to his 
 repellent manner, that he was disappointed in his expectations. 
 His wife, however, suddenly came into some money, and this 
 windfall enabled him to devote all his energies to his work 
 as composer of operas, without being obliged to fill any fixed 
 post. 
 
 During the wild days of my youth Marschner lived in Leipzig, 
 where his operas Der Vampir and Templer und Judin saw 
 their first appearance. My sister Rosalie had once taken me 
 to him in order to hear his opinion about ma He did not 
 treat me uncivilly, but my visit led to nothing. I was also 
 present at the first night of his opera Des Falkner's Braut, 
 which however was not a success. Then he went to Hanover. 
 His opera Hans Heiling, which was originally produced in 
 Berlin, I heard for the first time in Wurzburg; it showed 
 vacillation in its tendency, and a decrease in constructive power. 
 After that he produced several other operas, such as Das 
 Schloss am Aetna and Der Babu, which never became popular. 
 He was always neglected by the management at Dresden, as 
 though they bore him some grudge, and only his Templer was 
 played at all often. My colleague, Reissiger, had to conduct 
 this opera, and as in his absence I always had to take his 
 place, it also fell to my lot on one occasion to direct a per- 
 formance of this work. 
 
 This was during the time that I worked at my Tannhauser. 
 I remember that, although I had often conducted this opera 
 before in Magdeburg, on this occasion the wild nature of the 
 instrumentation and its lack of mastership affected me to 
 such an extent that it literally made me ill, and as soon as he 
 returned, therefore, I implored Reissiger at any cost to resume 
 the leadership. On the other hand, immediately after my 
 nomination I had started on the production of Hans Heiling, 
 but merely for the sake of the artistic honour. The insuffi- 
 cient distribution of the parts, however, a difficulty which in 
 those days could not be overcome, made a complete success
 
 'ADOLPH VON NASSAU' 353 
 
 impossible. In any case, though, the whole spirit of the work 
 seemed to be terribly old-fashioned. 
 
 I now heard that Marschner had finished another opera 
 called Adolph von Nassau, and in a criticism of this work, of 
 the genuineness of which I was unable to judge, particular 
 stress was laid upon the ' patriotic and noble German atmo- 
 sphere ' of this new creation. I did my best to make the 
 Dresden theatre take the initiative, and to urge Liittichau 
 to secure this opera before it was produced elsewhere. Marsch- 
 ner, who did not seem to have been treated with particular 
 consideration by the Hanoverian opera authorities, accepted 
 the invitation with great joy, sent his score, and declared him- 
 self willing to come to Dresden for the first performance. 
 Liittichau, however, was not anxious to see him take his place 
 at the head of the orchestra; while I, also, was of the opinion 
 that the too frequent appearance of outside conductors, even 
 if it were for the purpose of conducting their own works, would 
 not only lead to confusion, but might also fail to be as amus- 
 ing and instructive as Spontini's visit had proved to be. It 
 was therefore decided that I should conduct the new opera my- 
 self. And how I lived to regret it! 
 
 The score arrived: to a weak plot by Karl Golmick the 
 composer of the Templer had written such superficial music, 
 that the principal effect lay in a drinking song for a quartette, 
 in which the German Rhine and German wine played the usual 
 stereotyped part peculiar to such male quartettes. I lost all 
 courage; but we had to go on with it now, and all I could 
 do was to try, by maintaining a grave bearing, to make the 
 singers take an interest in their task; this, however, was not 
 easy. To Tichatschek and Mitterwurzer were assigned the 
 two principal male parts; being both eminently musical, they 
 sang everything at first sight, and after each number looked 
 up at me as if to say, ' What do you think of it all ? ' I 
 maintained that it was good German music; they must not 
 allow themselves to get confused. But all they did was to stare 
 at each other in amazement, not knowing what to make of 
 me. Nevertheless, in the end they could not stand it any 
 longer, and when they saw that I still retained my gravity, 
 they burst into loud laughter, in which I could not help joining.
 
 354 MY LIFE 
 
 I now had to take them into my confidence, and make them 
 promise to follow my lead and pretend to be serious, for it 
 was impossible to give up the opera at this stage. A Viennese 
 ' colorature ' singer of the latest style Madame Spatser 
 Gentiluomo who came to us from Hanover, and on whose 
 services Marschner greatly relied, was rather taken with her 
 part chiefly because it gave her the chance of showing 
 ' brilliancy.' And, indeed, there was a finale in which my 
 ' German master ' had actually tried to steal a march on 
 Donizetti. The Princess had been poisoned by a golden rose, 
 a present from the wicked Bishop of Mainz, and had become 
 delirious. Adolph von Nassau, with the knights of the German 
 empire, swears vengeance, and, accompanied by the chorus, 
 pours out his feelings in a stretta of such incredible vulgarity 
 and amateurishness that Donizetti would have thrown it at 
 the head of any of his pupils who had dared to compose such 
 a thing. Marschner now arrived for the dress rehearsal; 
 he was very pleased, and, without compelling me to falsehood, 
 he gave me sufficient opportunities for exercising my powers 
 in the art of concealing my real thoughts. At all events I 
 must have succeeded fairly well, for he had every reason to 
 think himself considerately and kindly treated by me. 
 
 During the performance the public behaved very much as 
 the singers had done at the rehearsals. We had brought a 
 still-born child into the world. But Marschner was comforted 
 by the fact that his drinking quartette was encored. This was 
 reminiscent of one of Becker's songs: Sie sollen ilin nicht 
 Tidben, den freien deutschen Rhein (' They shall not have it, 
 our free German Rhine '). After the performance the com- 
 poser was my guest at a supper party at which, I am sorry to 
 say, the singers, who had had enough of it, would not attend. 
 Herr Ferdinand Hiller had the presence of mind to insist, in 
 his toast to Marschner, that l whatever one might say, all 
 stress must be laid on the German master and German art.' 
 Strangely enough, Marschner himself contradicted him by 
 saying that there was something wrong with German operatic 
 compositions, and that one ought to consider the singers and 
 how to write more brilliantly for their voices than he had 
 succeeded in doing up to the present.
 
 FERDINAND KILLER 355 
 
 Highly gifted as Marschner was, there can be no doubt 
 that the decline of his genius was due partly to a tendency 
 which even in the ageing master himself, as he frankly admitted, 
 was effecting an important and most salutary change. In 
 later years I met him once more in Paris at the time of my 
 memorable production of Tannhduser. I did not feel inclined 
 to renew the old relations, for, to tell the truth, I wanted to 
 spare myself the unpleasantness of witnessing the consequences 
 of his change of views, of which we had seen the beginning in 
 Dresden. I learned that he was in a state of almost helpless 
 childishness, and that he was in the hands of a young and 
 ambitious woman, who was trying to make a last attempt 
 at conquering Paris for him. Among other puff paragraphs 
 calculated to spread Marschner's glory, I read one which said 
 that the Parisians must not believe that I (Wagner) was 
 representative of German art; no if only Marschner were 
 given a hearing, it would be discovered that he was beyond 
 a doubt better suited to the French taste than I could ever be. 
 Marschner died before his wife had succeeded in establishing 
 this point. 
 
 !Egrdinand_Hiller^ on the other hand, who was in Dresden, 
 behaved in a very charming and friendly manner, particularly 
 at this time. Meyerbeer also stayed in the same town from 
 time to time; precisely why, nobody knew. Once he had 
 rented a little house for the summer near the Pirnaischer 
 Schlag, and under a pretty tree in the garden of this place 
 he had had a small piano installed, whereon, in this idyllic 
 retreat, he worked at his Feldlager in Schlesien. He lived in 
 great retirement, and I saw very little of him. Ferdinand 
 Hiller, on the contrary, took a commanding position in the 
 Dresden musical world in so far as this was not already 
 monopolised by the royal orchestra and its masters, and for 
 many years he worked hard for its success. Having a little 
 private capital, he established himself comfortably amongst us, 
 and was soon known as a delightful host, who kept a pleasant 
 house, which, thanks to his wife's influence, was frequented 
 by a numerous Polish colony. Frau Hiller was indeed an 
 exceptional Jewish woman of Polish origin, and she was 
 perhaps all the more exceptional seeing that she, in company
 
 356 MY LIFE 
 
 with her husband, had been baptized a Protestant in Italy. 
 Hiller began his career in Dresden with the production of his 
 opera, Der Traum in der Christnacht. Since the unheard-of 
 fact that Rienzi had been able to rouse the Dresden public to 
 lasting enthusiasm, many an opera composer had felt himself 
 drawn towards our ' Florence on the Elbe,' of which Laube 
 once said that as soon as one entered it one felt bound to 
 apologise because one found so many good things there which 
 one promptly forgot the moment one departed. 
 
 The composer of Der Traum in der Cliristnacht looked upon 
 this work as a peculiarly ' German composition.' Hiller had 
 set to music a gruesome play by Raupach, Der Muller und 
 sein Kind (' The Miller and his Child '), in which father and 
 daughter, within but a short space of time, both die of con- 
 sumption. He declared that he had conceived the dialogue 
 and the music of this opera in what he called the ' popular 
 style,' but this work met with the same fate as that which, 
 according to Liszt, befell all his compositions. In spite of 
 his undoubted musical merits, which even Rossini acknowl- 
 edged, and whether he gave them in French in Paris or in 
 Italian in Italy, it was his sad experience always to see his 
 operas fail. In Germany he had tried the Mendelssohnian 
 style, and had succeeded in composing an oratorio called Die 
 Zerstorung Jerusalems, which luckily was not taken notice of 
 by the moody theatre-going public, and which consequently 
 received the unassailable reputation of being i a solid German 
 work.' He also took Mendelssohn's place as director of the 
 Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts when the latter was called to 
 Berlin in the capacity of general director. Hiller's evil fortune 
 still pursued him, however, and he was unable to retain his 
 position, everybody being given to understand that it was 
 because his wife was not sufficiently acknowledged as concert 
 prima-donna. Mendelssohn returned and made Hiller leave, 
 and Hiller boasted of having quarrelled with him. 
 
 Dresden and the success of my Rienzi now weighed so much 
 upon his mind that he naturally made another attempt to 
 succeed as an opera composer. Owing to his great energy, 
 and to his position as son of a rich banker (a special attraction 
 even to the director of a court theatre), it happened that he
 
 C. M. WEBER'S ASHES (1844) 357 
 
 induced them to put aside my poor friend Rockel's Farinelli 
 (the production of which had been promised him) in favour of 
 his (Hiller's) own work, Der Traum in der Christnacht. He 
 was of the opinion that next to Reissiger and myself, a man of 
 greater musical reputation than Rockel was needed. Liitti- 
 chau, however, was quite content to have Reissiger and myself 
 as celebrities, particularly as we got on so well together, and 
 he remained deaf to Hiller's wishes. To me Der Traum in der 
 Christnacht was a great nuisance. I had to conduct it a second 
 time, and before an empty house. Hiller now saw that he had 
 been wrong in not taking my advice before, and in not shorten- 
 ing the opera by one act and altering the end, and he now 
 fancied that he was doing me a great favour by at last declaring 
 himself ready to act on my suggestion in the event of another 
 performance of his opera being possible. I really managed to 
 have it played once more. This was, however, to be the last 
 time, and Hiller, who had read my book of Tanrihauser, thought 
 that I had a great advantage over him in writing my own words. 
 He therefore made me promise to help him with the choice and 
 writing of a subject for his next opera. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Hiller was present at a performance of 
 Rienzi, which was again given before a crowded and enthusi- 
 astic house. When, at the end of the second act, and after 
 frantic recalls from the audience, I left the orchestra in a great 
 state of excitement, Hiller, who was waiting for me in the 
 passage, took the opportunity of adding to his very hasty 
 congratulations, ' Do give my Traum once more ! ' I promised 
 him laughingly to do this if I had the chance, but I can- 
 not remember whether it came off or not. While he was 
 waiting for the creation of an entirely new plot for his next 
 opera, Hiller devoted himself to the study of chamber music, 
 to which his large and well-furnished room lent itself most 
 admirably. 
 
 A beautiful and solemn event added to the seriousness of the 
 mood in which I finished the music to Tannhduser towards the 
 end of the year, and neutralised the more superficial impres- 
 sions made upon me by the stirring events above described. 
 This was the removal of the remains of Carl Maria von Weber 
 from London to Dresden in December, 1844. As I have already
 
 358 MY LIFE 
 
 said, a committee had for years been agitating for this removal. 
 From information given by a certain traveller, it had become 
 known that the insignificant coffin which contained Weber's 
 ashes had been disposed of in such a careless way in a remote 
 corner of St. Paul's, that it was feared it might soon become 
 impossible to identify it. 
 
 My energetic friend, Professor Lowe, whom I have already 
 mentioned, had availed himself of this information in order to 
 urge the Dresden Glee Club, which constituted his hobby, to 
 take the matter in hand. The concert of male singers arranged 
 to this end had been a fair success financially, and they now 
 wanted to induce the theatre management to make similar 
 efforts, when suddenly they met with serious opposition from 
 this very quarter. The management of the Dresden theatre 
 told the committee that the King had religious scruples with 
 regard to disturbing the peace of the dead. However much 
 we felt inclined to doubt the genuineness of these reasons, 
 nothing could be done, and I was next approached on the 
 subject, in the hope that my influential position might lend 
 weight to my appeal. I entered into the spirit of the enter- 
 prise with great fervour. I consented to be made president; 
 Herr Hofrat Schulz, director of the ' Antiken-Cabinet,' who was 
 a well-known authority on artistic matters, and another gentle- 
 man, a Christian banker, were also elected members of the 
 committee, and the movement thus received fresh life. Pro- 
 spectuses were sent round, exhaustive plans were made, and 
 numerous meetings held. Here, again, I met with opposition 
 on the part of my chief, Liittichau; if he could have done so, 
 he would have forbidden me to move in the matter by making 
 the most of the King's scruples referred to above. But he had 
 had a warning not to pick a quarrel with me after his experience 
 in the summer, when, contrary to his expectations, the music 
 written by me to celebrate the King's arrival had found favour 
 with the monarch. As his antipathy to the proceedings was 
 not so very serious, Liittichau must have seen that even the 
 direct opposition of his Majesty could not have prevented 
 the enterprise from being carried out privately, and that, on 
 the contrary, the court would cut a sorry figure if the Royal 
 Court Theatre (to which Weber once belonged) should assume
 
 359 
 
 a hostile attitude. He therefore tried in a would-be friendly 
 way to make me desist from furthering the cause, well knowing 
 that, without me, the plan would fail. He tried to convince 
 me that it would be wrong to pay this exaggerated honour to 
 Weber's memory, whereas nobody thought of removing the 
 ashes of Morlacchi from Italy, although the latter had given 
 his services to the royal orchestra for a much longer period 
 than Weber had done. What would be the consequence ? By 
 way of argument he said, ' Suppose Reissiger died on his jour- 
 ney to some watering-place his wife would then be as much 
 justified as was Frau von Weber (who had annoyed him quite 
 enough already) in expecting her husband's dead body to be 
 brought home with music and pomp.' I tried to calm him, and 
 if I did not succeed in making him see the difference between 
 Reissiger and Weber, I managed to make him understand that 
 the affair must take its course, as the Berlin Court Theatre 
 had already announced a benefit performance to support our 
 undertaking. 
 
 Meyerbeer, to whom my committee had applied, was instru- 
 mental in bringing this about, and a performance of Euryanthe 
 was actually given which yielded the handsome balance of six 
 thousand marks. A few theatres of lesser importance now fol- 
 lowed our lead. The Dresden Court Theatre, therefore, could 
 not hold back any longer, and as we now had a fairly large 
 sum at the bank, we were able to cover the expenses of the re- 
 moval, as well as the cost of an appropriate vault and monument ; 
 we even had a nucleus fund for a statue of Weber, which we 
 were to fight for later on. The elder of the two sons of the 
 immortal master travelled to London to fetch the remains of 
 his father. He brought them by boat down the Elbe, and finally 
 arrived at the Dresden landing-stage, from whence they were 
 to be conducted to German soil. This last journey of the 
 remains was to take place at night A solemn torchlight pro- 
 cession was to be formed, and I had undertaken to see to the 
 funeral music. 
 
 I arranged this from two motives out of EuryantTie, using 
 that part of the music in the overture which relates to the vision 
 of spirits. I introduced the Cavatina from Euryanthe Hier 
 dicht am Quell ('Here near the source '), which I left unaltered,
 
 360 MY LIFE 
 
 except that I transposed it into B flat major, and I finished the 
 whole, as Weber finished his opera, by a return to the first 
 sublime motive. I had orchestrated this symphonic piece, which 
 was well suited to the purpose, for eight chosen wind instru- 
 ments, and notwithstanding the volume of sound, I had not 
 forgotten softness and delicacy of instrumentation. I substituted 
 the gruesome tremolo of the violas, which appears in that part 
 of the overture adapted by me, by twenty muffled drums, and 
 as a whole attained to such an exceedingly impressive effect, 
 especially to us who were full of thoughts of Weber, that, even 
 in the theatre where we rehearsed, Schroder-Devrient, who was 
 present, and who had been an intimate friend of Weber's, was 
 deeply moved. I had never carried out anything more in keep- 
 ing with the character of the subject; and the procession through 
 the town was equally impressive. 
 
 As the very slow tempo, devoid of any strongly marked 
 accents, offered numerous difficulties, I had had the stage 
 cleared for the rehearsal, in order to command a sufficient 
 space for the musicians, once they had thoroughly practised 
 the piece, to walk round me in a circle playing all the while. 
 Several of those who witnessed the procession from their win- 
 dows assured me that the effect of the procession was indescrib- 
 ably and sublimely solemn. After we had placed the coffin in 
 the little mortuary chapel of the Catholic cemetery in Fried- 
 richstadt, where Madame Devrient met it with a wreath of 
 flowers, we performed, on the following morning, the solemn 
 ceremony of lowering it into the vault. Herr Hofrat Schulz 
 and myself, as presidents of the committee, were allowed the 
 honour of speaking by the graveside, and what afforded me 
 an appropriate subject for the few, somewhat affecting, words 
 which I had to pronounce, was the fact that, shortly before 
 the removal of Weber's remains, the second son of the mas- 
 ter, Alexander von Weber, had died. The poor mother had 
 been so terribly affected by the sudden death of this youth, so 
 full of life and health, that had we not been in the very 
 midst of our arrangements, we should have been compelled to 
 abandon them; for in this new loss the widow saw a judgment 
 of God who, in her opinion, looked upon the removal of the 
 remains as an act of sacrilege prompted by vanity. As the
 
 361 
 
 public seemed particularly disposed to hold the same view, 
 it fell to my lot to set the nature of our undertaking in the 
 proper light before the eyes of the world. And this I so far 
 succeeded in doing that, to my satisfaction, I learned from all 
 sides that my justification of our action had received the most 
 general acceptance. 
 
 On this occasion I had a strange experience with regard to 
 myself, when for the first time in my life I had to deliver a 
 solemn public speech. Since then I have always spoken ex- 
 temporarily; this time, however, nn it ^ypi my firnfi nppnnrmirn ,"-' 
 qp an orator. I had written out my speech, and carefully learned 
 it by heart. As I was thoroughly under the influence of my 
 subject, I felt so sure of my memory that I never thought of 
 making any notes. Thanks to this omission, however, I made 
 my brother Albert very unhappy. He was standing near me 
 at the ceremony, and he told me afterwards that, in spite of 
 being deeply moved, he felt at one moment as if he could 
 have sworn at me for not having asked him to prompt me. 
 It happened in this way: I began my speech in a clear and 
 full voice, but suddenly the sound of my own words, and their 
 particular intonation, affected me to such an extent that, carried 
 away as I was by my own thoughts, I imagined I saw as well 
 as heard myself before the breathless multitude. While I thus 
 appeared objectively to myself I remained in a sort of trance, 
 during which I seemed to be waiting for something to happen, 
 and felt quite a different person from the man who was sup- 
 posed to be standing and speaking there. __It .was neither 
 nervousness nor absent-mindedness ou my part; only at the 
 encl~~of a -certain sentence there was such a long pause that 
 those who saw me standing there must have wondered what 
 on earth to think of me. At last my own silence and the 
 stillness round me reminded me that I was not there to listen, 
 but to speak. I at once resumed my discourse, and I spoke 
 with such fluency to the very end that the celebrated actor, 
 Emil Devrient, assured me that, apart from the solemn service, 
 he had been deeply impressed simply from the standpoint <>f 
 
 The ceremony concluded with a poem written and set to 
 music by myself, and, though it presented many difficulties
 
 362 MY LIFE 
 
 for men's voices, it was splendidly rendered by some of the best 
 opera singers. Liittichau, who was present, was now not only 
 convinced of the justice of the enterprise, but also strongly 
 in favour of it. I was deeply thankful that everything had 
 succeeded so well, and when Weber's widow, upon whom I 
 called after the ceremony, told me how profoundly she, too, 
 had been moved, the only cloud that still darkened my horizon 
 was dispelled. In my youth I had learned to love music through 
 my admiration for Weber's genius, and the news of his death 
 was a terrible blow to me. To have, as it were, come into 
 contact with him again and after so many years by this second 
 funeral, was an event that stirred the very depths of my 
 being. 
 
 From all the particulars I have given concerning my intimacy 
 with the great masters who were my contemporaries, it is 
 easy to see at what sources I had been able to quench my 
 thirst for intellectual intercourse. It was not a very satis- 
 factory outlook to turn from Weber's grave to his living suc- 
 cessors; but I had still to find out how absolutely hopeless 
 this was. 
 
 I spent the winter of 1844-5 partly in yielding to attrac- 
 tions from outside, and partly in indulging in the deepest 
 meditation. By dint of great energy, and by getting up very 
 "early, even" in winter, I succeeded in completing my score to 
 Tanrihauser early in April, having, as already stated, finished 
 the composition of it at the end of the preceding year. In 
 writing down the orchestration I made things particularly 
 difficult for myself by using the specially prepared paper which 
 the printing process renders necessary, and which involved me 
 in all kinds of trying formalities. I had each page transferred 
 to the stone immediately, and a hundred copies printed from 
 each, hoping to make use of these proofs for the rapid circu- 
 lation of my work. Whether my hopes were to be fulfilled or 
 not, I was at all events fifteen hundred marks out of pocket 
 when all the expenses of the publication were paid. 
 
 In regard to this work which called for so many sacrifices, 
 and which was so slow and difficult, more details will appear 
 in my autobiography. At all events, when May came round I 
 was in possession of a hundred neatly bound copies of my first
 
 THE SCOKE OF TAKNTHAUSER 363 
 
 new work since the production of the Fliegender Hollander, and 
 Hiller, to whom I showed some parts of it, formed a tolerably 
 good impression of its value. 
 
 These plans for rapidly spreading the fame of my Tannhduser 
 were made with the hope of a success which, in view of my needy 
 circumstances, seemed ever more and more desirable. In the 
 course of one year since I had begun my own publication of my 
 operas, much had been done to this end. In September of the 
 year 1844 I had presented the King of Saxony with a special 
 richly bound copy of the complete pianoforte arrangement of 
 Rienzi, dedicated to his Majesty. The Fliegender Hollander 
 had also been finished, and the pianoforte arrangement of Rienzi 
 for duet, as well as some songs selected from both operas, had 
 either been published or were about to be published. Apart from 
 this I had had twenty-five copies made of the scores of both these 
 operas by means of the so-called autographic transfer process, 
 although only from the writing of the copyists. All these heavy 
 expenses made it absolutely imperative that I should try to send 
 my scores to the different theatres, and induce them to produce 
 my operas, as the outlay on the piano scores had been heavy, and 
 these could only have a sale if my works got to be known suffi- 
 ciently well through the theatre. 
 
 I now sent the score of my Rienzi to the more important 
 theatres, but they all returned my work to me, the Munich 
 Court Theatre even sending it back unopened! I therefore 
 knew what to expect, and spared myself the trouble of sending 
 my Dutchman. From a speculative business point of view the 
 situation was this : the hoped-for success of Tannhduser would 
 bring in its wake a demand for my earlier works. The worthy 
 Meser, my agent, who was the music publisher appointed to the 
 court, had also begun to feel a little doubtful, and saw that this 
 was the only thing to do. I started at once on the publication of 
 a pianoforte arrangement of Tannhduser, preparing it myself 
 while Kockel undertook the Fliegender Hollander, and a cer- 
 tain Klink did Rienzi. 
 
 The only thing that Meser was absolutely opposed to was the 
 title of my new opera, which I had just named Der Venusberg; 
 he maintained that, as I did not mix with the public, I had no 
 idea what horrible jokes were made about this title. He said
 
 364 MY LIFE 
 
 the students and professors of the medical school in Dresden 
 would be the first to make fun of it, as they had a predilection 
 for that kind of obscene joke. I was sufficiently disgusted by 
 these details to consent to the change. To the name of my hero, 
 Tannhauser, I added the name of the subject of the legend 
 which, although originally not belonging to the Tannhauser 
 myth, was thus associated with it by me, a fact which later 
 on Simrock, the great investigator and innovator in the world 
 of legend, whom I esteemed so highly, took very much amiss. 
 
 Tannhauser un der Sangerkrieg auf Wartburg should hence- 
 forth be its title, and to give the work a mediaeval appearance I 
 had the words specially printed in Gothic characters upon the 
 piano arrangement, and in this way introduced the work to the 
 public. 
 
 The extra expenses this involved were very heavy ; but I went 
 to great pains to impress Meser with my belief in the success of 
 my work. So deeply were we involved in this scheme, and so 
 great were the sacrifices it had compelled us to make, that there 
 was nothing else for it but to trust to a special turn of Fortune's 
 wheel. As it happened, the management of the theatre shared 
 my confidence in the success of Tannhauser. I had induced 
 Liittichau to have the scenery for Tannhauser painted by the best 
 painters of the great opera house in Paris. I had seen their work 
 on the Dresden stage : it belonged to the style of German scenic 
 art which was then fashionable, and really gave the effect of 
 first-class work. 
 
 The order for this, as well as the necessary negotiations with 
 the Parisian painter, Desplechin, had already been settled in the 
 preceding autumn. The management agreed to all my wishes, 
 even to the ordering of beautiful costumes of mediaeval character 
 designed by my friend Heine. The only thing Liittichau con- 
 stantly postponed was the order for the Hall of Song on the 
 Wartburg; he maintained that the Hall for Kaiser Karl the 
 Great in Oberon, which had only recently been delivered by some 
 French painters, would answer the purpose just as well. With 
 superhuman efforts I had to convince my chief that we did not 
 want a brilliant throne-room, but a scenic picture of a certain 
 character such as I saw before my mind's eye, and that it could 
 be painted only according to my directions. As in the end I
 
 LOHENGRIN 365 
 
 became very irritable and cross, lie soothed me by saying that he 
 had no objection to having this scene painted, and that he 
 would order it to be commenced at once, adding that he had 
 not agreed immediately, only with the view of making my joy 
 the greater, because, what one obtained without difficulty, one 
 rarely appreciated. This Hall of Song was fated to cause me 
 great trouble later on. 
 
 Thus everything was in full swing; circumstances were 
 favourable, and seemed to cast a hopeful light upon the pro- 
 duction of my new work at the beginning of the autumn 
 season. Even the public was looking forward to it, and for the j 
 first time I saw my name mentioned in a friendly manner in a l 
 communication to the Allgemeine Zeitung. They actually spoke 
 of the great expectations they had of my new work, the poem of 
 which had been written ( with undoubted poetic feeling.' 
 
 Full of hope, I started in July on my holiday, which con- 
 sisted of a journey to Marienbad in Bohemia, where my wife 
 and I intended to take the cure. Again I found myself on the 
 'volcanic ' soil of this extraordinary country, Bohemia, which 
 always had such an inspiring effect on me. It was a marvel- 
 lous summer, almost too hot, and I was therefore in high 
 spirits. I had intended to follow the easy-going mode of life 
 which is a necessary part of this somewhat trying treatment, 
 and had selected my books with care, taking with me the poems 
 of Wolfram von Eschenbach, edited by Simrock and San 
 Marte, as well as the anonymous epic Lohengrin, with its 
 lengthy introduction by Gb'rres. With my book under my 
 arm I hid myself in the neighbouring woods, and pitching my 
 tent by the brook in company with Titurel and Parcival, I 
 lost myself in Wolfram's strange, yet irresistibly charming, 
 poem. Soon, however, a longing seized me to give expression 
 to the inspiration generated by this poem, so that I had the 
 greatest difficulty in overcoming my desire to give up the rest 
 I had been prescribed while partaking of the water of 
 Marienbad. 
 
 The result was an ever-increasing state of excitement, j 
 Lohengrin, the first conception of which dates from the end of I 
 my time in Paris, stood suddenly revealed before me, com- i 
 plete in every detail of its dramatic construction. The legend
 
 366 MY LIFE 
 
 of the swan which forms such an important feature of all the 
 many versions of this series of myths that my studies had 
 brought to my notice, exercised a singular fascination over my 
 imagination. 
 
 \ Remembering the doctor's advice, I struggled bravely against 
 the temptation of writing down my ideas, and resorted to the 
 most strange and energetic methods. Owing to some com- 
 ments I had read in Gervinus's History of German Literature, 
 both the Meistersinger von Nurnberg and Hans Sachs hud 
 acquired quite a vital charm for me. The Marker alone, 
 and the part he takes in the Master-singing, were particularly 
 pleasing to me, and on one of my lonely walks, without knowing 
 anything particular about Hans Sachs and his poetic contem- 
 poraries, I thought out a humorous scene, in which the cobbler 
 as a popular artisan-poet with the hammer on his last, 
 gives the Marker a practical lesson by making him sing, thereby 
 taking revenge on him for his conventional misdeeds. To me 
 the force of the whole scene was concentrated in the two fol- 
 lowing points: on the one hand the Marker, with his slate 
 covered with chalk-marks, and on the other Hans Sachs holding 
 up the shoes covered with his chalk-marks, each intimating to 
 the other that the singing had been a failure. To this picture, 
 by way of concluding the second act, I added a scene con- 
 sisting of a narrow, crooked little street in Nuremberg, with 
 the people all running about in great excitement, and ultimately 
 engaging in a street brawl. Thus, suddenly, the whole of my 
 Meistersinger comedy took shape so vividly before me, that, 
 inasmuch as it was a particularly cheerful subject, and not in 
 the least likely to over-excite my nerves, I felt I inust write it 
 out in spite of the doctor's orders. I therefore proceeded to 
 do this, and hoped it might free me from the thrall of the idea 
 of Lohengrin; but I was mistaken; for no sooner had I got 
 into my bath at noon, than I felt an overpowerig-4eftire_tp_. 
 wrjte out Itohcngrm, and this longing so overcame me that I 
 could not wait the prescribed hour for the bath, but when a 
 few minutes elapsed, jumped out and, barely giving myself time 
 to dress, ran home to write out what I had in my mind. I 
 repeated this for several days until the complete sketch of 
 Lohengrin was on paper.
 
 TANKEAUSER REHEARSED 
 
 367 
 
 The doctor then told me I had better give up taking the 
 waters and baths, saying emphatically that I was quite unfit 
 for such cures. My excitement had grown to such an extent 
 that even my efforts to sleep as a rule ended only in nocturnal 
 adventures. Among some interesting excursions that we made 
 at this time, one to Eger fascinated me particularly, on account 
 of its association with Wallenstein and of the peculiar costumes 
 of the inhabitants. 
 
 ]n mid- August we travelled back to Dresden, where my 
 friends were glad to see me in such good spirits ; as for myself, 
 I felt as if I had wings. In September, when all our singers 
 had returned from their summer holidays, I resumed the 
 rehearsals of Tannhduser with great earnestness. We had 
 now got so far, at least with the musical part of the perform- 
 ance, that the possible date of the production seemed quite 
 close at hand. Schroder-Devrient was one of the first to realise 
 the extraordinary difficulties which the production of Tannhduser 
 would entail. And, indeed, she saw these difficulties so clearly 
 that, to my great discomfiture, she was able to lay them all 
 before me. Once, when I called upon her, she read the 
 principal passages aloud with great feeling and force, and 
 then she asked me how I could have been so simple-minded 
 as to have thought that so childish a creature as Tichatschek 
 would be able to find the proper tones for Tannhauser. I 
 tried to bring her attention and my own to bear upon the 
 nature of the music, which was written so clearly in order 
 to bring out the necessary accent, that, in my opinion, the 
 music actually spoke for him who interpreted the passage, even 
 if he were only a musical singer and nothing more. She shook 
 her head, saying that this would be all right in the case of an 
 oratorio. 
 
 She now sang Elizabeth's prayer from the piano score, and 
 asked me if I really thought that this music would answer my 
 intentions if sung by a young and pretty voice without any 
 soul or- without that experience of life which alone could give 
 the real expression to the interpretation. I sighed and said 
 that, in that case, the youthfulness of the voice and of its 
 owner must make up for what was lacking: at the same time, 
 I asked her as a favour to see what she could do towards
 
 368 MY LIFE 
 
 making my niece, Johanna, understand her part. All this, 
 however, did not solve the Tannhauser problem, for any 
 effort at teaching Tichatschek would only have resulted in 
 confusion. I was therefore obliged to rely entirely upon the 
 energy of his voice, and on the singer's peculiarly sharp ' speak- 
 ing' tone. 
 
 Devrient's anxiety about the principal parts arose partly 
 out of concern about her own. She did not know what to do 
 with the part of Venus ; she had undertaken it for the sake of 
 the success of the performance, for although a small part, so 
 much depended upon its being ideally interpreted! Later on, 
 when the work was given in Paris, I became convinced that 
 this part had been written in too sketchy a style, and this 
 induced me to reconstruct it by making extensive additions, 
 and by supplying all that which I felt it lacked. For the 
 moment, however, it looked as if no art on the part of the 
 singer could give to this sketch anything of what it ought to 
 represent. The only thing that might have helped towards 
 a satisfactory impersonation of Venus would have been the 
 artist's confidence in her own great physical attraction, and in 
 the effect it would help to produce by appealing to the purely 
 material sympathies of the public. The certainty that these 
 means were no longer at her disposal paralysed this great 
 singer, who could hide her age and matronly appearance no 
 longer. She therefore became self-conscious, and unable to use 
 even the usual means for gaining an effect. On one occasion, 
 with a little smile of despair, she expressed herself incapable of 
 playing Venus, for the very simple reason that she could not 
 appear dressed like the goddess. ' What on earth am I to wear 
 as Venus ? ' she exclaimed. ' After all, I cannot be clad in 
 a belt alone. A nice figure of fun I should look, and you would 
 laugh on the wrong side of your face ! ' 
 
 On the whole, I still built my hopes upon the general effect 
 of the music alone, the great promise of which at the rehearsals 
 greatly encouraged me. Hiller, who had looked through the 
 score and had already praised it, assured me that the instru- 
 mentation could not have been carried out with greater 
 sobriety. The characteristic and delicate sonority of the 
 orchestra delighted me, and strengthened me in my resolve
 
 THE MEANING OF THE SANGERKRIEG 369 
 
 to be extremely sparing in the use of my orchestral material, 
 in order to attain that abundance of combinations which I 
 needed for my later works. 
 
 At the rehearsal my wife alone missed the trumpets and 
 trombones that gave such brightness and freshness to Rienzi. 
 Although I laughed at this, I could not help feeling anxious 
 when she confided to me how great had been her disappoint- 
 ment when, at the theatre rehearsal, she noticed the really feeble 
 impression made by the music of the Sdngerkrieg. Speaking 
 from the point of view of the public, who always want to be 
 amused or stirred in some way or other, she had thus very 
 rightly called attention to an exceedingly questionable side of 
 the performance. But I saw at once that the fault lay less 
 with the conception than with the fact that I had not controlled 
 the production with sufficient care. 
 
 In regard to the conception of this scene I was literally on 
 the horns of a dilemma, for I had to decide once for all whether 
 this Sdngerkrieg w r as to be a concert of arias or a competition 
 in dramatic poetry. There are many people even nowadays, 
 who, in spite of having witnessed a perfectly successful pro- 
 duction of this scene, have not received the right impression 
 of its purport. Their idea is that it belongs to the traditional 
 operatic 'genre,' which demands that a number of vocal evolu- 
 tions shall be juxtaposed or contrasted, and that these different 
 songs are intended to amuse and interest the audience by 
 means of their purely musical changes in rhythm and time on 
 the principle of a concert programme, i.e. by various items 
 of different styles. This was not at all my idea: my real in- 
 tention was, if possible, to force the listener, for the first time 
 in the history of opera, to take an interest in a poetical idea, 
 by making him follow all its necessary developments. For it 
 was only by virtue of this interest that he could be made to 
 understand the catastrophe, which in this instance was not to 
 be brought about by any outside influence, but must be the 
 outcome simply of the natural spiritual processes at work. 
 Hence the need of great moderation and breadth in the con- 
 ception of the music; first, in order that according to my 
 principle it might prove helpful rather than the reverse to the 
 understanding of the poetical lines, and secondly, in order
 
 370 MY LIFE 
 
 that the increasing rhythmic character of the melody which 
 marks the ardent growth of passion may not be interrupted 
 too arbitrarily by unnecessary changes in modulation and 
 rhythm. Hence, too, the need of a very sparing use of orches- 
 tral instruments for the accompaniment, and an intentional 
 suppression of all those purely musical effects which must be 
 utilised, and that gradually, only when the situation becomes 
 so intense that one almost ceases to think, and can only feel 
 the tragic nature of the crisis. No one could deny that I had 
 contrived to produce the proper effect of this principle the 
 moment I played the SdngerJcrieg on the piano. With the view 
 of ensuring all my future successes, I was now confronted 
 with the exceptional difficulty of making the opera singers under- 
 stand how to interpret their parts precisely in the way I de- 
 sired. I remembered how, through lack of experience, I had 
 neglected properly to superintend the production of the 
 Fliegender Hollander, and as I now fully realised all the disas- 
 trous consequences of this neglect, I began to think of means 
 by which I could teach the singers my own interpretation. I 
 have already stated that it was impossible to influence Tichat- 
 schek, for if he were made to do things he could not understand, 
 he only became nervous and confused. He was conscious of his 
 advantages. He knew that with his metallic voice he could 
 sing with great musical rhythm and accuracy, while his 
 delivery was simply perfect. But, to my great astonishment, 
 I was soon to learn that all this did not by any means suffice; 
 for, to my horror, at the first performance, that which had 
 strangely escaped my notice in the rehearsals became suddenly 
 apparent to me. At the close of the Sdngerkrieg, when Tann- 
 hauser (in frantic excitement, and forgetful of everybody 
 present) has to sing his praise to Venus, and I saw 
 Tichatschek moving towards Elizabeth and addressing his 
 passionate outburst to her, I thought of Schroder-Devrient's 
 warning in very much the same way as Cro3sus must have 
 thought when he cried, l O Solon ! Solon ! ' at the funeral 
 pyre. In spite of the musical excellence of Tichatschek, the 
 enormous life and melodic charm of the Sdngerkrieg failed 
 entirely. 
 
 On the other hand, I succeeded in calling into life an entirely
 
 MITTERWURZER AS ' WOLFRAM' 371 
 
 new element such as probably had never been seen in opera! 
 I had watched the young baritone Mitterwurzer with great 
 interest in some of his parts he was a strangely reticent man, 
 and not at all sociably inclined, and I had noticed that his 
 delightfully mellow voice possessed the rare quality of bringing 
 out the inner note of the soul. To him I entrusted Wolfram, 
 and I had every reason to be satisfied with his zeal and with 
 the success of his studies. Therefore, if I wished my intention 
 and method to become known, especially in regard to this 
 difficult Sangerkrieg, I had to rely on him for the proper exe- 
 cution of my plans and everything they involved. I began by 
 going through the opening song of this scene with him; but, 
 after I had done my utmost to make him understand how I 
 wanted it done, I was surprised to find how very difficult this 
 particular rendering of the music appeared to him. He was 
 absolutely incapable of repeating it after me, and with each 
 renewed effort his singing became so commonplace and so 
 mechanical that I realised clearly that he had not understood 
 this piece to be anything more than a phrase in recitative 
 form, which he might render with any inflections of the voice 
 that happened to be prescribed, or which might be sung either 
 this way or that, according to fancy, as was usual in operatic 
 pieces. He, too, was astonished at his own want of capacity, 
 but was so struck by the novelty and the justice of my views, 
 that he begged me not to try any more for the present, but to 
 leave him to find out for himself how best to become familiar 
 with this newly revealed world. During several rehearsals 
 he only sang in a whisper in order to get over the difficulty, 
 but at the last rehearsal he acquitted himself so admirably 
 of his task, and threw himself into it so heartily, that his work 
 has remained to this day as my most conclusive reason for 
 believing that, in spite of the unsatisfactory state of the world 
 of opera to-day, it is possible not only to find, but also properly 
 to train, the singer whom I should regard as indispensable 
 for a correct interpretation of my works. It was through the 
 impression made by Mitterwurzer that I ultimately succeeded 
 in making the public understand the whole of my work. This 
 man, who had utterly changed himself in bearing, look, and 
 appearance in order to fit himself to the role of Wolfram, had,
 
 372 MY LIFE 
 
 in thus solving the problem, not only become a thorough ar- 
 tist, but by his interpretation of his part had also proved 
 himself my saviour at the very moment when my work was 
 threatening to fail through the unsatisfactory result of the 
 first performance. 
 
 By his side the part of Elizabeth made a sweet impression. 
 The youthful appearance of my niece, her tall and slender 
 form, the decidedly German cast of her features, as well as the 
 incomparable beauty of her voice, with its expression of almost 
 childlike innocence, helped her to gain the hearts of the audi- 
 ence, even though her talent was more theatrical than dra- 
 matic. She soon rose to fame by her impersonation of this 
 part, and often in later years, when speaking about Tannliduser 
 performances in which she had appeared, people used to tell 
 me that its success had been entirely due to her. Strange to 
 say, in such reports people referred principally to the charm 
 of her acting at the moment when she received the guests in 
 the Wartburg Hall; and I used to account for this by remem- 
 bering the untiring efforts with which my talented brother and 
 I had trained her to perform this very part. And yet it was 
 never possible to make her understand the proper interpreta- 
 tion of the prayer in the third act, and I felt inclined to say, 
 1 O Solon ! Solon ! ' as I had done in the case of Tichatschek, 
 when after the first performance I was obliged to make a 
 considerable cut in this solo, a proceeding which greatly re- 
 duced its importance for ever afterwards. I heard later that 
 Johanna, who for a short period actually had the reputa- 
 tion of being a great singer, had never succeeded in singing 
 the prayer as it ought to be sung, whereas a French singer, 
 Mademoiselle Marie Sax, achieved this in Paris to my entire 
 satisfaction. 
 
 In the beginning of October we had so far progressed with 
 our rehearsals that nothing stood in the way of an immediate 
 production of Tannhduser save the scenery, which was not yet 
 complete. A few only of the scenes ordered from Paris had 
 arrived, and even these had come very late. The Wartburg 
 Valley was beautifully effective and perfect in every detail. 
 The inner part of the Venusberg, however, gave me much 
 anxiety: the painter had not understood me; he had
 
 painted clusters of trees and statues, which reminded one of 
 Versailles, and had placed them in a wild cave; he had evi- CX* 
 dently not known how to combine the weird with thg alluring. 
 I had to insist on extensive alterations, and chiefly on the paint- 
 ing out of the shrubs and statues, all of which required time. 
 The grotto had to lie half hidden in a rosy cloud, through which 
 the Wartburg Valley had to loom in the distance; this was to 
 be done in strict obedience to my own ideas. 
 
 The greatest misfortune, however, was to befall me in the 
 shape of the tardy delivery of the scenery for the Hall of Song. 
 This was due to great negligence on the part of the Paris 
 artists; and we waited and waited until every detail of the 
 opera had been studied and studied again ad nauseam. Daily 
 I went to the railway station and examined all the packages 
 and boxes that had arrived, but there was no Hall of Song. 
 At last I allowed myself to be persuaded not to postpone the 
 first performance any longer, and I decided to use the Hall of 
 Karl the Great out of Oberon, originally suggested to me by 
 Liittichau, instead of the real thing. Considering the impor- 
 tance I attached to practical effect, this entailed a great sacrifice 
 of my personal feelings. And true enough, when the curtain 
 rose for the second act, the reappearance of this throne-room, 
 which the public had seen so often, added considerably to the 
 general disappointment of the audience, who had anticipated 
 astonishing surprises in this opera. 
 
 On the 19th of October the first performance took place. y^^T 
 In the morning of that day a very beautiful young lady was 
 introduced to me by the leader Lipinsky. Her name was Mme. 
 Kalergis, and she was a niece of the Russian Chancellor, Count 
 von Nesselrode. Liszt had spoken to her about me with such 
 enthusiasm that she had travelled all the way to Dresden es- 
 pecially to hear the first production of my new work. I thought 
 I was right in regarding this flattering visit as a good omen. 
 But although on this occasion she turned away from me, some- 
 what perplexed and disappointed by the very unintelligible 
 performance and the somewhat doubtful reception with which 
 it met, I had sufficient cause in after-years to know how deeply 
 this remarkable and energetic woman had nevertheless been 
 impressed.
 
 374 MY LIFE 
 
 A great contrast to this visit was one I received from a 
 peculiar man called C. Gaillard. He was the editor of a Berlin 
 musical paper, which had only just started, and in which I 
 had read with great astonishment an entirely favourable and 
 important criticism of my Fliegender Hollander. Although 
 necessity had compelled me to remain indifferent to the atti- 
 tude of the critics, yet this particular notice gave me much 
 pleasure, and I had invited my unknown critic to come and 
 hear the first production of Tannhduser in Dresden. 
 
 This he did, and I was deeply touched to find that I had to 
 deal with a young man who, in spite of being threatened by 
 consumption, and being also exceedingly badly off, had come 
 at my invitation, simply from a sense of duty and honour, and 
 not with any mercenary motive. I saw from his knowledge 
 and capacities that he would never be able to attain a 
 position of great influence, but his kindness of heart and his 
 extraordinarily receptive mind filled me with a feeling of pro- 
 found respect for him. A few years later I was very sorry to 
 hear that he had at last succumbed to the terrible disease from 
 which I knew him to be suffering; for to the very end he 
 remained faithful and devoted to me, in spite of the most trying 
 circumstances. 
 
 Meanwhile I had renewed my acquaintance with the friend 
 I had won through the production of the Fliegender Hollander 
 in Berlin, and who for a long time I had never had an oppor- 
 tunity of knowing more thoroughly. The second time I met 
 her was at Schroder-Devrient's, with whom she was already 
 on friendly terms, and of whom she used to speak as ' one of 
 my greatest conquests.' 
 
 She was already past her first youth, and had no beauty of 
 feature except remarkably penetrating and expressive eyes that 
 showed the greatness of soul with which she was gifted. She 
 was the sister of Froinmann, the bookseller of Jena, and could 
 relate many intimate facts about Goethe, who had stayed at 
 her brother's house when he was in that town. She had held 
 the position of reader and companion to the Princess Augusta 
 of Prussia, and had thus become intimately acquainted with 
 her, and was regarded by her own association as almost a 
 bosom friend and confidante of that great lady. Nevertheless,
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCTION 375 
 
 she lived in extreme poverty, and seemed proud of being able, 
 by means of her talent as a painter of arabesques, to secure 
 for herself some sort of independence. She always remained 
 faithfully devoted to me, as she was one of the few who were 
 uninfluenced by the unfavourable impression produced by the 
 first performance of Tannhauser, and promptly expressed her 
 appreciation of my latest work with the greatest enthusiasm. 
 
 With regard to the production itself the conclusions I drew 
 from it were as follows: the real faults in the work, which I 
 have already mentioned incidentally, lay in the sketchy and 
 clumsy portrayal of the part of Venus, and consequently of the 
 whole of the introductory scene of the first act. In consequence 
 of this defect the drama never even rose to the level of genuine 
 warmth, still less did it attain to the heights of passion which, 
 according to the poetic conception of the part, should so 
 strongly work upon the feelings of the audience as to prepare 
 them for the inevitable catastrophe in which the scene culmi- 
 nates, and thus lead up to the tragic denouement. This great 
 scene was a complete failure, in spite of the fact that it was 
 entrusted to so great an actress as Schroder-Devrient, and a 
 singer so unusually gifted as Tichatschek. The genius of 
 Devrient might yet have struck the right note of passion in 
 the scene had she not chanced to be acting with a singer 
 incapable of all dramatic seriousness, and whose natural gifts 
 only fitted him for joyous or declamatory accents, and who 
 was totally incapable of expressing pain and suffering. It 
 was not until Wolfram's touching song and the closing scene 
 of this act were reached that the audience showed any signs of 
 emotion. Tichatschek wrought such a tremendous effect in 
 the concluding phrase by the jubilant music of his voice that, 
 as I was afterwards informed, the end of this first act left the 
 audience in a great state of enthusiasm. This was maintained, 
 and even exceeded in the second act, during which Elizabeth 
 and Wolfram made a very sympathetic impression. It was 
 only the hero of Tannhauser who continued to lose ground, 
 and at last so completely failed to hold the audience that in 
 the final scene he almost broke down himself in dejection, as 
 though the failure of Tannhauser were his own. The fatal 
 defect of his performance lay in his inability to find the
 
 376 MY LIFE 
 
 right expression, for the theme of the great Adagio passage 
 of the finale beginning with the words : ' To lead the sinner to 
 salvation, the Heaven-sent messenger drew near.' The im- 
 portance of this passage I have explained at length in my 
 subsequent instructions for the production of Tannhauser. 
 Indeed, owing to Tichatschek's absolutely expressionless ren- 
 dering, which made it seem terribly long and tedious, I had to 
 omit it entirely from the second performance. As I did not 
 wish to offend so devoted and, in his way, so deserving a man 
 as Tichatschek, I let it be understood I had come to the con- 
 clusion that this theme was a failure. Moreover, as Tichatschek 
 was thought to be an actor chosen by myself to take the parts 
 of the heroes in my works, this passage, which was so im- 
 measurably vital to the opera, continued to be omitted in all 
 the subsequent productions of Tannhauser, as though this 
 proceeding had been approved and demanded by me. I there- 
 fore cherished no illusions about the value of the subsequent 
 universal success of this opera on the German stage. My hero, 
 who, in rapture as in woe, should always have asserted his 
 feelings with boundless energy, slunk away at the end of the 
 second act with the humble bearing of a penitent sinner, only 
 to reappear in the third with a demeanour designed to awaken 
 the charitable sympathy of the audience. His pronunciation 
 of the Pope's excommunication, however, was rendered with 
 his usual full rhetorical power, and it was refreshing to 
 hear his voice dominating the accompanying trombones. 
 Granted that this radical defect in the hero's acting had left 
 the public in a doubtful and unsatisfied state of suspense re- 
 garding the meaning of the whole, yet the mistake in the 
 execution of the final scene, arising from my own inexperience 
 in this new field of dramatic creation, undoubtedly contributed 
 to produce a chilling uncertainty as to the true significance 
 of the scenic action. In my first complete version I had made 
 Venus, on the occasion of her second attempt to recall her 
 faithless lover, appear in a vision to Tannhauser when he is 
 in a frenzy of madness, and the awfulness of the situation 
 is merely suggested by a faint roseate glow upon the distant 
 Horselberg. Even the definite announcement of Elizabeth's 
 death was a sudden inspiration on the part of Wolfram. This
 
 A DOUBTFUL SUCCESS 3Y7 
 
 idea I intended to convey to the listening audience solely 
 by the sound of bells tolling in the distance, and by a faint 
 gleam of torches to attract their eyes to the remote Wartburg. 
 Moreover, there was a lack of precision and clearness in the 
 appearance of the chorus of young pilgrims, whose duty it was 
 to announce the miracle by their song alone. At that time I 
 had given them no budding staves to carry, and had unfortu- 
 nately spoiled their refrain by a tedious and unbroken monotony 
 of accompaniment. 
 
 When at last the curtain fell, I was under the impression, 
 not so much from the behaviour of the audience, which was 
 friendly, as from my own inward conviction, that the failure 
 of this work was to be attributed to the immature and unsuit- 
 able material used in its production. My depression was ex- 
 treme, and a few friends who were present after the piece, 
 among them my dear sister Clara and her husband, were 
 equally affected. That very evening I decided to remedy the 
 defects of the first night before the second performance. I 
 was conscious of where the principal fault lay, but hardly dared 
 give expression to my conviction. At the slightest attempt 
 on my part to explain anything to Tichatschek I had to aban- 
 don it, as I realised the impossibility of success. I should 
 only have made him so embarrassed and annoyed, that on one 
 pretext or another he would never have sung Tannhiwser 
 again. In order to ensure the repetition of my opera, there- 
 fore, I took the only course open to me by arrogating to myself 
 all blame for the failure. I could thus make considerable 
 curtailments, whereby, of course, the dramatic significance of 
 the leading role was considerably lessened; this, however, 
 did not interfere with the other parts of the opera, which had 
 been favourably received. Consequently, although inwardly 
 very humiliated, I hoped to gain some advantage for my work 
 at the second performance, and was particularly desirous that 
 this should take place with as little delay as possible. But 
 Tichatschek was hoarse, and I had to possess my soul in pa- 
 tience for fully a week. 
 
 I can hardly describe what I suffered during that time; it 
 seemed as if this delay would completely ruin my work. Every 
 day that elapsed between the first and second performance
 
 378 MY LIFE 
 
 left the result of the former more and more problematic, until 
 at last it appeared to be a generally acknowledged failure. 
 While the public as a whole expressed angry astonishment 
 that, after the approval they had shown of my Rienzi, I had 
 paid no attention to their taste in writing my new work, there 
 were may kind and judicious friends who were utterly per- 
 plexed at its inefficiency, the principal parts of which they 
 had been unable to understand, or thought were imperfectly 
 sketched and finished. The critics, with unconcealed joy, at- 
 tacked it as ravens attack carrion thrown out to them. Even 
 the passions and prejudices of the day were drawn into the 
 controversy in order, if possible, to confuse men's minds, and 
 prejudice them against me. It was just at the time when the 
 German-Catholic agitation, set in motion by Czersky and Ronge 
 as a highly meritorious and liberal movement, was causing a 
 great commotion. It was now made out that by Tannhduser 
 I had provoked a reactionary tendency, and that precisely as 
 Meyerbeer with his Huguenots had glorified Protestantism, so 
 I with my latest opera would glorify Catholicism. 
 
 The rumour that in writing Tannhduser I had been bribed 
 by the Catholic party was believed for a long time. While 
 the effort was being made to ruin my popularity by this means, 
 I had the questionable honour of being approached, first by 
 letter, afterwards in person, by a certain M. Rousseau, at that 
 time editor of the Prussian Staatszeitung, who wished for my 
 friendship and help. I knew of him only in connection with a 
 scathing criticism of my Fliegender Hollander. He informed 
 me that he had been sent from Austria to further the Catholic 
 cause in Berlin, but that he had had so many sad experiences 
 of the fruitlessness of his efforts, that he was now returning to 
 Vienna to continue his work in this direction undisturbed, 
 with which work I had, by my Tannhduser, proclaimed myself 
 fully in accord. 
 
 That remarkable paper, the Dresdener Anzeiger, which was a 
 local organ for the redress of slander and scandal, daily pub- 
 lished some fresh bit of news to my prejudice. At last I 
 noticed that these attacks were met by witty and forcible 
 little snubs, and also that encouraging comments appeared in 
 my favour, which for some time surprised me very much, as
 
 SECOND PERFORMANCE DEFERRED 379 
 
 I knew that only enemies and never friends interested them- 
 selves in such cases. But I learned, to my amusement, from 
 Rockel, that he and my friend Heine had carried out this 
 inspiriting campaign on my behalf. 
 
 The ill-feeling against me in this quarter was only trouble- 
 some because at that unfortunate period I was hindered from 
 expressing myself through my work. Tichatschek continued 
 hoarse, and it was said he would never sing in my opera again. 
 I heard from Liittichau that, scared by the failure of Tann- 
 hduser, he was holding himself in readiness to countermand 
 the order for the promised scenery for the Hall of Song, or 
 to cancel it altogether. I was so terrified at the cowardice 
 which was thus revealed, that I myself began to look upon 
 Tannhauser as doomed. My prospects and my whole position, 
 "wnen viewed m fhis'lnood, may be readily gathered from my 
 communications, especially those referring to my negotiations 
 for the publication of my works. 
 
 This terrible week dragged out like an endless eternity. I 1 
 was afraid to look anybody in the face, but was one day obliged 
 to go to Meser's music shop, where I met Gottfried Semper 
 just buying a text-book of Tannhauser. Only a short time 
 before I had been very much put out in discussing this subject 
 with him; he would listen to nothing I had to say about the 
 Minnesangers and Pilgrims of the Middle Ages in connection 
 with art, but gave me to understand that he despised me for 
 my choice of such material. 
 
 While Meser assured me that no inquiry whatever had been 
 received for the numbers of Tannhauser already published, 
 it was strange that my most energetic antagonist should be 
 the only person who had actually bought and paid for a copy. 
 In a peculiarly earnest and impressive manner he remarked to 
 me that it was necessary to be thoroughly acquainted with the 
 subject if a just opinion was to be passed on it, and that 
 for this purpose, unfortunately, nothing but the text was 
 available. This very meeting with Semper, strange as it 
 may appear, was the first really encouraging sign that I can 
 remember. 
 
 But I found my greatest consolation in those days of trouble 
 and anxiety in Rockel, who from that time forward entered
 
 380 MY LIFE 
 
 into a lifelong intimacy with me. He had, without my being 
 aware of it, disputed, explained, quarrelled, and petitioned on 
 my behalf, and thereby roused himself to a veritable enthusiasm 
 for Tannhauser. The evening before the second performance, 
 which was at last to take place, we met over a glass of beer, 
 and his bright demeanour had such a cheering effect upon me 
 that we became very lively. After contemplating my head 
 for some time, he swore that it was impossible to destroy me, 
 that there was a something in me, something, probably, in my 
 blood, as similar characteristics also appeared in my brother 
 Albert, who was otherwise so unlike me. To speak more 
 plainly, he called it the peculiar heat of my temperament; 
 this heat, he thought, might consume others, whereas I ap- 
 peared to' feel at my best when it glowed most fiercely, for 
 he had several times seen me positively ablaze. I laughed, 
 and did not know what to make of his nonsense. Well, he 
 said, I should soon see what he meant in Tannhduser, for it 
 was simply absurd to think the work would not live; and 
 he was absolutely certain of its success. I thought over the 
 matter on my way home, and came to the conclusion that if 
 Tannhauser did indeed win its way, and become really popular, 
 incalculable possibilities might be attained. 
 
 At last the time arrived for our second performance. For 
 this I thought I had made due preparation by lessening the 
 importance of the principal part, and lowering my original 
 ideals about some of the more important portions, and I 
 hoped by accentuating certain undoubtedly attractive passages 
 to secure a genuine appreciation of the whole. I was greatly 
 delighted with the scenery which had at last arrived for the 
 Hall of Song in the second act, the beautiful and imposing 
 effect of which cheered us all, for we looked upon it as a good 
 omen. Unfortunately I had to bear the humiliation of seeing 
 the theatre nearly empty. This, more than anything else, 
 sufficed to convince me what the opinion of the public really 
 was in regard to my work. But, if the audience was scanty, 
 the majority, at any rate, consisted of the first friends of my 
 art, and the reception of the piece was very cordial. Mitter- 
 wurzer especially aroused the greatest enthusiasm. As for 
 Tichatschek, my anxious friends, Rockel and Heine, thought
 
 TANNHAUSER AT LAST SUCCESSFUL 381 
 
 it necessary to endeavour by every artifice to keep him in a 
 good humour for his part. In order to give practical assistance 
 in making the undoubted obscurity of the last scene clear, my 
 friends had asked several young people, more especially artists, 
 to give vent to torrents of applause at those parts which are 
 not generally regarded by the opera-going public as provoking 
 any demonstration. Strange to say, the outburst of applause 
 thus provoked after the words, ' An angel flies to God's throne 
 for thee, and will make his voice heard; Heinrich, thou art 
 saved,' made the entire situation suddenly clear to the public. 
 At all subsequent productions this continued to be the principal 
 moment for the expression of sympathy on the part of the 
 audience, although it had passed quite unnoticed on the first 
 night. A few days later a third performance took place, but 
 this time before a full house. Schroder-Devrient, depressed 
 at the small share she was able to take in the success of my 
 work, watched the progress of the opera from the small stage 
 box; she informed me that Liittichau had come to her with 
 a beaming face, saying he thought we had now carried Tann- 
 hauser happily through. 
 
 And this certainly proved to be the case; we often repeated 
 it in the course of the winter, but noticed that when two 
 performances followed close upon one another, there was not 
 such a rush for the second, from which we concluded that I 
 had not yet gained the approval of the great opera-going 
 public, but only of the more cultured section of the community. 
 Among these real friends of Tannhduser there were many, 
 as I gradually discovered, who as a rule never visited the 
 theatre at all, and least of all the opera. This interest on the 
 part of a totally new public continued to grow in intensity, 
 and expressed itself in a delightful and hitherto unknown 
 manner by a strong sympathy for the author. It was particu- 
 larly painful to me, on Tichatschek's account, to respond alone 
 to the calls of the audience after almost every act; however, 
 I had at last to submit, as my refusal would only have exposed 
 the vocalist to fresh humiliations, for when he appeared on 
 the stage with his colleagues without me, the loud shouts for 
 me were almost insulting to him. With what genuine eager- 
 ness did I wish that the contrary were the case, and that the
 
 382 MY LIFE 
 
 excellence of the execution might overshadow the author. The 
 conviction that I should never attain this with my Tannhduser 
 in Dresden guided me in all my future undertakings. But, at 
 all events, in producing Tannhduser in this city I had succeeded 
 in making at least the cultured public acquainted with my 
 peculiar tendencies, by stimulating their mental faculties and 
 stripping the performance of all realistic accessories. I did 
 not, however, succeed in making these tendencies sufficiently 
 clear in a dramatic performance, and in such an irresistible 
 and convincing manner as also to familiarise the uncultivated 
 taste of the ordinary public with them when they saw them 
 embodied on the stage. 
 
 By enlarging the circle of my acquaintances, and making 
 interesting friends, I had a good opportunity during the 
 winter of obtaining further information on this point in a way 
 that was both instructive and encouraging. My acquaintance 
 and close intimacy at this time with Dr. Hermann Franck 
 of Breslau, who had for some time been living quietly in 
 Dresden, was also very inspiring. He was very comfortably 
 off, and was one of those men who, by a wide knowledge and 
 good judgment, combined with considerable gifts as an author, 
 won an excellent reputation for himself in a large and select 
 circle of private friends, without, however, making any great 
 name for himself with the public. He endeavoured to use his 
 knowledge and abilities for the general good, and was induced 
 by Brockhaus to edit the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung when it 
 first started. This paper had been founded by Brockhaus 
 some years earlier. However, after editing it for a year, 
 Franck resigned this post, and from that time forward it was 
 only on the very rarest occasions that he could be persuaded 
 to touch anything connected with journalism. His curt and 
 spirited remarks about his experiences in connection with the 
 Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung justified his disinclination to 
 engage in any work connected with the public press. My ap- 
 preciation was all the greater, therefore, when, without any 
 persuasion on my part, he wrote a full report on Tannhduser 
 for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. This appeared in 
 October or November, 1845, in a supplement to that paper, 
 and although it contained the first account of a work which
 
 RELATIONS .WITH H. FRANCE 383 
 
 has since been so widely discussed, I regard it, after mature 
 consideration, as the most far-reaching and exhaustive that 
 has ever been written. By this means my name figured for 
 the first time in the great European political paper, whose 
 columns, in consequence of a remarkable change of front which 
 was to the interests of the proprietors, have since been open 
 to any one who wished to make merry at the expense of me 
 or my work. 
 
 The point which particularly attracted me in Dr. Franck 
 was the delicate and tactful art he displayed in his criticism 
 and his methods of discussion. There was something dis- 
 tinguished about them that was not so much the outcome of 
 rank and social position as of genuine world-wide culture. 
 
 The delicate- coldness and reserve of his manner charmed 
 .rather tha repelled me, as it was a characteristic I had not 
 met with hitherto. When I found him expressing himself 
 with some reserve in regard to persons who enjoyed a reputa- 
 tion to which I did not think they were always entitled, I was 
 very pleased to see during my intercourse with him that in 
 many ways I exercised a decisive influence over his opinion. 
 Even at that time I did not care to let it pass unchallenged 
 when people evaded the close analysis of the work of this or 
 that celebrity, by referring in terms of eulogy to his ' good- 
 nature.' I even cornered my worldly wise friend on this point, 
 when a few years later I had the satisfaction of getting from him 
 a very concise explanation of Meyerbeer's ( good-nature/ of 
 which he had once spoken, and he recalled with a smile the 
 extraordinary questions I had put to him at the time. He 
 was, however, quite alarmed when I gave him a very lucid ex- 
 planation of the disinterestedness and conspicuous altruism of 
 Mendelssohn in the service of art, of which he had spoken 
 enthusiastically. In a conversation about Mendelssohn he had 
 remarked how delightful it was to find a man able to make 
 real sacrifices in order to free himself from a false position 
 that was of no service to art. It was assuredly a grand thing, 
 he said, to have renounced a good salary of nine thousand 
 marks as general musical conductor in Berlin, and to have 
 retired to Leipzig as a simple conductor at the Gewandhaus 
 concerts., and Mendelssohn was much to be admired on that
 
 384 MY LIFE 
 
 account. Just at that time I happened to be in a position to 
 give some correct details regarding this apparent sacrifice on 
 the part of Mendelssohn, because when I had made a serious 
 proposal to our general management about increasing the 
 salaries of several of the poorer members of the orchestra, 
 Liittichau was requested to inform me that, according to the 
 King's latest commands, the expenditure on the state bands 
 was to be so restricted that for the present the poorer chamber 
 musicians could not claim any consideration, for Herr von 
 Falkenstein, the governor of the Leipzig district, who was a 
 passionate admirer of Mendelssohn's, had gone so far as to 
 influence the King to appoint the latter secret conductor, 
 with a secret salary of six thousand marks. This sum, 
 together with the salary of three thousand marks openly granted 
 him by the management of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, would 
 amply compensate him for the position he had renounced in 
 Berlin, and he had consequently consented to migrate to Leipzig. 
 This large grant had, for decency's sake, to be kept secret by 
 the board administering the band funds, not only because it 
 was detrimental to the interests of the institution, but also 
 because it might give offence to those who were acting as 
 conductors at a lower salary, if they knew another man had 
 been appointed to a sinecure. From these circumstances Men- 
 delssohn derived not only the advantage of having the grant 
 kept a secret, but also the satisfaction of allowing his friends 
 to applaud him as a model of self-sacrificing zeal for going 
 to Leipzig; which they could easily do, although they knew 
 him to be in a good financial position. When I explained this 
 to Franck, he was astonished, and admitted it was one of the 
 strangest cases he had ever come across in connection with 
 undeserved fame. 
 
 We soon arrived at a mutual understanding in our views 
 about many other artistic celebrities with whom we came in 
 contact at that time in Dresden. This was a simple matter 
 in the case of Ferdinand Hiller, who was regarded as the chief 
 of the ' good-natured ' ones. Regarding the more famous 
 painters of the so-called Diisseldorf School, whom I met fre- 
 quently through the medium of Tannliauser, it was not quite 
 so easy to come to a conclusion, as I was to a great extent
 
 KILLER AND SCHUMANN 385 
 
 influenced by the fame attached to their well-known names; 
 but here again Franck startled me with opportune and con- 
 clusive reasons for disappointment. When it was a question 
 between Bendemann and Hiibner, it seemed to me that Hiibner 
 might very well be sacrificed to Bendemann. The latter, who 
 had only just completed the frescoes for one of the reception- 
 rooms at the royal palace, and had been rewarded by his 
 friends with a banquet, appeared to me to have the right to be 
 honoured as a great master. I was very much astonished, 
 therefore, when Franck calmly pitied the King of Saxony 
 for having had his room ' bedaubed ' by Bendemann ! Never- 
 theless, there was no denying that these people were ' good- 
 natured.' My intercourse with them became more frequent, 
 and at all events offered me opportunities of mixing with the 
 more cultured artistic society, in distinction to the theatrical 
 circles with which I had usually associated; yet I never de- 
 rived from it the least enthusiasm or inspiration. The latter, 
 however, appears to have been Killer's main object, and that 
 winter he organised a sort of social circle which held weekly 
 meetings at the home of one or the other of its members in 
 turn. Reinecke, who was both painter and poet, joined this 
 society, together with Hiibner and Bendemann, and had the 
 bad fortune to write the new text for an opera for Killer, 
 the fate of which I will describe later on. Robert Schumann, 
 the musician, who was also in Dresden at this time, and was 
 busy working out on opera, which eventually developed into 
 Genovefa, made advances to Killer and myself. I had already 
 known Schumann in Leipzig, and we had both entered upon 
 our musical careers at about the same time. I had also occasion- 
 ally -sent' small contributions to the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, 
 of which he had formerly been editor, and more recently a longer 
 one from Paris on Rossini's Stabat Mater. He had been asked 
 to conduct his Paradies und Peri at a concert to be given at 
 the theatre; but his peculiar awkwardness in conducting on 
 that occasion aroused my sympathy for the conscientious :m<l 
 energetic musician whose work made so strong an appeal 
 to me, and a kindly and friendly confidence soon grew up 
 between us. After a performance of Tannhauser, at which 
 he was present, he called on me one morning and declared
 
 386 MY LIFE 
 
 himself fully and decidedly in favour of my work. The only 
 objection he had to make was that the stretta of the second 
 finale was too abrupt, a criticism which proved his keenness 
 of perception; and I was able to show him, by the score, how 
 I had been compelled, much against my inclination, to curtail 
 the opera, and thereby create the position to which he had 
 taken exception. We often met when out walking and, as far 
 as it was possible with a person so sparing of words, we ex- 
 changed views on matters of musical interest. He was look- 
 ing forward to the production, under my baton, of Beetho- 
 ven's Ninth Symphony, as he had attended the performances 
 at Leipzig, and had been very much disappointed by Mendels- 
 sohn's conducting, which had quite misunderstood the time 
 of the first movement. Otherwise his society did not inspire 
 me particularly, and the fact that he was too (conservative to 
 benefit by my views was soon shown, more especially in his 
 conception of the poem of Genovefa. It was clear that my 
 example had only made a very transient impression on him, 
 only just enough, in fact, to make him think it advisable to 
 write the text of an opera himself. He afterwards invited me 
 to hear him read his libretto, which was a combination of the 
 styles of Hebbel and Tieck. When, however, out of a genuine 
 desire 'for the success of his work, about which I had serious 
 misgivings, I called his attention to some grave defects in it, 
 and suggested the necessary alterations, I realised how matters 
 stood with this extraordinary person: he simply wanted me 
 to be swayed by himself, but deeply resented any interfer- 
 ence with the product of his own ideals, so that thenceforward 
 I let matters alone. 
 
 In the following winter, our circle, thanks to the assiduity 
 of Hiller, was considerably widened, and it now became a 
 sort of club whose object was to meet freely every week in a 
 room at Engel's restaurant at the Postplatz. Just about 
 this time the famous J. Schnorr of Munich was appointed 
 director of the museums in Dresden, and we entertained him 
 at a banquet. I had already seen some of his large and 
 well-executed cartoons, which made a deep impression on me, 
 not only on account of their dimensions, but also by reason 
 of the events they depicted from old German history, in which
 
 AN ARTISTIC CIRCLE 387 
 
 I was at that time particularly interested. It was through 
 Schnorr that I now became acquainted with the ' Munich 
 School ' of which he was the master. My heart overflowed 
 when I thought what it meant for Dresden, if such giants of 
 German art were to shake hands there. I was much struck 
 by Schnorr's appearance and conversation, and I could not 
 reconcile his whining pedagogic manner with his mighty 
 cartoons; however, I thought it a great stroke of luck when 
 he also took to frequenting Engel's restaurant on Saturdays. 
 He was well versed in the old German legends, and I was 
 delighted when they formed the topic of conversation. The 
 famous sculptor, Hanel, used also to attend these meetings, 
 and his marvellous talent inspired me with the greatest respect, 
 although I was not an authority on his work, and could only 
 judge of it by my own feelings. I soon saw that his bearing 
 and manner were affected; he was very fond of expressing 
 his opinion and judgment on questions of art, and I was not 
 in a position to decide whether they were reliable or otherwise. 
 In fact, it often occurred to me that I was listening to a Philis- 
 tine swaggerer. It was only when my old friend Pecht, who 
 had also settled in Dresden for a time, clearly and emphatically 
 explained to me Hanel's standing as an artist, that I conquered 
 all my secret doubts, and tried to find some pleasure in his 
 works. Rietschel, who was also a member of our society, was 
 the very antithesis of Hanel. I often found it difficult to 
 believe that the pale delicate man, with the whining nervous 
 way of expressing himself, was really a sculptor ; but as similar 
 peculiarities in Schnorr did not prevent me from recognising 
 him as a marvellous painter, this helped me to make friends 
 with Rietschel, as he was quite free from affectation, and had 
 a warm sympathetic soul that drew me ever closer to him. 
 I also remember hearing from him a very enthusiastic appre- 
 ciation of my personality as a conductor. In spite, however, 
 of being fellow-members of our versatile art club, we never 
 attained a footing of real comradeship, for, after all, no one 
 thought much of anybody else's talents. For instance, Hiller 
 had arranged some orchestral concerts, and to commemorate 
 them he was entertained at the usual banquet by his friends, 
 when his services were gratefully acknowledged with due
 
 388 MY LIFE 
 
 rhetorical pathos. Yet I never found, in my private inter- 
 course with Killer's friends, the least enthusiasm in regard to 
 his work; on the contrary, I only noticed expressions of doubt 
 and apprehensive shrugs. 
 
 These feted concerts soon came to an end. At our social 
 evenings we never discussed the works of the masters who 
 were present; they were not even mentioned, and it was 
 soon evident that none of the members knew what to talk 
 about. Semper was the only man who, in his extraordinary 
 fashion, often so enlivened our entertainments that Rietschel, 
 inwardly sympathetic, though painfully startled, would heartily 
 complain against the unrestrained outbursts that led not 
 infrequently to hot discussions between Semper and myself. 
 Strange to say, we two always seemed to start from the hy- 
 pothesis that we were antagonists, for he insisted upon regard- 
 ing me as the representative of medieval Catholicism, which he 
 often attacked with real fury. I eventually succeeded in 
 persuading him that my studies and inclinations had always 
 led me to German antiquity, and to the discovery of ideals _in 
 the early Teutonic myths. When we came to paganism, and 
 I expressed my enthusiasm for the genuine heathen legends, 
 he became quite a different being, and a deep and growing 
 
 _ interest now began to unite us in such a way that it quite 
 isolated us from the rest of the company. It was, however, 
 
 ' impossible ever to settle anything without a heated argument, 
 not only because Semper had a peculiar habit of contradicting 
 everything flatly, but also because he knew his views were 
 opposed to those of the entire company. His paradoxical 
 assertions, which were apparently only intended to stir up 
 strife, soon made me realise, beyond any doubt, that he was 
 the only one present who was passionately in earnest about 
 everything he said, whereas all the others were quite content 
 to let the matter drop when convenient. A man of the latter 
 type was Gutzkow, who was often with us; he had been 
 summoned to Dresden by the general management of our 
 court theatre, to act in the capacity of dramatist and adapter 
 of plays. Several of his pieces had recently met with great 
 success: Zopf und Schwert, Das Urbild des Tartuffe, and 
 Uriel Acosta, shed an unexpected lustre on the latest dramatic
 
 LAUBE 389 
 
 repertoire, and it seemed as though the advent of Gutzkow 
 would inaugurate a new era of glory for the Dresden theatre, 
 where my operas had also been first produced. The good 
 intentions of the management were certainly undeniable. My 
 only regret on that occasion was that the hopes my old friend 
 Laube entertained of being summoned to Dresden to fill that 
 post were unrealised. He also had thrown himself enthusi- 
 astically into the work of dramatic literature. Even in Paris 
 I had noticed the eagerness with which he used to study the 
 technique of dramatic composition, especially that of Scribe, 
 in the hope of acquiring the skill of that writer, without which, 
 as he soon discovered, no poetical drama in German could be 
 successful. He maintained that he had thoroughly mastered 
 this style in his comedy, Rococo, and he cherished the convic- 
 tion that he could work up any imaginable material into an 
 effective stage play. 
 
 At the same time, he was very careful to show equal skill 
 in the selection of his material. In my opinion this theory of 
 his was a complete failure, as his only successful pieces were 
 those in which popular interest was excited by catch-phrases. 
 This interest was always more or less associated with the 
 politics of the day, and generally involved some obvious dia- 
 tribes about ' German unity ' and l German Liberalism.' As 
 this important stimulus was first applied by way of experi- 
 ment to the subscribers to our Residenz Theater, and afterwards 
 to the German public generally, it had, as I have already said, 
 to be worked out with the consummate skill which, presumably, 
 could only be learned from modern French writers of comic 
 opera. 
 
 I was very glad to see the result of this study in Laube's 
 plays, more especially as when he visited us in Dresden, which 
 he often did on the occasion of a new production, he admitted his 
 indebtedness with modest candour, and was far from pretend- 
 ing to be a real poet. Moreover, he displayed great skill and 
 an almost fiery zeal, not only in the preparation of his pieces, 
 but also in their production, so that the offer of a post at 
 Dresden, the hope of which had been held out to him, would 
 at least, from a practical point of view, have been a benefit 
 to the theatre. Finally, however, the choice fell on his rival
 
 390 MY LIFE 
 
 Gutzkow, in spite of his obvious unsuitability for tlie practical 
 work of dramatist. It was evident that even as regards his 
 successful plays his triumph was mainly due to his literary 
 skill, because these effective plays were immediately followed 
 by wearisome productions which made us realise, to our astonish- 
 ment, that he himself could not have been aware of the skill 
 he had previously displayed. It was, however, precisely these 
 abstract qualities of the genuine man of letters which, in the 
 eyes of many, cast over him the halo of literary greatness ; and 
 when Liittichau, thinking more of a showy reputation than of 
 permanent benefit to his theatre, decided to give the prefer- 
 ence to Gutzkow, he thought his choice would give a special 
 impetus to the cause of higher culture. To me the appoint- 
 ment of Gutzkow as the director of dramatic art at the theatre 
 was peculiarly objectionable, as it was not long before I was 
 convinced of his utter incompetence for the task, and it was 
 probably owing to the frankness with which I expressed my 
 opinion to Liittichau that our subsequent estrangement was 
 originally due. I had to complain bitterly of the want of judg- 
 ment and the levity of those who so recklessly selected men to 
 fill the posts of managers and conductors in such precious 
 institutions of art as the German royal theatres. To obviate 
 the failure I felt convinced must follow on this important 
 appointment, I made a special request that Gutzkow should 
 not be allowed to interfere in the management of the opera; 
 he readily yielded, and thus spared himself great humiliation. 
 This action, however, created a feeling of mistrust between us, 
 though I was quite ready to remove this as far as possible 
 by coming into personal contact with him whenever oppor- 
 tunity offered on those evenings when the artists used to 
 gather at the club, as already described. I would gladly have 
 made this strange man, whose head was anxiously bowed down 
 on his breast, relax and unburden himself in his conversations 
 with me, but I was unsuccessful, on account of his constant 
 reserve and suspicion, and his studied aloofness. An oppor- 
 tunity arose for a discussion between us when he wanted the 
 orchestra to take a melodramatic part (which they afterwards 
 did) in a certain scene of his Uriel Acosta, where the hero had 
 to recant his alleged heresy. The orchestra had to execute
 
 GUTZKOW AND B. AUEKBACH 391 
 
 the soft tremolo for a given time on certain chords, but when 
 I heard the performance it appeared to me absurd, and equally 
 derogatory both for the music and the drama. 
 
 On one of these evenings I tried to come to an understanding 
 with Gutzkow concerning this, and the employment of music 
 generally as a melodramatic auxiliary to the drama, and I 
 discussed my views on the subject in accordance with the 
 highest principles I had conceived. He met all the chief points 
 of my discussion with a nervous distrustful silence, but finally 
 explained that I really went too far in the significance which 
 I claimed for music, and that he failed to understand how music 
 would be degraded if it were applied more sparingly to the 
 drama, seeing that the claims of verse were often treated with 
 much less respect when it was used as a mere accessory to 
 operatic music. To put it practically, in fact, it would be 
 advisable for the librettist not to be too dainty in this matter; 
 it was n't possible always to give the actor a brilliant exit ; at 
 the same time, however, nothing could be more painful than 
 when the chief performer made his exit without any applause. 
 In such cases a little distracting noise in the orchestra really 
 supplied a happy diversion. This I actually heard Gutzkow 
 say; moreover, I saw that he really meant it! After this I 
 felt I had done with him. 
 
 It was not long before I had equally little to do with all the 
 painters, musicians, and other zealots in art belonging to our 
 society. At the same time, however, I came into closer con- 
 tact with Berthold Auerbach. With great enthusiasm, Alwine 
 Frommann had already drawn my attention to Auerbach's 
 Pastoral Stories. The account she gave of these modest works 
 (for that is how she characterised them) sounded quite 
 attractive. She said that they had had the same refreshing 
 effect on her circle of friends in Berlin as that produced by 
 opening the window of a scented boudoir (to which she com- 
 pared the literature they had hitherto been used to), and 
 letting in the fresh air of the woods. After that I read the 
 Pastoral Stories of the Black Forest, which had so quickly 
 become famous, and I, too, was strongly attracted by the 
 contents and tone of these realistic anecdotes about the life 
 of the people in a locality which it was easy enough to identify
 
 392 MY LIFE 
 
 from the vivid descriptions. As at this time Dresden seemed 
 to be becoming ever more and more the rendezvous for the 
 lights of our literary and artistic world, Auerbach also recon- 
 ciled himself to taking up his quarters in this city; and for 
 quite a long time lived with his friend Hiller, who thus again 
 had a celebrity at his side of equal standing with himself. The 
 short, sturdy Jewish peasant boy, as he was placed to repre- 
 sent himself to be, made a very agreeable impression. It was 
 only later that I understood the significance of his green 
 jacket, and above all of his green hunting-cap, which made 
 him look exactly what the author of Swabian Pastoral Stories 
 ought to look like, and this significance was anything but a 
 nai've one. The Swiss poet, Gottfried Keller, once told me 
 that, when Auerbach was in Zurich, and he had decided on 
 taking him up, he (Auerbach) had drawn his attention to the 
 best way in which to introduce one's literary effusions to the 
 public, and to make money, and he advised him, above all 
 things, to get a coat and cap like his own, for being, as he said, 
 like himself, neither handsome nor well grown, it would be 
 far better deliberately to make himself look rough and queer; 
 so saying, he placed his cap on his head in such a way as to 
 look a little rakish. For the time being, I perceived no real 
 affectation in Auerbach; he had assimilated so much of the 
 tone and ways of the people, and had done this so happily, 
 that, in any case, one could not help asking oneself why, with 
 these delightful qualities, he should move with such tremen- 
 dous ease in spheres that seemed absolutely antagonistic. At 
 all events, he always seemed in his true element even in those 
 circles which really seemed most opposed to his assumed 
 character; there he stood in his green coat, keen, sensitive, 
 and natural, surrounded by the distinguished society that 
 flattered him; and he loved to show letters he had received 
 from the Grand Duke of Weimar and his answers to them, all 
 the time looking at things from the standpoint of the Swabian 
 peasant nature which suited him so admirably. 
 
 What especially attracted me to him was the fact that he 
 was the first Jew I ever met with whom one could discuss 
 Judaism with absolute freedom. He even seemed particularly 
 desirous of removing, in his agreeable manner, all prejudice
 
 AUERBACH AS A JEW 393 
 
 on this score; and it was really touching to hear him speak 
 of his boyhood, and declare that he was perhaps the only 
 German who had read Klopstock's Messiah all through. Hav- 
 ing one day become absorbed in this work, which he read 
 secretly in his cottage home, he had played the truant from 
 school, and when he finally arrived too late at the school-house, 
 his teacher angrily exclaimed: 'You confounded Jew-boy, 
 where have you been ? Lending money again ? ' Such experi- 
 ences had only made him feel pensive and melancholy, but not 
 bitter, and he had even been inspired with real compassion 
 for the coarseness of his tormentors. These were traits in his 
 character which drew me very strongly to him. As time 
 went on, however, it seemed to me a serious matter that he 
 could not get away from the atmosphere of these ideas, for I 
 began to feel that the universe contained no other problem 
 for him than the elucidation of the Jewish question. One day, 
 therefore, I protested as good-naturedly and confidentially as 
 I could, and advised him to let the whole problem of Judaism 
 drop, as there were, after all, many other standpoints from 
 which the world might be criticised. Strange to say, he 
 thereupon not only lost his ingeniousness, but also fell to 
 whining in an ecstatic fashion, which did not seem to me very 
 genuine, and assured me that that would be an impossibility 
 for him, as there was still so much in Judaism which needed 
 his whole sympathy. I could not help recalling the surprising 
 anguish which he had manifested on this occasion, when I 
 learned, in the course of time, that he had repeatedly arranged 
 Jewish marriages, concerning the happy result of which I heard 
 nothing, save that he had, by this means, made quite a fortune. 
 When, several years afterwards, I again saw him in Zurich, I 
 observed that his appearance had unfortunately changed in a 
 manner quite disconcerting: he looked really extraordinarily 
 common and dirty; his former refreshing liveliness had turned 
 into the usual Jewish restlessness, and it was easy to see that 
 all he said was uttered as if he regretted that his words could 
 not be turned to better account in a newspaper article. 
 
 During his time in Dresden, however, Auerbach's warm 
 agreement with my artistic projects really did me good, even 
 though it may have been only from his Semitic and Swabian
 
 394 MY LIFE 
 
 standpoint; so did the novelty of the experience I was at that 
 time undergoing as an artist, in meeting with ever-increasing 
 regard and recognition among people of note, of acknowledged 
 importance and of exceptional culture. If, after the success 
 obtained by Bienzij I still remained with the circle of the real 
 theatrical world, the greater success following on Tannhduser 
 certainly brought me into contact with such people as I have" 
 mentioned above, who, though to be sure they considerably 
 enlarged my ideas, at the same time impressed me very 
 unfavourably with what was apparently the pinnacle of the 
 artistic life of the period. At any rate, I felt neither rewarded 
 nor, fortunately, even diverted by the acquaintances I won 
 by the first performance of my Tannhduser that winter. On 
 the contrary, I felt an irresistible desire to withdraw into my 
 shell and leave these gay surroundings into which, strangely 
 enough, I had been introduced at the instigation of Hiller, 
 whom I soon recognised as being a nonentity. I felt I must 
 quickly compose something, as this was the only means of 
 ridding myself of all the disturbing and painful excitement 
 Tannhduser had produced in me. 
 
 Only a few weeks after the first performances I had worked 
 out the whole of the Lohengrin text. In November I had already 
 read this poem to my intimate friends, and soon afterwards 
 to the Hiller set. It was praised, and pronounced ' effective.' 
 Schumann also thoroughly approved of it, although he did 
 not understand the musical form in which I wished to carry 
 it out, as he saw no resemblance in it to the old methods 
 of writing individual solos for the various artists. I then had 
 some fun in reading different parts of my work to him in 
 the form of arias and cavatinas, after which he laughingly 
 declared himself satisfied. 
 
 Serious reflection, however, aroused my gravest doubts as to 
 the tragic character of the material itself, and to these doubts 
 I had been led, in a manner both sensible and tactful, by Franck. 
 He thought it offensive to effect Elsa's punishment through 
 Lohengrin's departure; for although he understood that the 
 characteristics of the legend were expressed precisely by this 
 highly poetical feature, he was doubtful as to whether it did 
 full justice to the demands of tragic feeling in its relation to
 
 DISPUTE CONCERNING LOHENGRIN 
 
 dramatic realism. He would have preferred to see Lohengrin 
 die before our eyes owing to Elsa's loving treachery. As, 
 however, this did not seem feasible, he would have liked to 
 see Lohengrin spell-bound by some powerful motive, and pre- 
 vented from getting away. Although, of course, I would not 
 agree to any of these suggestions, I went so far as to consider 
 whether I could not do away with the cruel separation, and 
 still retain the incident of Lohengrin's departure, which was 
 essential. I then sought for a means of letting Elsa go away 
 with Lohengrin, as a form of penance which would withdraw 
 her also from the world. This seemed more promising to my 
 talented friend. While I was still very doubtful about all 
 this, I gave my poem to Frau von Liittichau, so that she might 
 peruse it, and criticise the point raised by Franck. In a little 
 letter, in which she expressed her pleasure at my poem, she 
 wrote briefly, but very decidedly, on the knotty question, and 
 declared that Franck must be devoid of all poetry if he did not 
 understand that it was exactly in the way I had chosen, and 
 in no other, that Lohengrin must depart. I felt as if a load 
 had fallen from my heart. In triumph I showed the letter to 
 Franck, who, much abashed, and by way of excusing himself, 
 opened a correspondence with Frau von Liittichau, which 
 certainly cannot have been lacking in interest, though I was 
 never able to see any of it. In any case, the upshot of it 
 was that Lohengrin remained as I had originally conceived it. 
 Curiously enough, some time later, I had a similar experience 
 with regard to the same subject, which again put me in a 
 temporary state of uncertainty. When Adolf Stahr gravely 
 raised the same objection to the solution of the Lohengrin 
 question, I was really taken aback by the uniformity of 
 opinion; and as, owing to some excitement, I was just then 
 no longer in the same mood as when I composed Lohengrin. 
 I was foolish enough to write a hurried letter to Stahr in which, 
 with but a few slight reservations, I declared him to be right 
 I did not know that, by this, I was causing real grief to Liszt, 
 who was now in the same position with regard to Stahr as 
 Frau von Liittichau had been with regard to Franck. Fortu- 
 nately, however, the displeasure of my great friend at my 
 supposed treachery to myself did not last long; for, without
 
 396 MY LIFE 
 
 having got wind of the trouble I had caused him, and thanks to 
 the torture I myself was going through, I came to the proper 
 decision in a few days, and, as clear as daylight, I saw what 
 madness it had been. I was therefore able to rejoice Liszt 
 with the following laconical protest which I sent him from my 
 Swiss resort : ' Stahr is wrong, and Lohengrin is right/ 
 
 For the present I remained occupied with the revision of 
 my poem, for there could be no question of planning the music 
 to it just now. That peaceful and harmonious state of mind 
 which is so favourable to creative work, and always so neces- 
 sary to me for composing, I now had to secure with the greatest 
 difficulty, for it was one of the things I always had the 
 hardest struggle to obtain. All the experiences connected with 
 the performance of Tannhduser having filled me with true 
 despair as to the whole future of my artistic operations, I saw 
 it was hopeless to think of its production being extended to 
 other German theatres for I had not been able to achieve 
 this end even with the successful Rienzi. It was perfectly 
 obvious, therefore, that my work would, at the utmost, be 
 conceded a permanent place in the Dresden repertoire. As 
 the result of all this, my pecuniary affairs, which have already 
 been described, had got into such a serious state that a catas- 
 trophe seemed inevitable. While I was preparing to meet 
 this in the best way I could, I tried to stupefy myself, on the 
 one hand, by plunging into the study of history, mythology, 
 
 ' and literature, which were becoming ever dearer and dearer 
 / to me, and on the other by working incessantly at my artistic 
 enterprises. As regards the former, I was chiefly interested 
 in the German Middle Ages, and tried to make myself familiar 
 with every point relative to this period. Although I could not 
 set about this task with philological precision, I proceeded 
 with such earnestness that I studied the German records, 
 published by Grimm, for instance, with the greatest interest. 
 
 i As I could not put the results of such studies immediately into 
 my scenes, there were many who could not understand why, 
 
 ' as an operatic composer, I should waste my time on such 
 barren work. Different people remarked later on, that the 
 personality of Lohengrin had a charm quite its own; but this 
 was ascribed to the happy selection of the subject, and I was
 
 THE NINTH SYMPHONY 397 
 
 specially praised for choosing it. Material from the German 
 Middle Ages, and later on, subjects from Scandinavian an- 
 tiquity, were therefore looked forward to by many, and, in 
 the end, they were astonished that I gave them no adequate 
 result of all my labours. Perhaps it will be of help to them 
 if I now tell them to take the old records and such works to 
 their aid. I forgot at that time to call Hiller's attention to 
 my documents, and with great pride he seized upon a subject 
 out of the history of the Hohenstaufen. As, however, he had 
 no success with his work, he may perhaps think I was a little 
 artful for not having spoken to him of the old records. 
 
 Concerning my other duties, my chief undertaking for this 
 winter consisted in an exceptionally carefully prepared per- 
 formance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which took place 
 in the spring on Palm Sunday. This performance involved 
 many a struggle, besides a host of experiences which were des- 
 tined to exercise a strong influence over my further develop- 
 ment. Roughly they were as follows: the royal orchestra had 
 only one opportunity a year of showing their powers inde- 
 pendently in a musical performance outside the Opera or the 
 church. For the benefit of the Pension Fund for their widows 
 and orphans, the old so-called Opera House was given up 
 to a big performance originally only intended for oratorios. 
 Ultimately, in order to make it more attractive, a symphony 
 was always added to the oratorio; and, as already mentioned, 
 I had performed on such occasions, once the Pastoral Symphony, 
 and later Haydn's Creation. The latter was a great joy to 
 me, and it was on this occasion that I first made its acquaint- 
 ance. As we two conductors had stipulated for alternate 
 performances, the Symphony on Palm Sunday of the year 1846 
 fell to my lot. I had a great longing for the Ninth Symphony, 
 and I was led to the choice of this work by the fact that it 
 was almost unknown in Dresden. When the directors of the 
 orchestra, who were the trustees of the Pension Fund, and 
 who had to promote its increase, got to know of this, such a 
 fright seized them that they interviewed the general director, 
 Liittichau, and begged him, by virtue of his high authority, to 
 dissuade me from carrying out my intention. They gave as a 
 reason for this request, that the Pension Fund would surely
 
 398 MY LIFE 
 
 suffer through the choice of this symphony, as the work was in 
 ill-repute in the place, and would certainly keep people from 
 going to the concert. The symphony had been performed 
 many years before by Reissiger at a charity concert, and, as 
 the conductor himself honestly admitted, had been an absolute 
 failure. Now it needed my whole ardour, and all the eloquence 
 I could command, to prevail over the doubts of our principal. 
 With the orchestral directors, however, there was nothing for 
 me to do but quarrel, as I heard that they were complaining all 
 over the town about my indiscretion. In order to add shame 
 to their trouble, I made up my mind to prepare the public in 
 such a way for the performance, upon which I had resolved, 
 and for the work itself, that at least the sensation caused would 
 lead to a full hall and thus, in a very favourable manner, 
 guarantee satisfactory returns, and contradict their belief 
 that the fund was menaced. Thus the Ninth Symphony had, 
 in every conceivable way, become for me a point of honour, 
 for the success of which I had to exercise all my powers to the 
 utmost. The committee had misgivings regarding the outlay 
 needed for procuring the orchestral parts, so I borrowed them 
 from the Leipzig Concert Society. 
 
 Imagine my feelings, however, on now seeing for the first 
 time since my earliest boyhood the mysterious pages of this 
 score, which I studied conscientiously! In those days the 
 sight of these same pages had filled me with the most mystic 
 reveries, and I had stayed up for nights together to copy them 
 out. Just as at the time of my uncertainty in Paris, on hearing 
 the rehearsal of the first three movements performed by the 
 incomparable orchestra of the Conservatoire, I had been 
 carried back through years of error and doubt to be placed in 
 marvellous touch with my earliest days, while all my inmost 
 aspirations had been fruitfully stimulated in a new direction, 
 so now in the same way the memory of that music was secretly 
 awakened in me as I again saw before my own eyes that which 
 in those early days had likewise been only a mysterious vision. 
 I had by this time experienced much which, in the depths 
 of my soul, drove me almost unconsciously to a process of 
 summing-up, to an almost despairing inquiry concerning my 
 fate. What I dared not acknowledge to myself was the fact
 
 FRESH STUDY OF THE SCOEE 399 
 
 of the absolute insecurity of my existence both from the 
 artistic and financial point of view; for I saw that I was a 
 stranger to my own mode of life as well as to my profession, 
 and I had no prospects whatsoever. This despair, which I 
 tried to conceal from my friends, was now converted into 
 genuine exaltation, thanks entirely to the Ninth Symphony. 
 It is not likely that the heart of a disciple has ever been filled 
 with such keen rapture over the work of a master, as mine was 
 at the first movement of this symphony. If any one had come 
 upon me unexpectedly while I had the open score before me, 
 and had seen me convulsed with sobs and tears as I went 
 through the work in order to consider the best manner of 
 rendering it, he would certainly have asked with astonishment 
 if this were really fitting behaviour for the Conductor Royal of 
 Saxony! Fortunately, on such occasions I was spared the 
 visits of our orchestra directors, and their worthy conductor 
 Reissiger, and even those of F. Hiller, who was so versed in 
 classical music. 
 
 In the first place I drew up a programme, for which the 
 book of words for the chorus always ordered according to 
 custom furnished me with a good pretext. I did this in order 
 to provide a guide to the simple understanding of the work, and 
 thereby hoped to appeal not to the critical judgment, but 
 solely to the feelings, of the audience. This programme, in the 
 framing of which some of the chief passages in Goethe's Faust 
 were exceedingly helpful to me, was very well received, not 
 only on that occasion in Dresden, but later on in other places. 
 Besides this, I made use of the Dresden Anzeiger, by writing 
 all kinds of short and enthusiastic anonymous paragraphs, 
 in order to whet the public taste for a work which hitherto 
 had been in ill-repute in Dresden. 
 
 Not only did these purely extraneous exertions succeed in 
 making the receipts of that year by far exceed any that had 
 been taken theretofore, but the orchestra directors themselves, 
 during the remaining years of my stay in Dresden, made a point 
 of ensuring similarly large profits by repeated performances of 
 the celebrated symphony. Concerning the artistic side of the 
 performance, I aimed at making the orchestra give as expressive 
 a rendering as possible, and to this end made all kinds of notes,
 
 400 MY LIFE 
 
 myself, in the various parts, so as to make quite sure that their 
 interpretation would be as clear and as coloured as could be 
 desired. It was principally the custom which existed then of 
 doubling the wind instruments, that led me to a most careful 
 consideration of the advantages this system presented, for, in 
 performances on a large scale, the following somewhat crude 
 rule prevailed: all those passages marked piano were executed 
 by a single set of instruments, while those marked forte were 
 carried out by a duplicated set. As an instance of the way in 
 which I took care to ensure an intelligible rendering by this 
 means, I might point to a certain passage in the second move- 
 ment of the symphony, where the whole of the string instru- 
 ments play the principal and rhythmical figure in C major for 
 the first time; it is written in triple octaves, which play 
 uninterruptedly in unison and, to a certain degree, serve as an 
 accompaniment to the second theme, which is only performed 
 by feeble wood instruments. As fortissimo is indicated alike 
 for the whole orchestra, the result in every imaginable render- 
 ing must be that the melody for the wood instruments not only 
 completely disappears, but cannot even be heard through the 
 strings, which, after all, are only accompanying. Now, as 
 I never carried my piety to the extent of taking directions 
 absolutely literally, rather than sacrifice the effect really in- 
 tended by the master to the erroneous indications given, I 
 made the strings play only moderately loudly instead of real 
 fortissimo, up to the point where they alternate with the wind 
 instruments in taking up the continuation of the new theme: 
 thus the motive, rendered as it was as loudly as possible by a 
 double set of wind instruments, was, I believe for the first time 
 since the existence of the symphony, heard with real distinct- 
 ness. I proceeded in this manner throughout, in order to 
 guarantee the greatest exactitude in the dynamical effects 
 of the orchestra. There was nothing, however difficult, 
 which was allowed to be performed in such a way as not to 
 arouse the feelings of the audience in a particular manner. 
 For example, many brains had been puzzled by the Fugato in 
 | time which comes after the chorus, Froh wie seine Sonnen 
 fliegen, in the movement of the finale marked alia marcia. 
 In view of the preceding inspiriting verses, which seemed to be
 
 MY IOTERPKETATIOH OF SYMPHONY 401 
 
 preparing for combat and victory, I conceived this Fugato 
 really as a glad but earnest war-song, and I took it at a con- 
 tinuously fiery tempo, and with the utmost vigour. The day 
 following the first performance I had the satisfaction of receiv- 
 ing a visit from the musical director Anacker of Freiburg, 
 who came to tell me somewhat penitently, that though until 
 then he had been one of my antagonists, since the performance 
 of the symphony he certainly reckoned himself among my 
 friends. What had absolutely overwhelmed him, he said, was 
 precisely my conception and interpretation of the Fugato. 
 Furthermore, I devoted special attention to that extraordinary 
 passage, resembling a recitative for the 'cellos and basses, 
 which comes at the beginning of the last movement, and which 
 had once caused my old friend Pohlenz such great humiliation 
 in Leipzig. Thanks to the exceptional excellence of our bass 
 players, I felt certain of attaining to absolute perfection in this 
 passage. After twelve special rehearsals of the instruments 
 alone concerned, I succeeded in getting them to perform in a way 
 which sounded not only perfectly free, but which also expressed 
 the most exquisite tenderness and the greatest energy in a 
 thoroughly impressive manner. 
 
 From the very beginning of my undertaking I had at once 
 recognised, that the only method of achieving overwhelming 
 popular success with this symphony was to overcome, by some 
 ideal means, the extraordinary difficulties presented by the 
 choral parts. I realised that the demands made by these parts 
 could be met only by a large and enthusiastic body of singers. 
 It was above all necessary, then, to secure a very good and 
 large choir; so, besides adding the somewhat feeble Dreissig 
 ' Academy of Singing ' to our usual number of members in the 
 theatre chorus, in spite of great difficulties I also enlisted the 
 help of the choir from the Kreuzschule, with its fine boys' voices, 
 and the choir of the Dresden seminary, which had had much 
 practice in church singing. In a way quite my own I now tried 
 to get these three hundred singers, who were frequently united 
 for rehearsals, into a state of genuine ecstasy; for instance, I 
 succeeded in demonstrating to the basses that the celebrated 
 passage Seid umschlungen, Millionen, and especially Briider, 
 uber'm Sternenzelt muss ein guter Vater wolinen, could not be
 
 402 MY LIFE 
 
 sung in an ordinary manner, but must, as it were, be proclaimed 
 with the greatest rapture. In this I took the lead in a manner 
 so elated that I really think I literally transported them to a 
 world of emotion uttery strange to them for a while; and I 
 did not desist till my voice, which had been heard clearly above 
 all the others, began to be no longer distinguishable even to 
 myself, but was drowned, so to speak, in the warm sea of 
 sound. 
 
 It gave me particular pleasure, with Mitterwurzer's co- 
 operation, to give a most overwhelmingly expressive rendering 
 of the recitative for baritone: Freunde, nicht diese Tone. In 
 view of its exceptional difficulties this passage might almost be 
 considered impossible to perform, and yet he executed it in a 
 way which showed what fruit our mutual interchange of ideas 
 had borne. I also took care that, by means of the complete 
 reconstruction of the hall, I should obtain good acoustic con- 
 ditions for the orchestra, which I had arranged according to 
 quite a new system of my own. As may be imagined, it was 
 only with the greatest difficulty that the money for this could 
 be found; however, I did not give up, and owing to a totally 
 new construction of the platform, I was able to concentrate the 
 whole of the orchestra towards the centre, and surround it, 
 in amphitheatre fashion, by the throng of singers who were 
 accommodated on seats very considerably raised. This was 
 not only of great advantage to the powerful effect of the choir, 
 but it also gave great precision and energy to the finely organised 
 orchestra in the purely symphonic movements. 
 
 Even at the general rehearsal the hall was overcrowded. 
 Reissiger was guilty of the incredible stupidity of working up 
 the public mind against the symphony and drawing attention 
 to Beethoven's very regrettable error. Gade, on the other 
 hand, who came to visit us from Leipzig, where he was then 
 conducting the Gewandhaus Concerts, assured me after the 
 general rehearsal, that he would willingly have paid double 
 the price of his ticket in order to hear the recitative by the 
 basses once more; whilst Hiller considered that I had gone 
 too far in my modification of the tempo. What he meant by this 
 I learned subsequently when I heard him conducting intricate 
 orchestral works ; but of this I shall have more to say later on.
 
 SUCCESS OF THE NINTH SYMPHONY 403 
 
 There was no denying that the performance was, on the whole, 
 a success; in fact, it exceeded all our expectations, and was 
 particularly well received by the non-musical public. Among 
 these I remember the philologist Dr. Kochly, who came to me 
 at the end of the evening and confessed that it was the first 
 time he had been able to follow a symphonic work from begin- 
 ning to end with intelligent interest. This experience left me 
 with a pleasant feeling of ability and power, and strongly con- 
 firmed me in the belief, that if I only desired anything with 
 sufficient earnestness, I was able to achieve it with irresistible 
 and overwhelming success. I now had to consider, however, 
 what the difficulties were, which hitherto had prevented a 
 similarly happy production of my own new conceptions. 
 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was still such a problem 
 to so many, and had, at all events, never attained to popularity, 
 I had been able to make a complete success; yet, as often as 
 it was put on the stage, my Tannhauser taught me that the 
 possibilities of its success had yet to be discovered. How was 
 this to be done ? This was and remained the secret question 
 which influenced all my subsequent development. 
 
 I dared not, however, indulge at that time in any medita- 
 tion on this point with the view of arriving at any particular 
 results, for the real significance of my failure, of which I was 
 inwardly convinced, stood absolutely bare before me with all 
 its terrifying lessons. Albeit, I could no longer delay taking 
 even the most disagreeable steps with the view of warding off 
 the catastrophe which menaced my financial position. 
 
 I was led to this, thanks to the influence of a ridiculous 
 omen. My agent, the purely nominal publisher of my three 
 operas Rienzi, the Fliegender Hollander, and Tannhauser 
 the eccentric court music publisher, C. F. Meser, invited me one 
 day to the cafe known as the ' Verderber ' to discuss our money 
 affairs. With great qualms we talked over the possible results 
 of the Annual Easter Fair, and wondered whether they would 
 be tolerably good or altogether bad. I gave him courage, and 
 ordered a bottle of the best Haut-Sauterne. A venerable 
 flask made its appearance; I filled the glasses, and we drank 
 to the good success of the Fair; when suddenly we both 
 yelled as though we had gone mad, while, with horror, we tried
 
 404: MY LIFE 
 
 to rid our mouths of the strong Tarragon vinegar with which 
 we had been served by mistake. ' Heavens ! ' cried Meser, 
 * nothing could be worse ! ' ( True enough/ I answered, ' no 
 doubt there is much that will turn to vinegar for us/ My 
 good-humour revealed to me in a flash that I must try some 
 other way of saving myself than by means of the Easter Fair. 
 
 Not only was it necessary to refund the capital which had 
 been got together by dint of ever-increasing sacrifices, in order 
 to defray the expenses of the publication of my operas; but, 
 owing to the fact that I had been obliged ultimately to seek 
 aid from the usurers, the rumour of my debts had spread so 
 far abroad, that even those friends who had helped me at the 
 time of my arrival in Dresden were seized with anxiety on my 
 account. At this time I met with a really sad experience at 
 the hands of Madame Schroder-Devrient, who, as the result 
 of her incomprehensible lack of discretion, did much to bring 
 about my final undoing. When I first settled in Dresden, as 
 I have already pointed out, she lent me three thousand marks, 
 not only to help me to discharge my debts, but also to allow 
 me to contribute to the maintenance of my old friend Kietz in 
 Paris. Jealousy of my niece Johanna, and suspicion that I had 
 made her (my niece) come to Dresden in order to make it easier 
 for the general management to dispense with the services of the 
 great artist, had awakened in this otherwise so noble-minded 
 woman the usual feelings of animosity towards me, which are 
 so often met with in the theatrical profession. She had now 
 given up her engagement; she even declared openly that I 
 had been partly instrumental in obtaining her dismissal; and 
 abandoning all friendly regard for me, whereby she deeply 
 wronged me in every respect, she placed the I.O.U. I had given 
 her in the hands of an energetic lawyer, and without further 
 ado this man sued me for the payment of the money. Thus I 
 was forced to make a clean breast of everything to Liittichau, 
 and to beseech him to intervene for me, and if possible to obtain 
 a royal advance that would enable me to clear my position, 
 which was so seriously compromised. 
 
 My principal declared himself willing to support any request 
 I might wish to address to the King on this matter. To this 
 end I had to note down the amount of my debts; but as I
 
 LOAN FROM THEATRE PENSION EUBTD 405 
 
 soon discovered that the necessary sum could only be assigned 
 to me as a loan from the Theatre Pension Fund, at an interest 
 of five per cent., and that I should moreover have to secure 
 the capital of the Pension Fund by a life insurance policy, 
 which would cost me annually three per cent, of the capital 
 borrowed, I was, for obvious reasons, tempted to leave out of 
 my petition all those of my debts which were not of a pressing 
 nature, and for the payment of which I thought I could count 
 on the receipts which I might finally expect from my publish- 
 ing enterprises. Nevertheless, the sacrifices I had to make 
 in order to repay the help offered me increased to such an 
 extent, that my salary of conductor, in itself very slender, 
 promised to be materially diminished for some time to come. 
 I was forced to make the most irksome efforts to gather 
 together the necessary sum for the life insurance policy, and 
 was therefore obliged frequently to appeal to Leipzig. In 
 addition to this, I had to overcome the most appalling doubts 
 in regard both to my health and to the probable length of my 
 life, concerning which I fancied I had heard all sorts of 
 malicious apprehensions expressed by those who had observed 
 me but casually in the miserable condition which I was in at 
 that time. My friend Pusinelli, as a doctor who was very 
 intimate with me, eventually managed to give such satisfactory 
 information concerning the state of my health, that I succeeded 
 in insuring my life at the rate of three per cent. 
 
 The last of these painful journeys to Leipzig was, at all 
 events, made under pleasant circumstances owing to a kind 
 invitation from the old Maestro Louis Spohr. I was particu- 
 larly pleased over this, because to me it meant nothing less than 
 an act of reconciliation. As a matter of fact, Sophr had written 
 to me on one occasion, and had declared that, stimulated by 
 the success of my Fliegender Hollander and his own enjoyment 
 of it, he had once more decided to take up the career of a 
 dramatic composer, which of recent years had brought him 
 such scant success. His last work was an opera Die Kreuz- 
 fahrer which he had sent to the Dresden theatre in the course 
 of the preceding year in the hope, as he himself assured me, 
 that I would urge on its production. After asking this favour, 
 he drew my attention to the fact that in this work he had made
 
 406 MY LIFE 
 
 an absolutely new departure from his earlier operas, and had 
 kept to the most precise rhythmically dramatic declamation, 
 which had certainly been made all the more easy for him by 
 the l excellent subject.' Without being actually surprised, 
 my horror was indeed great when, after studying not only the 
 text, but also the score, I discovered that the old maestro had 
 been absolutely mistaken in regard to the account he had 
 given me of his work. The custom in force at that time that 
 the decision concerning the production of works should not, 
 as a rule, rest with one of the conductors alone, did not tend 
 to make me any less fearful of declaring myself emphatically 
 in favour of this work. In addition to this, it was Reissiger, 
 who, as he had often boasted, was an old friend of Spohr's, 
 whose turn it was to select and produce a new work. Un- 
 fortunately, as I learned later, the general management had 
 returned Spohr's opera to its author in such a curt manner 
 as to offend him, and he complained bitterly of this to me. 
 Genuinely concerned at this, I had evidently managed to calm 
 and appease him, for the invitation mentioned above was 
 clearly a friendly acknowledgment of my efforts. He wrote 
 that it was very painful for him to have to touch at Dresden 
 on his way to one of the watering-places; as, however, he had 
 a real longing to make my acquaintance, he begged me to 
 meet him in Leipzig, where he was going to stay for a few days. 
 This meeting with him did not leave me unimpressed. He 
 was a tall, stately man, distinguished in appearance, and of a 
 serious and calm temperament. He gave me to understand, 
 in a touching, almost apologetic manner, that the essence of 
 his education and of his aversion from the new tendencies in 
 music, had its origin in the first impressions he had received 
 on hearing, as a very young boy, Mozart's Magic Flute, a work 
 which was quite new at that time, and which had a great influ- 
 ence on his whole life. Regarding my libretto to Lohengrin, 
 which I had left behind for him to read, and the general im- 
 pression which my personal acquaintance had made on him, 
 he expressed himself with almost surprising warmth to my 
 brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus, at whose house we had 
 been invited to dine, and where, during the meal, the conversa- 
 tion was most animated. Besides this, we had met at real
 
 A SUMMER HOLIDAY 
 
 407 
 
 musical evenings at the conductor Hauptmann's as well as at 
 Mendelssohn's, on which occasion I heard the master take the 
 violin in one of his own quartettes. It was precisely in these 
 circles that I was impressed by the touching and venerable 
 dignity of his absolutely calm demeanour. Later on, I learned 
 from witnesses for whose testimony, be it said, I cannot 
 vouch that Tannhduser, when it was performed at Cassel, 
 had caused him so much confusion and pain that he declared 
 he could no longer follow me, and feared that I must be on the 
 wrong road. 
 
 In order to recover from all the hardships and cares I had 
 gone through, I now managed to obtain a special favour from 
 the management, in the form of a three months' leave, in 
 which to improve my health in rustic retirement, and to get 
 pure air to breathe while composing some new work. To this 
 end I had chosen a peasant's house in the village of Gross- 
 Graupen, which is half-way between Pillnitz and the border 
 of what is known as * Saxon Switzerland.' Frequent excur- 
 sions to the Porsberg, to the adjacent Liebethaler, and to the 
 far distant bastion helped to strengthen my unstrung nerves. 
 While I was first planning the music to Lohengrin, I was 
 disturbed incessantly by the echoes of some of the airs in 
 Rossini's William Tell, which was the last opera I had had to 
 conduct. At last I happened to hit on an effective means of 
 stopping this annoying obtrusion: during my lonely walks 
 I sang with great emphasis the first theme from the Ninth 
 Symphony, which had also quite lately been revived in my 
 memory. This succeeded ! At Pirna, where one can bathe 
 in the river, I was surprised, on one of my almost regular 
 evening constitutionals, to hear the air from the Pilgrim's 
 Chorus out of Tannhduser whistled by some bather, who was 
 invisible to me. This first sign of the possibility of popularis- 
 ing the work, which I had with such difficulty succeeded in 
 getting performed in Dresden, made an impression on me 
 which no similar experience later on has ever been able to 
 surpass. Sometimes I received visits from friends in Dresden, 
 and among them Hans von Billow, who was then sixteen years 
 old, came accompanied by Lipinsky. This gave me great 
 pleasure, because I had already noticed the interest which he
 
 408 MY LIFE 
 
 took in me. Generally, however, I had to rely only on my 
 wife's company, and during my long walks I had to be satisfied 
 with my little dog Peps. During this summer holiday, of 
 which a great part of the time had at the beginning to be 
 devoted to the unpleasant task of arranging my business affairs, 
 and also to the improvement of my health, I nevertheless 
 succeded in making a sketch of the music to the whole of the 
 three acts of Lohengrin, although this cannot be said to have 
 consisted of anything more than a very hasty outline. 
 
 With this much gained, I returned in August to Dresden, 
 and resumed my duties as conductor, which every year seemed 
 to become more and more burdensome to me. Moreover, I 
 immediately plunged once more into the midst of troubles 
 which had only just been temporarily allayed. The business 
 of publishing my operas, on the success of which I still counted 
 as the only means of liberating me from my difficult position, 
 demanded ever-fresh sacrifices if the enterprise were to be made 
 worth while. But as my income was now very much reduced, 
 even the smallest outlays necessarily led me into ever-new and 
 more painful complications; and I once more lost all courage. 
 
 On the other hand, I tried to strengthen myself by again 
 working energetically at Lohengrin. While doing this, I pro- 
 V ceeded in a manner that I have not since repeated. I first 
 of all completed the third act, and in view of the criticism 
 already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this 
 act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole 
 opera. I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical 
 motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail ; but in other 
 respects the plan struck me as perfectly satisfactory. 
 
 Owing to previous suggestions on my part, Gluck's Iphigenia 
 in A.ulis was to be produced this winter. I felt it my duty to 
 give more care and attention to this work, which interested me 
 particularly on account of its subject, than I had given to the 
 study of the Armida. In the first place, I was upset by the 
 translation in which the opera with the Berlin score was pre- 
 sented to us. In order not to be led into false interpretations 
 through the instrumental additions which I considered very 
 badly applied in this score, I wrote for the original edition from 
 Paris. When I had made a thorough revision of the trans-
 
 lation, with a view merely to the correctness of declamation, 
 I was spurred on by my increasing interest to revise the score 
 itself. I tried to bring the poem as far as possible into agree- 
 ment with Euripides' play of the same name, by the elimination 
 of everything which, in deference to French taste, made the 
 relationship between Achilles and Iphigenia one of tender love. 
 The chief alteration of all was to cut out the inevitable marriage 
 at the end. For the sake of the vitality of the drama I tried 
 to join the arias and choruses, which generally followed im- 
 mediately upon each other without rhyme or reason, by con- 
 necting links, prologues and epilogues. In this I did my best, 
 by the use of Gluck's themes, to make the interpolations of a 
 strange composer as unnoticeable as possible. In the third act 
 alone was I obliged to give Iphigenia, as well as Artemis, whom 
 I had myself introduced, recitatives of my own composition. 
 Throughout the rest of the work I revised the whole instru- 
 mentation more or less thoroughly, but only with the object 
 of making the existing version produce the effect I desired. 
 It was not till the end of the year that I was able to finish this 
 tremendous task, and I had to postpone the completion of the 
 third act of Lohengrin, which I had already begun, until the 
 New Year. 
 
 The first thing to claim my attention at the beginning of 
 the year (1847) was the production of Iphigenia. I had to act 
 as stage manager in this case, and was even obliged to help the 
 scene-painters and the mechanicians over the smallest details. 
 Owing to the fact that the scenes in this opera were generally 
 strung together somewhat clumsily and without any apparent 
 connection, it was necessary to recast them completely, in 
 order so to animate the representation as to give to the dramatic 
 action the life it lacked. A good deal of this faultiness of con- 
 struction seemed to me due to the many conventional practices 
 which were prevalent at the Paris Opera in Gluck's time. 
 Mitterwurzer was the only actor in the whole cast who gave 
 me any pleasure. In the role of Agamemnon he showed a 
 thorough grasp of that character, and carried out my instruc- 
 tions and suggestions to the letter, so that he succeeded in 
 giving a really splendid and intelligent rendering of the part. 
 The success of the whole performance was far beyond my
 
 410 MY LIFE 
 
 expectations, and even the directors were so surprised at the 
 exceptional enthusiasm aroused by one of Gluck's operas, that 
 for the second performance they, on their own initiative, had 
 my name put on the programme as l Reviser.' This at once 
 drew the attention of the critics to this work, and for once they 
 almost did me justice; my treatment of the overture, the only 
 part of the opera which these gentlemen heard rendered in the 
 usual trivial way, was the only thing that they could find fault 
 with. I have discussed and given an accurate account of all 
 that relates to this in a special article on ' Gluck's Overture to 
 Iphigenia in Aulis,' and I only wish to add here that the 
 musician who made such strange comments on this occasion 
 was Ferdinand Hiller. 
 
 As in former years, the winter meetings of the various artistic 
 elements in Dresden which Hiller had inaugurated, continued 
 to take place; but they now assumed more the character of 
 1 salons ' in Hiller's own house, and it seemed to me intended 
 solely for the purpose of laying the foundations for a general 
 recognition of Hiller's artistic greatness. He had already 
 founded, among the more wealthy patrons of art, the chief of 
 whom was the banker Kaskel, a society for running subscription 
 concerts. As it was impossible for the royal orchestra to be 
 placed at his disposal for this purpose, he had to content him- 
 self with members of the town and military bands for his 
 orchestra, and it cannot be denied that, thanks to his persever- 
 ance, he attained a praiseworthy result. As he produced many 
 compositions which were still unknown in Dresden, especially 
 from the domain of more modern music, I was often tempted to 
 go to his concerts. His chief bait to the general public, how- 
 ever, seemed to lie in the fact that he presented unknown 
 singers (among whom, unfortunately, Jenny Lind was not to 
 be found) and virtuosos, one of which, Joachim, who was then 
 very young, I became acquainted with. 
 
 Hiller's treatment of those works with which I was already 
 well acquainted, showed what his musical power was really 
 worth. The careless and indifferent manner in which he 
 interpreted a Triple Concerto by Sebastian Bach positively 
 astounded me. In the tempo di minuetto of the Eighth Sym- 
 phony of Beethoven, I found that Hiller's rendering was even
 
 STUDY OF GEEEK ANTIQUITY 411 
 
 more astonishing than Keissiger's and Mendelssohn's. I prom- 
 ised to be present at the performance of this symphony if I 
 could rely on his giving a correct rendering of the tempo of 
 the third phrase, which was generally so painfully distorted. 
 He assured me that he thoroughly agreed with me about it, 
 and my disappointment at the performance was all the greater 
 when I found the well-known waltz measure adopted again. 
 When I called him to account about it he excused himself with 
 a smile, saying that he had been seized with a fit of temporary 
 abstraction just at the beginning of the phrase in question, 
 which had made him forget his promise. For inaugurating 
 these concerts, which, as a matter of fact, only lasted for two 
 seasons, Hiller was given a banquet, which I also had much 
 pleasure in attending. ^, 
 
 People in these circles were surprised at that time to hear .^ 
 me speak, often with great animation, about Greek literature 
 and history, but never about music. In the course of my 
 reading, which I zealously pursued, and which drew me away 
 from my professional activities to retirement and solitude, I 
 was at that time impelled by my spiritual needs to turn my 
 attention once more to a systematic study of this all-important 
 source of culture, with the object of filling the perceptible gap 
 between my boyhood's knowledge of the eternal elements of 
 human culture and the neglect of this field of learning due to 
 the life I had been obliged to lead. In order to approach the 
 real goal of my desires the study of Old and Middle High 
 German in the right frame of mind, I began again from the 
 beginning with Greek antiquity, and was now filled with such 
 overwhelming enthusiasm for this subject that, whenever I 
 entered into conversation, and by hook or by crook had 
 managed to get it round to this theme, I could only speak in 
 terms of the strongest emotion. I occasionally met some one 
 who seemed to listen to what I had to say; on the whole, 
 however, people preferred to talk to me only about the theatre 
 because, since my production of Gluck's Iphigenia, they thought 
 themselves justified in thinking I was an authority on this 
 subject. I received special recognition from a man to whom 
 I quite rightly gave the credit of being at least as well versed 
 as myself in the matter. This was Eduard Devrient, who had
 
 412 MY LIFE 
 
 been forced at that time to resign his position as stage manager- 
 in-chief owing to a plot against him on the part of the actors, 
 headed by his own brother Emil. We were brought into closer 
 sympathy by our conversations in connection with this, which 
 led him into dissertations on the triviality and thorough hope- 
 lessness of our whole theatrical life, especially under the ruining 
 influence of ignorant court managers, which could never be 
 overcome. 
 
 We were also drawn together by his intelligent understanding 
 of the part I had played in the production of Iphigenia, which 
 he compared with the Berlin production of the same piece, that 
 had been utterly condemned by him. He was for a long time 
 the only man with whom I could discuss, seriously and in 
 detail, the real needs of the theatre and the means by which 
 its defects might be remedied. Owing to his longer and more 
 specialised experience, there was much he could tell me and 
 make clear to me; in particular he helped me successfully 
 to overcome the idea that mere literary excellence is enough 
 for the theatre, and confirmed my conviction that the path 
 to true prosperity lay only with the stage itself and with the 
 actors of the drama. 
 
 From this time forward, till I left Dresden, my intercourse 
 with Eduard Devrient grew more and more friendly, though his 
 dry nature and obvious limitations as an actor had attracted me 
 but little before. His highly meritorious work, Die Gescliichte 
 der deutschen Schauspielkunst (' History of German Dramatic 
 Art '), which he finished and published about that time, threw 
 a fresh and instructive light on many problems which exercised 
 my mind, and helped me to master them for the first time. 
 
 At last I managed once more to resume my task of composing 
 the third act of Lohengrin, which had been interrupted in the 
 middle of the Bridal Scene, and I finished it by the end of the 
 winter. After the repetition, by special request, of the Ninth 
 Symphony at the concert on Palm Sunday had revived me, I 
 tried to find comfort and refreshment for the further progress 
 of my new work by changing my abode, this time without 
 asking permission. The old Marcolini palace, with a very 
 large garden laid out partly in the French style, was situated 
 in an outlying and thinly populated suburb of Dresden.
 
 THE MARCOLINI PALACE 413 
 
 It had been sold to the town council, and a part of it was to 
 be let. The sculptor, Hanel, whom I had known for a long 
 time, and who had given me as a mark of friendship an orna- 
 ment in the shape of a perfect plaster cast of one of the bas- 
 reliefs from Beethoven's monument representing the Ninth 
 Symphony, had taken the large rooms on the ground floor 
 of a side-wing of this palace for his dwelling and studio. At 
 Easter I moved into the spacious apartments, above him, the 
 rent of which was extremely low, and found that the large 
 garden planted with glorious trees, which was placed at my 
 disposal, and the pleasant stillness of the, whole place, not only 
 provided mental food for the weary artist, but at the same 
 time, by lessening my expenses, improved my straitened 
 finances. We soon settled down quite comfortably in the 
 long row of pleasant rooms without having incurred any un- 
 necessary expense, as Minna was very practical in her arrange- 
 ments. The only real inconvenience which in the course of time 
 I found our new home possessed, was its inordinate distance 
 from the theatre. This was a great trial to me after fatiguing 
 rehearsals and tiring performances, as the expense of a cab 
 was a serious consideration. But we were favoured by an 
 exceptionally fine summer, which put me in a happy frame of 
 mind, and soon helped to overcome every inconvenience. 
 
 At this time I insisted with the utmost firmness on refraining 
 from taking any further share in the management of the theatre, 
 and I had most cogent reasons to bring forth in defence of 
 my conduct. All my endeavours to set in order the wilful 
 chaos which prevailed in the use of the costly artistic materials 
 at the disposal of this royal institution were repeatedly 
 thwarted, merely because I wished to introduce some method 
 into the arrangements. In a carefully written pamphlet 
 which, in addition to my other work, I had compiled during the 
 past winter, I had drawn up a plan for the reorganisation of 
 the orchestra, and had shown how we might increase the 
 productive power of our artistic capital by making a more 
 methodical use of the royal funds intended for its maintenance, 
 and showing greater discretion regarding salaries. This in- 
 crease in the productive power would raise the artistic spirit 
 as well as improve the economic position of the members of the
 
 414 MY LIFE 
 
 orchestra, for I should have liked them at the same time to 
 form an independent concert society. In such a capacity it 
 would have been their task to present to the people of Dresden, 
 in the best possible way, a kind of music which they had 
 hitherto hardly had the opportunity of enjoying at all. I 
 would have been possible for such a union, which, as I pointed 
 out, had so many external circumstances in its favour, to 
 provide Dresden with a suitable concert-hall. I hear, however, 
 that such a place is wanting to this day. 
 
 With this object in view I entered into close communication 
 with architects and builders, and the plans were completed, 
 according to which the scandalous buildings facing a wing of the 
 renowned prison opposite the Ostra Alice, and consisting of 
 a shed for the members of the theatre and a public wash house, 
 were to be pulled down and replaced by a beautiful building, 
 which, besides containing a large concert-hall adapted to our 
 requirements, would also have had other large rooms which 
 could have been, let out on hire at a profit. The practicality 
 of these plans was disputed by no one, as even the administrators 
 of the orchestra's widows' fund saw in them an opportunity for 
 the safe and advantageous laying out of capital ; yet they were 
 returned to me, after long consideration on the part of the 
 general management, with thanks and an acknowledgment 
 of my careful work, and the curt reply that it was thought 
 better for things to remain as they were. 
 
 All my proposals for meeting the useless waste and drain 
 upon our artistic capital by a more methodical arrangement, 
 met with the same success in every detail that I suggested. 
 I had also found out by long experience that every proposal 
 which had to be discussed and decided upon in the most tiring 
 committee meetings, as for instance the starting of a reper- 
 toire, might at any moment be overthrown and altered for the, 
 worse by the temper of a singer or the plan of a junior business 
 inspector. I was therefore driven to renounce my wasted 
 efforts and, after many a stormy discussion and outspoken 
 expression of my sentiments, I withdrew from taking any 
 part whatever in any branch of the management, and limited 
 myself entirely to holding rehearsals and conducting perform- 
 ances of the operas provided for me.
 
 WORK ON LOHENGRIN 415 
 
 Although my relations with Liittichau grew more and more 
 strained on this account, for the time being it mattered little 
 whether my conduct pleased him or not, as otherwise my posi- 
 tion was one which commanded respect, on account of the 
 ever-increasing popularity of Tannhduser and Rienzi, which 
 were presented during the summer to houses packed with dis- 
 tinguished visitors, and were invariably chosen for the gala 
 performances. 
 
 By thus going my own way and refusing to be interfered 
 with, I succeeded this summer, amid the delightful and per- 
 fect seclusion of my new home, in preserving myself in a frame 
 of mind exceedingly favourable to the completion of my Lohen- 
 grin. My studies, which, as I have already mentioned, I pur- 
 sued eagerly at the same time as I was working on my opera, 
 made me feel more light-hearted than I had ever done before. 
 For the first time I now mastered ^Eschylus with real feeling 
 and understanding. Droysen's eloquent commentaries in par- 
 ticular helped to bring before my imagination the intoxicating 
 effect of the production of an Athenian tragedy, so that I 
 could see the Oresteia with my -mind's eye, as though it were 
 actually being performed, and its effect upon me was inde- 
 scribable. Nothing, however, could equal the sublime emotion 
 with which the Agamemnon trilogy inspired me, and to the 
 last word of the Eumenides I lived in an atmosphere so far 
 removed from the present day that I have never since been 
 really able to reconcile myself with modern literature. My 
 ideas about the whole significance of the drama and of the 
 theatre were, without a doubt, moulded by these impressions. 
 I worked my way through the other tragedians, and finally 
 reached Aristophanes. When I had spent the morning indus- 
 triously upon the completion of the music for Lohengrin, I 
 used to creep into the depths of a thick shrubbery in my part 
 of the garden to get shelter from the summer heat, which was 
 becoming more intense every day. My delight in the comedies 
 of Aristophanes was boundless, when once his Birds had 
 plunged me into the full torrent of the genius of this wanton 
 favourite of the Graces, as he used to call himself with conscious 
 daring. Side by side with this poet I read the principal dia- 
 logues of Plato, and from the Symposium I gained such a
 
 416 MY LIFE 
 
 insight into the wonderful beauty of Greek life that I felt 
 myself more truly at home in ancient Athens than in any 
 conditions which the modern world has to offer. 
 
 As I was following out a settled course of self-education, 
 I did not wish to pursue my way further in the leading-strings 
 of any literary history, and I consequently turned my attention 
 from the historical studies, which seemed to be my own peculiar 
 province, and in which department Droysen's history of 
 Alexander and the Hellenistic period, as well as Niebuhr and 
 Gibbon, were of great help to me, and fell back once more 
 upon my old and trusty guide, Jakob Grimm, for the study 
 of German aniquity. In my efforts to master the myths of 
 Germany more thoroughly than had been possible in my former 
 perusal of the Nibelung and the Heldenbuch, Mone's particu- 
 larly suggestive commentary on this Heldensage filled me with 
 delight, although stricter scholars regarded this work with sus- 
 picion on account of the boldness of some of its statements. 
 By this means I was drawn irresistibly to the northern sagas; 
 and I now tried, as far as was possible without a fluent knowl- 
 edge of the Scandinavian languages, to acquaint myself with 
 the Edda, as well as with the prose version which existed of a 
 considerable portion of the Heldensage. 
 
 Read by the light of Mone's Commentaries, the Wolsungasaga 
 had a decided influence upon my method of handling this ma- 
 terial. My conceptions as to the inner significance of these 
 old-world legends, which had been growing for a long time, 
 gradually gained strength and moulded themselves with the 
 plastic forms which inspired my later works. 
 
 All this was sinking into my mind and slowly maturing, 
 whilst with unfeigned delight I was finishing the music of the 
 first two acts of Lohengrin, which were now at last completed. 
 I now succeeded in shutting out the past and building up for 
 myself a new world of the future, which presented itself with 
 ever-growing clearness to my mind as the refuge whither I 
 might retreat from all the miseries of modern opera and theatre 
 life. At the same time, my health and temper were settling 
 down into a mood of almost unclouded serenity, which made 
 me oblivious for a long time of all the worries of my position. 
 I used to walk every day up into the neighbouring hills, which
 
 LOHENGRIN COMPLETED 417 
 
 rose from the banks of the Elbe to the Plauenscher Grand. 
 I generally went alone, except for the company of our little 
 dog Peps, and my excursions always resulted in producing 
 a satisfactory number of ideas. At the same time, I found I 
 had developed a capacity, which I had never possessed before, 
 for good-tempered intercourse with the friends and acquaint- 
 ances who liked to come from time to time to the Marcolini 
 garden to share my simple supper. My visitors used often to 
 find me perched on a high branch of a tree, or on the neck of 
 the Neptune which was the central figure of a large group of 
 statuary in the middle of an old fountain, unfortunately always 
 dry, belonging to the palmy days of the Marcolini estate. I 
 used to enjoy walking with my friends up and down the broad 
 footpath of the drive leading to the real palace, which had 
 been laid especially for Napoleon in the fatal year 1813, when 
 he had fixed his headquarters there. 
 
 By August, the last month of summer, I had completely 
 finished the composition of Lohengrin, and felt that it was 
 high time for me to have done so, as the needs of my position 
 demanded imperatively that I should give my most serious 
 attention to improving it, and it became a matter of supreme 
 importance for me once more to take steps for having my operas 
 produced in the German theatres. 
 
 Even the success of Tannhduser in Dresden, which became 
 more obvious every day, did not attract the smallest notice 
 anywhere else. Berlin was the only place which had any 
 influence in the theatrical world of Germany, and I ought long 
 before to have given my undivided attention to that city. 
 From all I had heard of the special tastes of Friedrich 
 Wilhelm IV., I felt perfectly justified in assuming that he 
 would feel sympathetically inclined towards my later works and 
 conceptions if I could only manage to bring them to his notice 
 in the right light. On this hypothesis I had already thought 
 of dedicating Tannhduser to him, and to gain permission to do 
 so I had to apply to Count Redern, the court musical director. 
 From him I heard that the King could only accept the dedi- 
 cation of works which had actually been performed in his 
 presence, and of which he thus had a personal knowledge. 
 As my Tannhduser had been refused by the managers of the
 
 418 MY LIFE 
 
 court theatre because it was considered too epic in form, the 
 Count added that if I wished to remain firm in my resolve, 
 there was only one way out of the difficulty, and that was to 
 adapt my opera as far as possible to a military band, and try 
 to bring it to the King's notice on parade. This drove me to 
 determine upon another plan of attack on Berlin. 
 
 After this experience I saw that I must open my campaign 
 there with the opera that had won the most decided triumph 
 in Dresden. I therefore obtained an audience of the Queen 
 of Saxony, the sister of the King of Prussia, and begged her 
 to use her influence with her brother to obtain a performance 
 in Berlin by royal command of my Rienzi, which was also 
 a favourite with the court of Saxony. This manoeuvre was 
 successful, and I soon received a communication from my old 
 friend Kiistner to say that the production of Rienzi was fixed 
 for a very early date at the Berlin Court Theatre, and at the 
 same time expressing the hope that I would conduct my work 
 in person. As a very handsome author's royalty had been 
 paid by this theatre, at the instigation of Kiistner, on the 
 occasion of the production of his old Munich friend Lachner's 
 opera, Katharina von Cornaro, I hoped to realise a very sub- 
 stantial improvement in my finances if only the success of 
 Rienzi in this city in any degree rivalled that in Dresden. But 
 my chief desire was to make the acquaintance of the King of 
 Prussia, so that I might read him the text of my Lohengrin, 
 and arouse his interest in my work. This from various signs 
 I flattered myself was perfectly possible, in which case I in- 
 tended to beg him to command the first performance of 
 Lohengrin to be given at his court theatre. 
 
 After my strange experiences as to the way in which my 
 success in Dresden had been kept secret from the rest of Ger- 
 many, it seemed to me a matter of vital importance to make 
 the future centre of my artistic enterprises the only place 
 which exercised any influence on the outside world, and as 
 such I was forced to regard Berlin. Inspired by the success 
 of my recommendation to the Queen of Prussia, I hoped to gain 
 access to the King himself, which I regarded as a most im- 
 portant step. Full of confidence, and in excellent spirits, I set 
 out for Berlin in September, trusting to a favourable turn of
 
 BERLIN 419 
 
 Fortune's wheel, in the first place for the rehearsals of Rienzi, 
 though my interests were no longer centred in this work. 
 
 Berlin made the same impression on me as on the occasion 
 of my former visit, when I saw it again after my long absence 
 in Paris. Professor Werder, my friend of the Fliegender 
 Hollander, had taken lodgings for me in advance in the re- 
 nowned Gensdarmeplatz, but when I looked at the view from my 
 windows every day I could not believe that I was in a city which 
 was the very centre of Germany. Soon, however, I was com- 
 pletely absorbed by the cares of the task I had in hand. 
 
 I had nothing to complain of with regard to the official pre- 
 parations for Rienzi, but I soon noticed that it was looked 
 upon merely as a conductor's opera, that is to say, all the 
 materials to hand were duly placed at my disposal, but the 
 management had not the slightest intention of doing anything 
 more for me. All the arrangements for my rehearsals were 
 entirely upset as soon as a visit from Jenny Lind was announced, 
 and she occupied the Royal Opera exclusively for some time. 
 
 During the delay thus caused I did all I could to attain my 
 main object an introduction to the King and for this pur- 
 pose made use of my former acquaintance with the court musical 
 director, Count Redern. This gentleman received me at once 
 with the greatest affability, invited me to dinner and a soiree, 
 and entered into a hearty discussion with me about the steps 
 necessary for attaining my purpose, in which he promised to 
 do his utmost to help me. I also paid frequent visits to Sans- 
 Souci, in order to pay my respects to the Queen and express 
 my thanks to her. But I never got further than an interview 
 with the ladies-in-waiting, and I was advised to put myself 
 into communication with M. Illaire, the head of the Royal 
 Privy Council. This gentleman seemed to be impressed by 
 the seriousness of my request, and promised to do what he 
 could to further my wish for a personal introduction to the 
 King. He asked what my real object was, and I told him it 
 was to get permission from the King to read my libretto 
 Lohengrin to him. On the occasion of one of my oft-repeated 
 visits from Berlin, he asked me whether I did not think it 
 would be advisable to bring a recommendation of my work 
 from Tieck. I was able to tell him that I had already had the
 
 420 MY LIFE 
 
 pleasure of bringing my case to the notice of the old poet, who 
 lived near Potsdam as a royal pensioner. 
 
 I remembered very well that Frau von Liittichau had sent 
 the themes Lohengrin and Tannh'duser to her old friend some 
 years ago, when these matters were first mentioned between 
 us. When I called upon Tieck, I was welcomed by him almost 
 as a friend, and I found my long talks with him exceedingly 
 valuable. Although Tieck had perhaps gained a somewhat 
 doubtful reputation for the leniency with which he would give 
 his recommendation for the dramatic works of those who applied 
 to him, yet I was pleased by the genuine disgust with which 
 he spoke of our latest dramatic literature, which was modelling 
 itself on the style of modern French stagecraft, and his com- 
 plaint at the utter lack of any true poetic feeling in it was 
 heartfelt He declared himself delighted with my poem of 
 Lohengrin, but could not understand how all this was to be 
 set to music without a complete change in the conventional 
 structure of an opera, and on this score he objected to such 
 scenes as that between Ortrud and Frederick at the beginning 
 of the second act. I thought I had roused him to a real 
 enthusiasm when I explained how I proposed to solve these 
 apparent difficulties, and also described my own ideals about 
 musical drama. But the higher I soared the sadder he grew 
 when I had once made known to him my hope of securing the 
 patronage of the King of Prussia for these conceptions, and the 
 working out of my scheme for an ideal drama. He had no 
 doubt that the King would listen to me with the greatest 
 interest, and even seize upon my ideas with warmth, only I 
 must not entertain the smallest hope of any practical result, 
 unless I wished to expose myself to the bitterest disappoint- 
 ment. ' What can you expect from a man who to-day is 
 enthusiastic about Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris, and to-morrow 
 mad about Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia? ' he said. Tieck's 
 conversation about these and similar topics was much too 
 entertaining and charming for me to give any serious weight 
 to the bitterness of his views. He gladly promised to recom- 
 mend my poem, more particularly to Privy Councillor Illaire, 
 and dismissed me with hearty goodwill and his sincere though 
 anxious blessing.
 
 RIENZI UNSUCCESSFUL IN BERLIN 421 
 
 The only result of all my labours was that the desired 
 invitation from the King still hung fire. As the rehearsals 
 for Rienteif which had been postponed on account of Jenny 
 Lind's visit, were being carried on seriously again, I made up 
 my mind to take no further trouble before the performance of 
 my opera, as I thought myself, at any rate, justified in counting 
 on the presence of the monarch on the first night, as the piece 
 was being played at his express command, and at the same time 
 I hoped this would conduce to the fulfilment of my main object 
 However, the nearer we came to the event the lower did the 
 hopes I had built upon it sink. To play the part of the hero 
 I had to be satisfied with a tenor who was absolutely devoid 
 of talent, and far below the average. He was a conscientious, 
 painstaking man, and had moreover been strongly recommended 
 to me by my kind host, the renowned Meinhard. After I had 
 taken infinite pains with him, and had in consequence, as so 
 often happens, conjured up in my mind certain illusions as 
 to what I might expect from his acting, I was obliged, when 
 it came to the final test of the dress rehearsal, to confess my 
 true opinion. I realised that the scenery, chorus, ballet, and 
 minor parts were on the whole excellent, but that the chief 
 character, around whom in this particular opera everything 
 centred, faded into an insignificant phantom. The reception 
 which this opera met with at the hands of the public when it 
 was produced in October was also due to him; but in conse- 
 quence of the fairly good rendering of a few brilliant passages, 
 and more especially on account of the enthusiastic recognition 
 of Frau Koster in the part of Adriano, it might have been 
 concluded from all the external signs that the opera had been 
 fairly successful. Nevertheless, I knew very well that this 
 seeming triumph could have no real substance, as only the 
 immaterial parts of my work could reach the eyes and ears of 
 ;he audience; its essential spirit had not entered their hearts. 
 Moreover, the Berlin reviewers in their usual way began their 
 attacks immediately, with the view of demolishing any success 
 my opera might have won, so that after the second performance, 
 which I also conducted myself, I began to wonder whether my 
 desperate labours were really worth while. 
 
 When I asked the few intimate friends I had their opinion on
 
 422 MY LIFE 
 
 this point, I elicited much valuable information. Among these 
 friends I must mention, in the first place, Hermann Franck, 
 whom I found again. He had lately settled in Berlin, and did 
 much to encourage me. I spent the most enjoyable part of 
 those sad two months in his company, of which, however, I 
 had but too little. Our conversation generally turned upon 
 reminiscences of the old days, and on to topics which had no 
 connection with the theatre, so that I was almost ashamed to 
 trouble him with my complaints on this subject, especially as 
 they concerned my worries about a work which I could not 
 pretend was of any practical importance to the stage. He for 
 his part soon arrived at the conclusion that it had been foolish 
 of me to choose my Rienzi for this occasion, as it was an opera 
 which appealed merely to the general public, in preference to 
 my Tannhauser, which might have educated a party in Berlin 
 useful to my higher aims. He maintained that the very nature 
 of this work would have aroused a fresh interest in the drama 
 in the minds of people who, like himself, were no longer to 
 be counted among regular theatre-goers, precisely because they 
 had given up all hope of ever finding any nobler ideals of the 
 stage. 
 
 The curious information as to the character of Berlin art 
 in other respects, which Werder gave me from time to time, 
 was most discouraging. With regard to the public, he told 
 me once that at a performance of an unknown work, it was 
 quite useless for me to expect a single member of the audience 
 from the stalls to the gallery to take his seat with any better 
 object in view than to pick as many holes as possible in the 
 production. Although Werder did not wish to discourage me 
 in any of my endeavours, he felt himself obliged to warn me 
 continually not to expect anything above the average from 
 the cultured society of Berlin. He liked to see proper respect 
 paid to the really considerable gifts of the King; and when 
 I asked him how he thought the latter would receive my ideas 
 about the ennobling of opera, he answered, after having listened 
 attentively to a long and fiery tirade on my part : ' The King 
 would say to you, " Go and consult Stawinsky ! " This was 
 the opera manager, a fat, smug creature who had grown rusty 
 in following out the most jog-trot routine. In short, every-
 
 COUNTESS ROSSI 423 
 
 thing I learned was calculated to discourage me. I called on 
 Bernhard Marx, who some years ago had shown a kindly in- 
 terest in my Fliegender Hollander, and was courteously received 
 by him. This man, who in his earlier writings and musical 
 criticisms had seemed to me filled with a fire of energy, now 
 struck me as extraordinarily limp and listless when I saw him 
 by the side of his young wife, who was radiantly and bewitch- 
 ingly beautiful. From his conversation I soon learned that he 
 also had abandoned even the remotest hope of success for 
 any efforts directed towards the object so dear to both our 
 hearts, on account of the inconceivable shallowness of all the 
 officials connected with the head authority. He told me of 
 the extraordinary fate which had befallen a scheme he had 
 brought to the notice of the King for founding a school of 
 music. In a special audience the King had gone into the 
 matter with the greatest interest, and noticed the minutest 
 detail, so that Marx felt justified in entertaining the strongest 
 possible hopes of success. However, all his labours and negoti- 
 ations about the business, in the course of which he was driven 
 from pillar to post, proved utterly futile, until at last he was 
 told to have an interview with a certain general. This per- 
 sonage, like the King, had Marx's proposals explained to him in 
 the minutest detail, and expressed his warmest sympathy with 
 the undertaking. ' And there,' said Marx, at the end of this 
 long rigmarole, ' the matter ended, and I never heard another 
 word about it.' 
 
 One day I learned that Countess Rossi, the renowned 
 Henriette Sontag, who was living in quiet seclusion in Berlin, 
 had pleasant recollections of me in Dresden, and wished me to 
 visit her. She had at this time already fallen into the un- 
 fortunate position which was so detrimental to her artistic 
 career. She too complained bitterly of the general apathy of 
 the influential classes in Berlin, which effectually prevented 
 any artistic aims from being realised. It was her opinion that 
 the King found a sort of satisfaction in knowing that the theatre 
 was badly managed, for though he never opposed any criticisms 
 which he received on the subject, he likewise never supported 
 any proposal for its improvement. She expressed a wish to 
 know something of my latest work, and I gave her my poem of
 
 424 MY LIFE 
 
 Lohengrin for perusal. On the occasion of my next morning 
 call she told me she would send me an invitation to a musical 
 evening which she was going to have at her house in honour 
 of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, her elderly patron, 
 and she also gave me back the manuscript of Lohengrin, with 
 the assurance that it had appealed to her very much, and that 
 while she was reading it she had often seen the little fairies 
 and elves dancing about in front of her. As in the old days 
 I had been heartily encouraged by the warm and friendly 
 sympathy of this naturally cultured woman, I now felt as if 
 cold water had been suddenly poured down my back. I soon 
 took my leave, and never saw her again. Indeed, I had no par- 
 ticular object in doing so, as the promised invitation never 
 came. Herr E. Kossak also sought me out, and although our 
 acquaintance did not lead to much, I was sufficiently kindly 
 received by him to give him my poem of Lohengrin to read. I 
 went one day by appointment to see him, and found that his 
 room had just been scrubbed with boiling water. The steam 
 from this operation was so unbearable that it had already given 
 him a headache, and was not less disagreeable to me. He 
 looked into my face with an almost tender expression when he 
 gave me back the manuscript of my poem, and assured me, 
 in accents which admitted of no doubt of his sincerity, that 
 he thought it ' very pretty.' 
 
 I found my casual intercourse with H. Truhn rather more 
 entertaining. I used to treat him to a good glass of wine at 
 Lutter and Wegener's, where I went occasionally on account of 
 its association with Hoffmann, and he would then listen with 
 apparently growing interest to my ideas as to the possible 
 development of opera and the goal at which we should aim. 
 His comments were generally witty and very much to the point, 
 and his lively and animated ways pleased me very much. 
 After the production of Rienzi, however, he too, as a critic, 
 joined the majority of scoffers and detractors. The only 
 person who supported me stoutly but uselessly, through thick 
 and thin, was my old friend Gaillard. His little music-shop 
 was not a success, his musical journal had already failed, so 
 that he was only able to help me in small ways. Unfortunately 
 I discovered not only that he was the author of many exceedingly
 
 MEYERBEER IN BERLIN 425 
 
 dubious dramatic works, for which he wished to gain my sup- 
 port, but also that he was apparently in the last stages of the 
 disease from which he was suffering, so that the little inter- 
 course I had with him, in spite of all his fidelity and devotion, 
 only exercised a melancholy and depressing influence upon me. 
 
 But as I had embarked upon this Berlin enterprise in contra- 
 diction to all my inmost wishes, and prompted solely by the 
 desire of winning the success so vital to my position, I made 
 up my mind to make a personal appeal to Rellstab. 
 
 As in the case of the Fliegender Hollander he had taken ex- 
 ception more particularly to its ( nebulousness ' and ' lack of 
 form/ I thought I might with advantage point out to him the 
 brighter and clearer outline of Rienzi. He seemed to be pleased 
 at my thinking I could get anything out of him, but told me at 
 once-o-f -his firm conviction that any new art form was utterly 
 impossible after Gluck, and that the only thing that the best 9f 
 good luok and hard work was capable of producing was mean- 
 ingless bombasL I then realised that in Berlin all hope had 
 been abandoned. I was told that Meyerbeer was the only man 
 who had been able in any way to master the situation. 
 
 This former patron of mine I met once more in Berlin, and 
 he declared that he still took an interest in me. As soon as 
 I arrived I called on him, but in the hall I found his servant 
 busy packing up trunks, and learned that Meyerbeer was just 
 going away. His master confirmed this assertion, and regretted 
 that he would not be able to do anything for me, so I had to 
 say good-bye and how-do-you-do at the same time. For some 
 time I thought he really was away, but after a few weeks 
 I learned to my surprise that he was still staying in Berlin 
 without letting himself be seen by any one, and at last he 
 made his appearance again at one of the rehearsals of Rienzi. 
 What this meant I only discovered later from a rumour which 
 was circulated among the initiated, and imparted to me by 
 Eduard von Billow, my young friend's father. Without having 
 the slightest idea how it originated, I learned, about the middle 
 of my stay in Berlin, from the conductor Taubert, that he had 
 heard on very good authority that I was trying for a director's 
 post at the court theatre, and had good expectations of se- 
 curing the appointment in addition to special privileges. In
 
 426 MY LIFE 
 
 order to remain on good terms with Taubert, as it was very 
 necessary for me to do, I had to give him the most solemn 
 assurances that such an idea had never even entered my head, 
 and that I would not accept such a position if it were offered 
 to me. On the other hand, all my endeavours to get access to 
 the King continued to be fruitless. My chief mediator, to 
 whom I always turned, was still Count Redern, and although 
 my attention had been called to his staunch adherence to 
 Meyerbeer, his extraordinary open and friendly manner always 
 strengthened my belief in his honesty. At last the only 
 medium that remained open to me was the fact that the King 
 could not possibly stay away from the performance of Rienzi, 
 given at his express command, and on this conviction I based 
 all further hope of approaching him. Whereupon Count 
 Redern informed me, with an expression of deep despair, that 
 on the very day of the first performance the monarch would 
 be away on a hunting party. Once more I begged him to 
 make very effort in his power to secure the King's presence, 
 at least at the second performance, and at length my inex- 
 haustible patron told me that he could not make head or tail 
 of it, but his Majesty seemed to have conceived an utter dis- 
 inclination to accede to my wish; he himself had heard these 
 hard words fall from the royal lips : ' Oh bother ! have you 
 come to me again with your Rienzi ? ' 
 
 At this second performance I had a pleasant experience. 
 After the impressive second act the public showed signs of 
 wishing to call me, and as I went from the orchestra to the 
 vestibule, in order to be ready if necessary, my foot slipped 
 on the smooth parquet, and I might have had perhaps a serious 
 fall had I not felt my arm prasped by a strong hand. I turned, 
 and recognised the Crown Prince of Prussia, 1 who had come out 
 of his box, and who at once seized the opportunity of inviting 
 me to follow him to his wife, who wished to make my acquaint- 
 ance. She had only just arrived in Berlin, and told me that 
 she had heard my opera for the first time that evening, and 
 
 1 This Prince subsequently became the Emperor William the First. He was 
 given the title of Crown Prince in 1840 on the death of his father, Frederick 
 William III., as he was then heir-presumptive to his brother, Frederick William 
 IV., whose marriage was without issue. EDITOR. 

 
 SAD DEPARTURE FROM BERLIN 427 
 
 expressed her appreciation of it She had, however, long ago 
 received very favourable reports of me and my artistic aims 
 from a common friend, Alwine Frommann. The whole tenor 
 of this interview, at which the Prince was present, was un- 
 usually friendly and pleasant. 
 
 It was indeed my old friend Alwine who in Berlin had not 
 only followed all my fortunes with the greatest sympathy, 
 but had also done all in her power to give me consolation and ' 
 courage to endure. Almost every evening, when the day's * JL 
 business made it possible, I used to visit her for an hour of \ 
 recreation, and gain strength from her ennobling conversation \(A^ 
 for the struggle against the reverses of the following day. I \ 
 was particularly pleased by the warm and intelligent sympathy 
 which she and our mutual friend Werder devoted to Lohengrin, 
 the object of all my labours at that time. On the arrival of 
 her friend and patroness, the Crown Princess^ w r hich had been 
 delayed till now, she hoped to hear something more definite 
 as to how my affairs stood with the King, although she inti- 
 mated to me that even this great lady was in deep disfavour, 
 and could only bring her influence to bear upon the King by 
 observing the strictest etiquette. But from this source also 
 no news reached me till it was time for me to leave Berlin 
 and I could postpone my departure no longer. 
 
 As I had to conduct a third performance of Rienzi, and 
 there still remained a remote possibility of receiving a sudden 
 command to Sans-Souci, I accordingly fixed on a date which 
 would be the very latest I could wait to ascertain the fate of 
 the projects I had nearest to heart. This period passed by, 
 and I was forced to realise that my hopes of Berlin were wholly 
 shattered. 
 
 I was in a very depressed state when I made up my mind 
 to this conclusion. I can seldom remember having been so 
 dreadfully affected by the influence of cold and wet weather 
 and an eternally grey sky as during those last wretched weeks 
 in Berlin, when everything that I heard, in addition to my 
 own private anxieties, weighed upon me with a leaden weight 
 of discouragement. 
 
 My conversations with Hermann Franck about the social 
 and political situation had assumed a peculiarly gloomy tone,
 
 428 MY LIFE 
 
 as the King of Prussia's efforts to summon a united conference 
 had failed. I was among those who had at first been inclined 
 to see a hopeful significance in this undertaking, but it was a 
 shock to have all the intimate details relating to the project 
 clearly set before me by so well informed a man as Franck. 
 His dispassionate views on this subject, as well as on the 
 Prussian State in particular, which was supposed to be repre- 
 sentative of German intelligence, and was universally considered 
 to be a model of order and good government, so completely dis- 
 illusioned me and destroyed all the favourable and hopeful 
 opinions I had formed of it, that I felt as if I had plunged 
 into chaos, and realised the utter futility of expecting a pros- 
 perous settlement of the German question from this quarter. 
 If in the midst of my misery in Dresden I had founded great 
 hopes from gaining the King of Prussia's sympathy for my 
 ideas, I could no longer close my eyes to the fearful hollowness 
 which the state of affairs disclosed to me on every side. 
 
 In this despairing mood I felt but little emotion when, on 
 going to say good-bye to Count Redern, he told me with a 
 very sad face the news, which had just arrived, of Mendelssohn's 
 death. I certainly did not realise this stroke of fate, which 
 Redern's obvious grief first brought to my notice. At all 
 events, he was spared more detailed and heartfelt explanation 
 of my own affairs, which he had so much at heart. 
 
 The only thing that remained for me to do in Berlin was to 
 try and make my material success balance my material loss. 
 For a stay of two months, during which my wife and my sister 
 Clara had been with me, lured on by the hope that the pro- 
 duction of Rienzi in Berlin would be a brilliant success, I found 
 my old friend, Director Kiistner, by no means inclined to com- 
 pensate me. From his correspondence with me he could prove 
 up to the hilt that legally he had only expressed the desire for 
 my co-operation in studying Rienzi, but had given me no posi- 
 tive invitation. As I was prevented by Count Redern's grief 
 over Mendelssohn's death from going to him for help in these 
 trivial private concerns, there was no alternative but for me to 
 accept with a good grace Kiistner's beneficence in paying me 
 on the spot the royalties on the three performances which had 
 already taken place. The Dresden authorities were surprised
 
 RETURN TO DRESDEN 429 
 
 when I found myself obliged to beg an advance of income from 
 them in order to conclude this brilliant undertaking in Berlin. 
 
 As I was travelling with my wife in the most horrible (^ 
 weather through the deserted country on my way home, I fell 
 into a mood of the blackest despair, which I thought I might 
 perhaps survive once in a lifetime but never again. Neverthe- 
 less, it amused me, as I sat silently looking out of the carriage 
 into the grey mist, to hear my wife enter into a lively dis- 
 cussion with a commercial traveller who, in the course of 
 friendly conversation, had spoken in a disparaging way about 
 the l new opera Rienzi.' My wife, with great heat and even 
 passion, corrected various mistakes made by this hostile critic, 
 and to her great satisfaction made him confess that he had 
 not heard the opera himself, but had only based his opinion 
 upon hearsay and the reviews. Whereupon my wife pointed out 
 to him most earnestly that ' he could not possibly know whose 
 future he might not injure by such irresponsible comment.' 
 
 These were the only cheering and consoling impressions which 
 I carried back with me to Dresden, where I soon felt the 
 direct results of the reverses I had suffered in Berlin in the 
 condolences of my acquaintances. The papers had spread 
 abroad the news that my opera had been a dismal failure. 
 The most painful part of the whole proceeding was that I had 
 to meet these expressions of pity with a cheerful countenance 
 and the assurance that things were by no means so bad as had 
 been made out, but that, on the contrary, I had had many 
 pleasant experiences. 
 
 This unaccustomed effort placed me in a position strangely 
 similar to that in which I found Hiller on my return to Dresden. 
 He had given a performance of his new opera, Conradin von 
 Holienstaufen, here just about this time. He had kept the 
 composition of this work a secret from me, and had hoped to 
 make a decided hit with it after the three performances which 
 took place in my absence. Both the poet and the composer 
 thought that in this work they had combined the tendencies 
 and effects of my Rienzi with those of my Tannliduser in a 
 manner peculiarly suited to the Dresden public. As he was 
 just setting out for Diisseldorf, where he had been appointed 
 concert-director, he commended his work with great confidence 

 
 430 MY LIFE 
 
 to my tender mercies, and regretted not having the power of 
 appointing me the conductor of it. He acknowledged that he 
 owed his great success partly to the wonderfully happy render- 
 ing of the male part of Conradin by my niece Johanna. She, 
 in her turn, told me with equal confidence that without her 
 Hiller's opera would not have had such an extraordinary 
 triumph. I was now really anxious to see this fortunate work 
 and its wonderful staging for myself; and this I was able 
 to do, as a fourth performance was announced after Hiller and 
 his family had left Dresden for good. When I entered the 
 theatre at the beginning of the overture to take my place in 
 the stalls, I was astonished to find all the seats, with a few 
 scarcely noticeable exceptions, absolutely empty. At the other 
 end of my row I saw the poet who had written the libretto, 
 the gentle painter Reinike. We moved, naturally, towards the 
 middle of the space and discussed the strange position in which 
 we found ourselves. He poured out melancholy complaints 
 to me about Hiller's musical setting to his poetry; the secret 
 of the mistake which Hiller had made about the success of 
 his work he did not explain, and was evidently very much 
 upset at the conspicuous failure of the opera. It was from 
 another quarter that I learned how it had been possible for 
 Hiller to deceive himself in such an extraordinary way. Frau 
 Hiller, who was of Polish origin, had managed at the frequent 
 Polish gatherings which took place in Dresden to persuade a 
 large contingent of her countrymen, who were keen theatre- 
 goers, to attend her husband's opera. On the first night these 
 friends, with their usual enthusiasm, incited the public to 
 applaud, but had themselves found so little pleasure in the 
 work that they had stayed away from the second performance, 
 which was otherwise badly attended, so that the opera could 
 only be considered a failure. By commandeering all the help 
 that could possibly be got from the Poles by way of applause, 
 every effort was made to secure a third performance on a Sun- 
 day, when the theatre generally filled of its own accord. This 
 object was achieved, and the Polish theatre aristocracy, with 
 the charity that was habitual to them, fulfilled their duty 
 towards the needy couple in whose drawing-room they had 
 often spent such pleasant evenings.
 
 APPLICATION FOE A HIGHER SALARY 431 
 
 Once more the composer was called before the curtain, and 
 everything went off well. Hiller thereupon placed his confi- 
 dence in the verdict on the third performance, according to 
 which his opera was an undoubted success, just as had been 
 the case with my Tannhauser. The artificiality of this pro- 
 ceeding was, however, exposed by this fourth performance, 
 at which I was present, and at which no one was under an 
 obligation to the departed composer to attend. Even my 
 niece was disgusted with it, and thought that the best singer 
 in the world could not make a success of such a tedious opera. 
 Whilst we were watching this miserable performance I man- 
 aged to point out to the poet some weaknesses and faults that 
 were to be found in the subject-matter. The latter reported 
 my criticisms to Hiller, whereupon I received a warm and 
 friendly letter from Diisseldorf, in which Hiller acknowledged 
 the mistake he had made in rejecting my advice on this point. 
 He gave me plainly to understand that it was not too late to 
 alter the opera according to my suggestions; I should thus 
 have had the inestimable benefit of having such an obviously 
 well-intentioned, and, in its way, so significant, a work in the 
 repertoire, but I never got so far as that. 
 
 On the other hand, I experienced the small satisfaction of 
 hearing the news that two performances of my Rienzi had 
 taken place in Berlin, for the success of which Conductor 
 Taubert, as he informed me himself, thought he had won some 
 credit on account of the extremely effective combinations he 
 had arranged. In spite of this, I was absolutely convinced that 
 I must abandon all hope of any lasting and profitable success 
 from Berlin, and I could no longer hide from Liittichau that, 
 if I were to continue in the discharge of my duties with the 
 necessary good spirits, I must insist on a rise of salary, as, 
 beyond my regular income, I could not rely on any substantial 
 success wherewith to meet my unlucky publishing transactions. 
 My income was so small that I could not even live on it, but 
 I asked nothing more than to be placed on an equal footing 
 with my colleague Reissiger, a prospect which had been held 
 out to me from the beginning. 
 
 At this juncture Liittichau saw a favourable opportunity 
 for making me feel my dependence on his goodwill, which
 
 432 MY LIFE 
 
 could only be secured by my showing due deference to his 
 wishes. After I had laid my case before the King, at a per- 
 sonal interview, and asked for the favour of the moderate in- 
 crease in income which was my object, Liittichau promised to 
 make the report he was obliged to give of me as favourable as 
 possible. How great was my consternation and humiliation 
 when one day he opened our interview by telling me that his 
 report had come back from the King. In it was set forth 
 that I had unfortunately overestimated my talent on account 
 of the foolish praise of various friends in a high position 
 (among whom he counted Fran v. Konneritz), and had thus 
 been led to consider that I had quite as good a right to success 
 as Meyerbeer. I had thereby caused such serious offence that it 
 might, perhaps, be considered advisable to dismiss me altogether. 
 On the other hand, my industry and my praiseworthy perform- 
 ance with regard to the revision of Gluck's Iphigenia, which 
 had been brought to the notice of the management, might 
 justify my being given another chance, in which case my 
 material condition must be given due consideration. At this 
 point I could read no further, and stupefied by surprise I gave 
 my patron back the paper. He tried at once to remove the 
 obviously bad impression it had made upon me by telling me 
 that my wish had been granted, and I could draw the nine 
 hundred marks belonging to me at once from the bank. I 
 took my leave in silence, and pondered over what course of 
 action I must pursue in face of this disgrace, as it was quite 
 out of the question for me to accept the nine hundred marks. 
 
 But in the midst of these adversities a visit of the King of 
 Prussia to Dresden was one day announced, and at the same 
 time by his special request a performance of Tannhduser was 
 arranged. He really did make his appearance in the theatre 
 at this performance in the company of the royal family of 
 Saxony, and stayed with apparent interest from beginning to 
 end. On this occasion the King gave a curious explanation 
 for having stayed away from the performances of Rienzi in 
 Berlin, which was afterwards reported to me. He said he had 
 denied himself the pleasure of hearing one of my operas in 
 Berlin, because it was important to get a good impression of 
 them, and he knew that in his own theatre they would only
 
 ORCHESTRAL CONCERTS (1848) 433 
 
 be badly produced. This strange event had, at any rate, the 
 result of giving me back sufficient self-confidence to accept the 
 nine hundred marks of which I was in such desperate need. 
 
 Liittichau also seemed to make a point of winning back my 
 trust to some extent, and I gathered from his calm friendliness 
 that I must suppose this wholly uncultured man had no con- 
 sciousness of the outrage he had done me. He returned to the 
 idea of having orchestral concerts, in accordance with the sug- 
 gestions I had made in my rejected report on the orchestra, 
 and in order to induce me to arrange such musical performances 
 in the theatre, said the initiative had come from the manage- 
 ment and not from the orchestra itself. As soon as I discovered 
 that the profits were to go to the orchestra I willingly entered 
 into the plan. By a special device of my own the stage 
 of the theatre was made into a concert-hall (afterwards con- 
 sidered first-class) by means of a sounding board enclosing the 
 whole orchestra, which proved a great success. In future six 
 performances were to take place during the winter months. 
 This time, however, as it was the end of the year, and we only 
 had the second half of the winter before us, subscription tickets 
 were issued for only three concerts, and the whole available 
 space in the theatre was filled by the public. I found the 
 preparations for this fairly diverting, and entered upon the 
 fateful year 1848 in a rather more reconciled and amiable 
 frame of mind. 
 
 Early in the New Year the first of these orchestral concerts 
 took place, and brought me much popularity on account of its 
 unusual programme. I had discovered that if any real sig- 
 nificance were to be given to these concerts, in distinction to 
 those consisting of heterogeneous scraps of music of every 
 different species under the sun, and which are so opposed 
 to all serious artistic taste, we could only afford to give two 
 kinds of genuine music alternately if a good effect was to 
 be produced. Accordingly between two symphonies I placed 
 one or two longer vocal pieces, which were not to be heard 
 elsewhere, and these were the only items in the whole concert. 
 After the Mozart Symphony in D major, I made all the 
 musicians move from their places to make room for an im- 
 posing choir, which had to sing Palestrina's Stabat Mater, from
 
 434 MY LIFE 
 
 an adaptation of the original recitative, which I had carefully- 
 revised, and Bach's Motet for eight voices : Singet dem Herrn 
 ein neues Lied (' Sing unto the Lord a new song ') ; thereupon 
 I let the orchestra again take its place to play Beethoven's 
 Sinfonia Eroica, and with that to end the concert. 
 
 This success was very encouraging, and disclosed to me a 
 somewhat consoling prospect of increasing my influence as 
 musical conductor at a time when my disgust was daily grow- 
 ing stronger at the constant meddling with our opera repertoire, 
 which made me lose more and more influence as compared with 
 the wishes of my would-be prima donna niece, whom even 
 Tichatschek supported. Immediately on my return from Berlin 
 I had begun the orchestration of Lohengrin, and in all other 
 respects had given myself up to greater resignation, which 
 made me feel I could face my fate calmly, when I suddenly 
 received a very disturbing piece of news. 
 
 In the beginning of February my mother's death was an- 
 nounced to me. I at once hastened to her funeral at Leipzig, 
 and was filled with deep emotion and joy at the wonderfully 
 calm and sweet expression of her face. She had passed the 
 latter years of her life, which had before been so active and 
 restless, in cheerful ease, and at the end in peaceful and almost 
 childlike happiness. On her deathbed she exclaimed in humble 
 modesty, and with a bright smile on her face : ' Oh ! how 
 beautiful! how lovely! how divine! Why do I deserve such 
 favour ? ' It was a bitterly cold morning when we lowered the 
 coffin into the grave in the churchyard, and the hard, frozen 
 lumps of earth which we scattered on the lid, instead of the 
 customary handful of .dust, frightened me by the loud noise 
 they made. On the way home to the house of my brother- 
 in-law, Hermann Brockhaus, where the whole family were to 
 gather together for an hour, Laube, of whom my mother had 
 been very fond, was my only companion. He expressed his 
 anxiety at my unusually exhausted appearance, and when he 
 afterwards accompanied me to the station, we discussed the 
 unbearable burden which seemed to us to lie like a dead weight 
 on every noble effort made to resist the tendency of the time 
 to sink into utter worthlessness. On my return to Dresden 
 the realisation of my complete loneliness came over me for the
 
 THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION 435 
 
 first time with full consciousness, as I could not help knowing 
 that with the loss of my mother every natural bond of union 
 was loosened with my brothers and sisters, each of whom was 
 taken up with his or her own family affairs. So I plunged 
 dully and coldly into the only thing which could cheer and 
 warm me, the working out of my Lohengrin and my studies 
 of German antiquity. 
 
 Thus dawned the last days of February, which were to 
 plunge Europe once more into revolution. I was among those 
 who least expected a probable or even possible overthrow of 
 the political world. My first knowledge of such things had 
 been gained in my youth at the time of the July Revolution, 
 and the long and peaceful reaction that followed it Since then 
 I had become acquainted with Paris, and from all the signs of 
 public life which I saw there, I thought all that had occurred 
 had been merely the preliminaries of a great revolutionary 
 movement. I had been present at the erection of the forts 
 detaches around Paris, which Louis Philippe had carried out, 
 and been instructed about the strategic value of the various 
 fixed sentries scattered about Paris, and I agreed with those 
 who considered that everything was ready to make even an 
 attempt at a rising on the part of the populace of Paris quite 
 impossible. "When, therefore, the Swiss War of Separation 
 at the end of the previous year, and the successful Sicilian 
 Revolution at the beginning of the New Year, turned all men's 
 eyes in great excitement to watch the effect of these risings 
 on Paris, I did not take the slightest interest in the hopes and 
 fears which were aroused. News of the growing restlessness 
 in the French capital did indeed reach us, but I disputed 
 Rockel's belief that any significance could be attached to it. 
 I was sitting in the conductor's desk at a rehearsal of Martha 
 when, during an interval, Rockel, with the peculiar joy of being 
 in the right, brought me the news of Louis Philippe's flight, 
 and the proclamation of the Republic in Paris. This made 
 a strange and almost astonishing impression on me, although 
 at the same time the doubt as to the true significance of these 
 events made it possible for me to smile to myself. I too caught 
 the fever of excitement which had spread everywhere. The 
 German March days were coming, and from all directions ever
 
 436 MY LIFE 
 
 more alarming news kept coming in. Even within the narrow 
 confines of my native Saxony serious petitions were framed, 
 which the King withstood for a long time; even he was de- 
 ceived, in a way which he was soon to acknowledge, as to 
 the meaning of this commotion and the temper that prevailed 
 in the country. 
 
 On the evening of one of these really anxious days, when 
 the very air was heavy and full of thunder, we gave our third 
 great orchestral concert, at which the King and his court were 
 present, as on the two previous occasions. For the opening of 
 this one I had chosen Mendelssohn's Symphony in A minor, 
 which I had played on the occasion of his funeral. The mood 
 of this piece, which even in the would-be joyful phrases is 
 always tenderly melancholy, corresponded strangely with the 
 anxiety and depression of the whole audience, which was more 
 particularly accentuated in the demeanour of the royal family. 
 I did not conceal from Lipinsky, the leader of the orchestra, 
 my regret at the mistake I had made in the arrangement of 
 that day's programme, as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, also 
 in a minor key, was to follow this minor symphony. With 
 a merry twinkle in his eyes the eccentric Pole comforted me 
 by exclaiming : ' Oh, let us play only the first two movements 
 of the Symphony in C minor, then no one will know whether 
 we have played Mendelssohn in the major or the minor key/ 
 Fortunately before these two movements began, to our great 
 surprise, a loud shout was raised by some patriotic spirit in the 
 middle of the audience, who called out ' Long live the King ! ' 
 and the cry was promptly repeated with unusual enthusiasm 
 and energy on all sides. Lipinsky was perfectly right: the 
 symphony, with the passionate and stormy excitement of the 
 first theme, swelled out like a hurricane of rejoicing, and had 
 seldom produced such an effect on the audience as on that 
 night. This was the last of the newly inaugurated concerts 
 that I ever conducted in Dresden. 
 
 Shortly after this the inevitable political changes took place. 
 The King dismissed his ministry and elected a new one, con- 
 sisting partly of Liberals and partly even of really enthusiastic 
 Democrats, who at once proclaimed the well-known regulations, 
 which are the same all over the world, for founding a thoroughly
 
 SCOKE OF LOHENGRIN COMPLETED 437 
 
 democratic constitution. I was really touched by this result, 
 and by the heartfelt joy which was evident among the whole 
 population, and I would have given much to have been able 
 to gain access to the King, and convince myself of his hearty 
 confidence in the people's love for him, which seemed to me 
 so desirable a consummation. In the evening the town was 
 gaily illuminated, and the King drove through the streets in 
 an open carriage. In the greatest excitement I went out 
 among the dense crowds and followed his movements, often 
 running where I thought it likely that a particularly hearty 
 shout might rejoice and reconcile the monarch's heart. My 
 wife was quite frightened when she saw me come back late at 
 night, tired out and very hoarse from shouting. 
 
 The events which took place in Vienna and Berlin, with their 
 apparently momentous results, only moved me as interesting 
 newspaper reports, and the meeting of a Frankfort parliament 
 in the place of the dissolved Bundestag sounded strangely 
 pleasant in my ears. Yet all these significant occurrences 
 could not tear me for a single day from my regular hours of 
 work. With immense, almost overweening satisfaction, I 
 finished, in the last days of this eventful and historic month 
 of March, the score of Lohengrin with the orchestration of 
 the music up to the vanishing of the Knight of the Holy Grail 
 into the remote and mystic distance. 
 
 About this time a young Englishwomen, Madame Jessie 
 Laussot, who had married a Frenchman in Bordeaux, one day 
 presented herself at my house in the company of Karl Hitter, 
 who was barely eighteen years of age. This young man, who 
 was born in Russia of German parents, was a member of one 
 of those northern families \vh<> had settled down permanently 
 in Dresden, on account of the pleasant artistic atmosphere of 
 tliaT"place. I remembered that I had seen him once before 
 not long after the first performance of Tannhduser, when he 
 asked me for my autograph for a copy of the score of that opera, 
 which was on sale at the music-shop. I now learned that this 
 copy really belonged to Frau Laussot, who had been present 
 at those performances, and who was now introduced to me. 
 Overcome with shyness, the young lady expressed her admira- 
 tion in a way I had never experienced before, and at the same
 
 438 MY LIFE 
 
 time told me how great was her regret at being called away 
 by family affairs from her favourite home in Dresden with the 
 Bitter family, who, she gave me to understand, were deeply 
 devoted to me. It was with a strange, and in its way quite 
 a new, sensation that I bade farewell to this young lady. This 
 was the first time since my meeting with Alwine Frommann 
 and Werder, when the Fliegender Hollander was produced, that 
 I came across this sympathetic tone, which seemed to come 
 like an echo from some old familiar past, but which I never 
 heard close at hand. I invited young Hitter to come and see 
 me whenever he liked, and to accompany me sometimes on 
 my walks. His extraordinary shyness, however, seemed to 
 prevent him from doing this, and I only remember seeing him 
 very occasionally at my house. He used to turn up more often 
 with Hans von Billow, whom he seemed to know pretty well, 
 and who had already entered the Leipzig University as a 
 student of law. This well-informed and talkative young man 
 showed his warm and hearty devotion to me more openly, 
 and I felt bound to reciprocate his affection. He was the first 
 person who made me realise the genuine character ofjjhe new 
 political enthusiasm. On his hat, as welTas on his father's, the 
 black, red, and gold cockade was paraded before my eyes. 
 
 Xow that I had finished my Lohengrin, and had leisure to 
 study the course of events, I could no longer help myself sym- 
 pathising with the ferment aroused by the birth of German 
 ideals and the hopes attached to their realisation. My old 
 friend Franck had already imbued me with a fairly sound 
 political judgment, and, like many others, I had grave doubts 
 as to whether the German parliament now assembling would 
 serve any useful purpose. Nevertheless, the temper of the 
 populace, of which there could be no question, although it 
 might not have been given very obvious expression, and the 
 belief, everywhere prevalent, that it was impossible to return 
 to the old conditions, could not fail to exercise its~influence 
 upon me. But I wanted^actions instead of words, and actions 
 which would force our princes to break for ever with their old 
 traditions, which were so detrimental to the cause of the German 
 commonwealth. With this object I felt inspired to write a 
 popular appeal in verse, calling upon the German princes and
 
 POLITICAL POEMS 439 
 
 peoples to inaugurate a great crusade-^igainei Russia, as the 
 country which had been the prime instigator of that policy in 
 Germany winch had so fatally separated the monarchs from their 
 subjects. One of the verses ran as follows : 
 
 The old fight against the East 
 
 Returns again to-day. 
 The people's sword must not rust 
 
 Who freedom wish for aye. 
 
 As I had no connection with political journals, and had 
 learned by chance that Berthold Auerbach was on the staff 
 of a paper in Mannheim, where the waves of revolution ran 
 high, I sent him my poem with the request to do whatever he 
 thought best with it, and from that day to this I have never 
 heard or seen anything of it. 
 
 Whilst the Frankfort Parliament continued to sit on from 
 day to day, and it seemed idle to conjecture whither this big 
 talk by small men would lead, I was much impressed by the 
 news which reached us from Vienna. In the May of this year 
 an attempt at a reaction, such as had succeeded in Naples 
 and remained indecisive in Paris, had been triumphantly nipped 
 in the bud by the enthusiasm and energy of the Viennese people 
 under the leadership of the students' band, who had acted with 
 such unexpected firmness. I had arrived at the conclusion 
 that, in matters directly concerning the people, no reliance 
 could be placed on reason or wisdom, but only on sheer force 
 supported by fanaticism or absolute necessity; but the course 
 of events in Vienna, where I saw the youth of the educated 
 classes working side by side with the labouring man, filled 
 me with peculiar enthusiasm, to which I gave expression in 
 another popular appeal in verse. This I sent to the Oester- 
 reichischcn Zeitung, where it was printed in their columns with 
 my full signature. 
 
 In Dresden two political unions had been formed, as a result 
 of the great changes that had taken place. The first was 
 called the Deutscher Verein (German Union), whose programme 
 aimed at l a constitutional monarchy on the broadestT <famo- 
 cratic foundation.' The names of its principal leaders, among 
 which, in spite of its broad democratic foundation, my friends
 
 440 MY LIFE 
 
 Eduard Devrient and Professor Rietschel had the courage 
 openly to appear, guaranteed the safety of its objects. This 
 union, which tried to include every element that regarded a 
 
 real revolution with abhorrence, conjured into existence an 
 opposition club which called itself the Vatci 
 
 (Patriotic Union). In this the 'democratic foundation' 
 seemed to be the chief basis, and the ' constitutional monarchy ' 
 only provided the necessary cloak. 
 
 Ifcockel canvassed passionately for the latter, as he seemed 
 to have lost all confidence in the monarchy. The poor fellow 
 was, indeed, in a very bad way. He had long ago given up 
 all hope of rising to any position in the musical world; his 
 directorship had become pure drudgery, and was, unfortunately, 
 so badly paid that he could not possibly keep himself and his 
 yearly increasing family on the income he derived from his 
 post. He always had an unconquerable aversion from teaching, 
 which was a fairly profitable employment in Dresden among 
 the many wealthy visitors. So he went on from bad to worse, 
 running miserably into debt, and for a long time saw no hope 
 for his position as the father of a family except in emigration 
 to America, where he thought he could secure a livelihood for 
 himself and his dependants by manual labour, and for his practi- 
 cal mind by working as a farmer, from which class he had origin- 
 ally sprung. This, though tedious, would at least be certain. 
 On our walks he had of late been entertaining me almost 
 exclusively with ideas he had gleaned from reading books on 
 farming, doctrines which he applied with zeal to the improve- 
 ment of his encumbered position. This was the mood in which 
 the Revolution of 1848 found him, and he immediately went 
 over to the extreme socialist side, which, owing to the example 
 set by Paris, threatened to become serious. Every one who 
 knew him was utterly taken aback at the apparently vital 
 change which had so suddenly taken place in him, when he 
 declared that he had at last found his real vocation that of an 
 agitator. 
 
 His persuasive faculties, on which, however, he could not rely 
 sufficiently for platform purposes, developed in private inter- 
 course into stupefying energy. It was impossible to stop his 
 flow of language with any objection, and those he could not
 
 ROCKEL AS A SOCIALIST 441 
 
 draw over to his cause he cast aside for ever. In his enthusiasm 
 about the problems which occupied his mind day and night, 
 he sharpened his intellect into a weapon capable of demolishing 
 every foolish objection, and suddenly stood in our midst like 
 a preacher in the wilderness. He was at home in every de- 
 partment of knowledge. The Vaterlands-Verein had elected a 
 committee... for .carrying into execution a plan,. for arming the 
 populace; this included Rockel and other thoroughgoing 
 democrats, and, in addition, certain military experts, among 
 whom was my old friend Herrmann Muller ? the lieutenant of 
 the Guards who had once been engaged to Schroder-Devrient. 
 He and another officer named Zichlinsky were the only meml>er.s 
 of the Saxon army who joined the political movement. The 
 part I played in the meetings of this committee, as in every- 
 thing else, was dictated by artistic motives. As far as I can ^ 
 remember, the details of this plan, which at last became a 
 nuisance, afforded very sound foundation for a genuine arming 
 of the people, though it was impossible to carry it out during 
 the political crisis. 
 
 My interest and enthusiasm about the social and political \ 
 problems which were occupying the whole world increased 
 every day, until public. meetings and private intercourse, and 
 the shallow platitudes which formed the >ta]>lr eloquence of 
 the orators of the day, proved to me the terrible shallowness 
 of the whole movement. 
 
 If only I could rest assured that, while such senseless con- 
 fusion was the order of the day, people well versed in these 
 matters would withhold from any demonstration (which to 
 my great regret I observed in Hermann Franck, and told him 
 of, openly), then, on the contrary, I should feel myself com- 
 pelled, as soon as the opportunity arose, to discuss the purport 
 of such questions and problems according to my judgment. 
 Xeedless to say, the newspapers played an exciting and pro- 
 minent part on this occasion. Once, when 1 went incidentally 
 (as I might go to see a play) t<> a meeting <>f the Vatrrlands- 
 Verein, when they were assembled in a public garden, they 
 chose for the subject of their discussion, 'Republic or Mon- 
 archy ? ' I was astonished to hear and to read with what 
 incredible triviality it was carried on, and how the sum-total
 
 442 MY LIFE 
 
 of their explanation was, that, to be sure, a republic is best, 
 but, at the worst, one could put up with a monarchy if it were 
 well conducted. As the result of many heated discussions on 
 this point, I was incited to lay bare my views on the subject 
 in an article which I published in the Dresdener Anzeiger, but 
 which I did not sign. My special aim was to turn the atten- 
 tion of the few who really took the matter seriously, from the 
 external form of the government to its intrinsic value. "When 
 I had pursued and consistently discussed the utmost idealistic 
 conclusions of all that which, to my mind, was necessary and 
 inseparable from the perfect state and from social order, I in- 
 quired whether it would not be possible to realise all this with 
 a king at the head, and entered so deeply into the matter as to 
 portray the king in such a fashion, that he seemed even more 
 anxious than any one else that his state should be organised 
 on genuinely republican lines, in order that he might attain 
 to the fulfilment of his own highest aims. I must own, how- 
 ever, that I felt bound to urge this king to assume a much more 
 familiar attitude towards his people than the court atmo- 
 sphere and the almost exclusive society of his nobles would 
 seem to render possible. Finally, I pointed to the King of 
 Saxony as being specially chosen by Fate to lead the way in 
 the direction I had indicated, and to give the example to all 
 the other German princes. Hockel considered this article a true 
 inspiration from the Angel oFPropitiation, but as he feared that 
 it would not meet with proper recognition and appreciation 
 in the paper, he urged me to lecture on it publicly at the next 
 meeting of the Vaterlands-Verein, for he attached great im- 
 portance to my discoursing on the subject personally. Quite 
 uncertain as to whether I could really persuade myself to 
 do this, I attended the meeting, and there, owing to the 
 intolerable balderdash uttered by a certain barrister named 
 !B16de and a master-furrier Klette, whom at that time Dresden 
 venerated as a Demosthenes and a Cleon, I passionately 
 decided to appear at this extraordinary tribunal with my 
 paper, and to give a very spirited reading of it to about three 
 thousand persons. 
 
 The success I had was simply appalling. The astounded 
 audience seemed to remember nothing of the speech of the
 
 EESULTS OF MY POLITICAL SPEECH 443 
 
 Orchestral Conductor Royal save the incidental attack I had 
 made upon the court sycophants. The news of this incredible 
 event spread like wildfire. The next day I rehearsed Rienzi, 
 which was to be performed the following evening. I was con- 
 gratulated on all sides upon my self-sacrificing audacity. On 
 the day of the performance, however, I was informed by Eisolt, 
 the attendant of the orchestra, that the plans had been changed, 
 and he gave me to understand that thereby there hung a tale. 
 True enough, the terrible sensation I had made became so 
 great, that the directors feared the most unheard-of demon- 
 strations at any performance of Rienzi. Then a perfect stojmi 
 of derision and vituperation broke loose in the press, and I 
 was besieged on all sides to such an extent that it was useless 
 to think of self-defence. I had even offended the Communal 
 Guard of Saxony, and was challenged by the commander to 
 make a full apology. But the most inexorable enemies I made 
 were the court officials, especially those holding a minor office, 
 and to this day I still continue to be persecuted by them. I 
 learned that, as far as it lay in their power, they incessantly 
 besought the King, and finally the director, to deprive me at 
 once of my office. On account of this I thought it necessary 
 to write to the monarch personally, in order to explain to him 
 that my action was to be regarded more in the light of a thought- 
 less indiscretion than as a culpable offence. I sent this letter 
 to Herr von Liittichau, begging him to deliver it to the King, 
 and to arrange at the same time a short leave for me, so that 
 the provoking disturbance should have a chance of dying down 
 during my absence from Dresden. The striking kindness and 
 goodwill which Herr von Liittichau showed me on this occasion 
 made no little impression upon me, and this I took no pains 
 to conceal from him. As in the course of time, however, his 
 ill-controlled rage at various things, and especially at a good 
 deal that he had misunderstood in my pamphlet, broke loose, 
 I learned that it was not from any humane motives that he 
 had spoken in such a propitiatory manner to me, but rather by 
 desire of the King himself. On this point I received most 
 accurate information, and heard that when cvrrvlmdy, and 
 even von Liittichau himself, were besieging the King to visit, 
 me with punishment, the King had forbidden any further talk
 
 444: MY LIFE 
 
 on the subject. After this very encouraging experience, I 
 nattered myself that the King had understood not only my 
 letter, but also my pamphlet, better than many others. 
 
 In order to change my mind a little, I determined for the 
 present (it was the beginning of July) to take advantage of the 
 short period of leave granted to me, by going to Vienna. I 
 travelled by way of Breslau, where I looked up an old friend 
 of my family, the musical director Mosewius, at whose house 
 I spent an evening. We had a most lively conversation, but, 
 unfortunately, were unable to steer clear of the stirring political 
 questions of the day. What interested me most was his 
 exceptionally large, or even, if I remember rightly, complete 
 collection of Sebastian Bach's cantatas in most excellent 
 copies. Besides this, he related, with a humour quite his own, 
 several amusing musical anecdotes which were a pleasant 
 memory for many a year. When Mosewius returned my visit 
 in the course of the summer at Dresden, I played a part of the 
 first act of Lohengrin on the piano for him, and the expression 
 of his genuine astonishment at this conception was very grati- 
 fying to me. In later years, however, I found that he had 
 spoken somewhat scoffingly about me; but I did not stop to 
 reflect as to the truth of this information, or as to the real 
 character of the man, for little by little I had had to accustom 
 myself to the most inconceivable things. At Vienna the first 
 thing I did was to call on Professor Fischhof, as I knew that 
 he had in his keeping important manuscripts, chiefly by 
 Beethoven, among which the original of the C minor Sonata, 
 opus 111, I was particularly curious to see. Through this new 
 friend, whom I found somewhat dry, I made the acquaintance 
 of Herr Vesque von Piittlingen, who, as the composer of a 
 most insignificant opera (Joan of Arc}, which had been per- 
 formed in Dresden, had with cautious good taste adopted only 
 the last two syllables of Beethoven's name Hoven. One day 
 we were at his house to dinner, and I then recognised in him a 
 former confidential official of Prince Metternich, who now, with 
 his ribbon of black, red, and gold, followed the current of the 
 age, apparently quite convinced. I made another interesting 
 acquaintance in the person of Herr von Fonton, the Russian 
 state councillor, and attache at the Russian Embassy in
 
 REFORM OF THE THEATRE 445 
 
 Vienna. I frequently met this man, both at Fischhof's house 
 and on excursions into the surrounding country; and it was 
 interesting to me for the first time to run up against a man 
 who could so strongly profess his faith in the pessimistic stand- 
 point that a consistent despotism guarantees the only order 
 of things which can be tolerated. Not without interest, and 
 certainly not without intelligence for he boasted of having 
 been educated at the most enlightened schools in Switzerland 
 he listened to my enthusiastic narration of the art ideal 
 which I had in my mind, and which was destined to exercise 
 a great and decided influence upon the human race. As he 
 had to allow that the realisation of this ideal could not be 
 effected through the strength of despotism, and as he was unable 
 to foresee any rewards for my exertions, by the time we came 
 to the champagne he thawed to such a degree of affable good- 
 nature as to wish me every success. I learned later on that this 
 man, of whose talent and energetic character I had at the time 
 no small opinion, was last heard of as being in great distress. 
 
 Now, as I never undertook anything whatever without some 
 serious object in view, I had made up my mind to avail myself 
 of this visit to Vienna, in order to try in some practical manner 
 to promote my ideas for the reform of the theatre. Vienna 
 seemed to me specially suitable for this purpose, as at that time 
 it had five theatres, all totally different in character, which 
 were dragging on a miserable existence. I quickly worked out 
 a plan, according to which these various theatres might be 
 formed into a sort of co-operative organisation, and placed 
 under one administration composed not only of active members, 
 but also of all those having any literary connection with the 
 theatre. With a view to submitting my plan to them, I then 
 made inquiries about persons with such capacities as seemed 
 most likely to answer my requirements. Besides Herr Fried- 
 rich Uhl, whom I had got to know at the very beginning through 
 Fischer, and who did me very good service, I was told of a 
 Herr Franck (the same, I presume, who later on published a 
 big epic work called Tannhauser), and a Dr. Pacher, an agent 
 of Meyerbeer's, and a pettifogger of whose acquaintance later 
 on I was to have no reason to be proud. The most sympathetic, 
 and certainly the most important, of those chosen by me for
 
 446 MY LIFE 
 
 the conference meeting at Fischhof's house, was undoubtedly 
 Dr. Becher, a passionate and exceedingly cultivated man. 
 He was the only one present who seriously followed the read- 
 ing of my plan, although, of course, he by no means agreed 
 with everything. I observed in him a certain wildness and 
 vehemence, the impression of which returned to me very 
 vividly some months later, when I heard of his being shot 
 as a rebel who had participated in the October Insurrection at 
 Vienna. For the present, then, I had to satisfy myself with 
 having read the plan of my theatre reform to a few attentive 
 listeners. All seemed to be convinced that the time was not 
 opportune for putting forward such peaceable schemes of 
 reform. On the other hand, Uhl thought it right to give me 
 an idea of what was at present all the rage in Vienna, by taking 
 me one evening to a political club of the most advanced tend- 
 encies. There I heard a speech by Herr Sigismund Englander, 
 who shortly afterwards attracted much attention in the political 
 monthly papers; the unblushing audacity with which he and 
 others expressed themselves that evening with regard to the 
 most dreaded persons in public power astounded me almost 
 as much as the poverty of the political views expressed on that 
 occasion. By way of contrast I received a very nice impression 
 of Herr Grillparzer, the poet, whose name was like a fable to 
 me, associated as it was, from my earliest days, with his Ahnfrau. 
 I approached him also with respect to the matter of my theatre 
 reform. He seemed quite disposed to listen in a friendly 
 manner to what I had to say to him; he did not, however, 
 attempt to conceal his surprise at my direct appeals and the 
 personal demands I made of him. He was the first playwright 
 I had ever seen in an official uniform. 
 
 After I had paid an unsuccessful visit to Herr Bauernfeld, re- 
 lative to the same business, I concluded that Vienna was of no 
 more use for the present, and gave myself up to the excep- 
 tionally stimulating impressions produced by the public life uf 
 the motley crowd, which of late had undergone such marked 
 changes. If the student band, which was always represented 
 in great numbers in the streets, had already amused me with 
 the extraordinary constancy with which its members sported 
 the German colour*, I was very highly diverted by the effect
 
 PRAGUE 447 
 
 produced when at the theatres I saw even the ices served by 
 attendants in the black, red, and gold of Austria. At the 
 Karl Theatre, in the Leopold quarter of the town, I saw a new 
 farce, by Nestroy, which actually introduced the character of 
 Prince Metternich, and in which this statesman, on being asked 
 whether he had poisoned the Duke of Reichstadt, had to make 
 his escape behind the wings as an unmasked sinner. On 
 the whole, the appearance of this imperial city usually so 
 fond of pleasure impressed one with a feeling of youthful and 
 powerful confidence. And this impression was revived in me 
 when I heard of the energetic participation of tlie youthful 
 members of the population, during those fateful October days, 
 in the defence of Vienna against the troops of Prince "Windisch- 
 gratz. 
 
 On the homeward journey I touched at Prague, where I 
 found my old friend Kittl. (who had grown very much more 
 corpulent) still in the most terrible fright about the riotous 
 events which had taken place there. He seemed to be of 
 opinion that the revolt of the Tschech party against the Austrian 
 Government was directed at him personally, and he thought 
 fit to reproach himself with the terrible agitation of the time, 
 which he believed he had specially inflamed by his composition 
 of my operatic text of Die Franzosen vor Nizza, out of which a 
 kind of revolutionary air seemed to have become very popular. 
 To my great pleasure, on my homeward journey I had the 
 company of Hanel the sculptor, whom I met on the steamer. 
 There travelled with us also a Count Albert Nbstitz, with whom 
 he had just settled up his business concerning the statue of 
 the Emperor Charles IV., and he was in the gayest mood, as the 
 extremely insecure state of Austrian paper money had led to his 
 being paid at a great profit to himself, in silver coin in accord- 
 ance with his agreement I was very pleased to find that, 
 thanks to this circumstance, he was in such a confident mood, 
 and so free from prejudice, that on arriving at Dresden he 
 accompanied me the whole way a very long distance from 
 the landing-stage at which we had left the steamer to my house, 
 in an open carriage ; and this despite the fact that he very well 
 knew that, only a few weeks before, I had caused a really 
 terrible stir in this very city.
 
 448 MY LIFE 
 
 As far as the public were concerned, the storm seemed quite 
 to have died down, and I was able to resume my usual occu- 
 pations and mode of life without any further trouble. I am 
 sorry to say, however, that my old worries and anxieties 
 started afresh ; I stood in great need of money, and had not the 
 vaguest notion whither to go in search of it. I then examined 
 very thoroughly the answer I had received during the preceding 
 winter to my petition for a higher salary. I had left it unread, 
 as the modifications made in it had already disgusted me. If 
 I had till now believed that it was Herr von Liittichau who 
 had brought about the increase of salary I had demanded, in 
 the shape of a supplement which I was to receive annually 
 in itself a humiliating thing I now saw to my horror that all 
 the time there had been no mention save of one single supple- 
 ment, and that there was nothing to show that this should be 
 repeated annually. On learning this, I saw that I should now 
 be at the hopeless disadvantage of coming too late with a 
 remonstrance if I should attempt to make one; so there was 
 nothing left for me but to submit to an insult which, under 
 the circumstances, was quite unprecedented. My feelings 
 towards Herr von Liittichau, which shortly before had been 
 rather warm owing to his supposed kind attitude towards me 
 during the last disturbance, now underwent a serious change, 
 and I soon had a new reason (actually connected with the above- 
 mentioned affair) for altering my favourable opinion of him, 
 and for turning finally against him for good and all. He had 
 informed me that the members of the Imperial Orchestra had 
 sent him a deputation demanding my instant dismissal, as 
 they thought that it affected their honour to be any longer 
 under a conductor who had compromised himself politically to 
 the extent which I had. He also informed me that he had 
 not only reprimanded them very severely, but that he had also 
 been at great pains to pacify them concerning me. All this, 
 which Liittichau had put in a highly favourable light, had 
 latterly made me feel very friendly towards him. Then, how- 
 ever, as the result of inquiries into the matter, I heard acci- 
 dentally through members of the orchestra that the facts of the 
 case were almost exactly the reverse. What had happened 
 was this, that the members of the Imperial Orchestra had been
 
 THE ROYAL ORCHESTRA AND LUTTICHAU 449 
 
 approached on all sides by the officials of the court, and had 
 been not only earnestly requested to do what Liittichau had 
 declared they had done of their own accord, but also threatened 
 with the displeasure of the King, and of incurring the strongest 
 suspicion if they refused to comply. In order to protect them- 
 selves against this intrigue, and to avoid all evil consequences 
 should they not take the required step, the musicians had turned 
 to their principal, and had sent him a deputation, through 
 which they declared that, as a corporation of artists, they did 
 not in the least feel called upon to mix themselves up in a 
 matter that did not concern them. Thus the halo with which 
 my former attachment to Herr von Liittichau had surrounded 
 him at last disappeared for good and all, and it was chiefly 
 my shame at having been so very much upset by his false con- 
 duct that now inspired me for ever with such bitter feelings 
 for this man. What determined this feeling even more than 
 the insults I had suffered, was the recognition of the fact that 
 I was now utterly incapable of ever being able to enlist his 
 influence in the cause of theatrical reform, which was 
 so dear to me. It was natural that I should learn to attach 
 ever less and less importance to the mere retention of the post 
 of orchestral conductor on so extraordinarily inadequate and 
 reduced a salary ; and in keeping to this office, I merely bowed 
 to what was an inevitable though purely accidental circum- 
 stance of a wretched fate. I did nothing to make the post 
 more intolerable, but, at the same time, I moved not a finger 
 to ensure its permanence. 
 
 The very next thing I must do was to attempt to establish 
 my hopes of a larger income, so sadly doomed hitherto, upon a 
 very onuch sounder basis. In this respect it occurred to me 
 that I might consult my friend Liszt, and beg him to suggest a 
 remedy for my grievous position. And lo and behold, shortly 
 after those fateful March days, and not long before the com- 
 pletion of my Lohengrin score, to my very great delight and 
 astonishment, the very man I wanted walked into my room. 
 He had come from Vienna, where he had lived through the 
 ' Barricade Days,' and he was going on to Weimar, where he 
 intended to settle permanently. We spent an evening together 
 at Schumann's, had a little music, and finally began a discussion
 
 450 MY LIFE 
 
 on Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, in which Liszt and Schumann 
 differed so fundamentally that the latter, completely losing 
 his temper, retired in a fury to his bedroom for quite a long 
 time. This incident did indeed place us in a somewhat awk- 
 ward position towards our host, but it furnished us with 
 a most amusing topic of conversation on the way home. I 
 have seldom seen Liszt so extravagantly cheerful as on that 
 night, when, in spite of the cold and the fact that he was clad 
 only in ordinary evening-dress, he accompanied first the music 
 director Schubert, and then myself, to our respective homes. 
 Subsequently I took advantage of a few days' holiday in 
 August to make an excursion to Weimar, where I found Liszt 
 permanently installed and, as is well known, enjoying a life 
 of most intimate intercourse with the Grand Duke. Even 
 though he was unable to help me in my affairs, except by giving 
 me a recommendation which finally proved useless, his reception 
 of me on this short visit was so hearty and so exceedingly 
 stimulating, that it left me profoundly cheered and encouraged. 
 On returning to Dresden I tried as far as possible to curtail 
 my expenses and to live within my means; and, as every 
 means of assistance failed me, I resorted to the expedient of 
 sending out a circular letter addressed jointly to my remaining 
 creditors, all of whom were really friends; and in this I told 
 them frankly of my situation, and enjoined them to relinquish 
 their demands for an indefinite time, till my affairs took a turn 
 for the better, as without this I should certainly never be in" 
 a position to satisfy them. By this means they would, at all 
 events, be in a position to oppose my general manager, whom 
 I had every reason to suspect of evil designs, and who would 
 have been only too glad to seize any signs of hostility towards 
 me, on the part of my creditors, as a pretext for taking the 
 worst steps against me. The assurance I required was given 
 me unhesitatingly; my friend Pusinelli, and Frau Klepper- 
 bein (an old friend of my mother's), even going so far as to 
 declare that they were prepared to give up all claim to the 
 money they had lent me. Thus, in some measure reassured, 
 and with my position relative to Liittichau so far improved 
 that I could consult my own wishes as to whether and when 
 I should give up my post entirely, I now continued to fulfil my
 
 ROCKEL'S POPULAR JOURNAL 451 
 
 duties as a conductor as patiently and conscientiously as I 
 was able, while with great zeal I also resumed my studies, which 
 were carrying me ever further and further afield. 
 
 Thus settled, I now began to watch the wonderful develop- 
 ments in the fate of my friend Rockel. As every day brought 
 fresh rumours of threatened reactionary coups il'i'lnl and similar 
 violent outbreaks, which Rockel thought it right to prevent, 
 he drew up an appeal to the soldiers of the army of Saxony, 
 in which he explained every detail of the cause lor which lie 
 stood, and which he then had printed and distributed broad- 
 cast. This was too flagrant a misdeed for the public prose- 
 cutors: he was therefore immediately placed under unv-t, and 
 had to remain three days in gaol while an action for high 
 treason was lodged against him. He was only released when 
 the solicitor Minkwitz stood bail for the requisite three thousand 
 marks (equal to 150). This return home to his anxious wife 
 and children was celebrated by a little public festival, which 
 the committee of the Vaterlands-Verein had sir ranged in his 
 honour, and fHe liberated man was greeted as the champion 
 of the people's cause. On the other hand, however, the general 
 management of ine court theatre, who had before suspended 
 him temporarily, now gave him his final dismissal. Rockel 
 let a full beard grow, and bpfran the pnhljcftt.irm of a. popular 
 journal called the Volksblatt, of which he was >ole editor, lie 
 must have counted on its success to compensate him for the 
 loss of his salary as musical director, for he at once hired 
 an office in the Briidergasse for his undertaking. This paper 
 succeeded in attracting the attention of a great many peopl 6 
 to its editor, and showed up ^jijrtgtPTTt,u I" qiHW ft naw light. 
 He never got involved in his style or indulged in any elaboration 
 of words, but confined himself to matters of immediate im- 
 portance and general interest; it was only after having dis- 
 cussed them in a calm and sober fashion, that he led up from 
 them to further deductions of still greater interest connected 
 with them. The individual articles were short, and never 
 contained anything superfluous, in addition to which they 
 were so clearly written, that they made an instructive and 
 convincing appeal to the most uneducated mind. By always 
 going to the root of things, instead of indulging in circum-
 
 452 MY LIFE 
 
 locutions which, in politics, have caused such great confusion 
 in the minds of the uneducated masses, he soon had a large 
 circle of readers, both among cultivated and uncultivated 
 people. The only drawback was that the price of the little 
 weekly paper was too small to yield him a corresponding profit. 
 Moreover, it was necessary to warn him that if the reactionary 
 party should ever come into power again, it could never 
 possibly forgive him for this newspaper. His younger brother, 
 Edward, who was paying a visit at the time in Dresden, declared 
 himself willing to accept a post as piano-teacher in England, 
 which, though most uncongenial to him, would be lucrative 
 and place him in a position to help Rockel's family, if, as 
 seemed probable, he met his reward in prison or on the gallows. 
 Owing to his connection with various societies, his time was so 
 much taken up that my intercourse with him was limited to 
 walks, which became more and more rare. On these occasions 
 I often got lost in the most wildly speculative and profound 
 discussions, while this wonderfully exciteable man always re- 
 mained calmly reflective and clear-headed. First and fore- 
 
 /"most, he had planned a drastic social reform of the middle 
 classes as at present constituted by aiming at a complete 
 
 \ alteration of the basis of their condition. He constructed a 
 \ totally new moral order of things, founded on the teaching of 
 Proudhon and other socialists regarding the annihilation of 
 the power of capital, by immediately productive labour, dis- 
 pensing with the middleman. Little by little he converted 
 me, by most seductive arguments, to his own views, to such an 
 extent that I began to rebuild my hopes for the realisation 
 of my ideal in art upon them. Thus there were two questions 
 which concerned me very nearly: he wished to abolish matri- 
 mony, in the usual acceptation of the word, altogether. I there- 
 upon asked him what he thought the result would be of 
 promiscuous intercourse with women of a doubtful character. 
 With amiable indignation he gave me to understand that we 
 could have no idea about the purity of morals in general, and of 
 the relations of the sexes in particular, so long as we were unable 
 to free people completely from the yoke of the trades, guilds, 
 and similar coercive institutions. He asked me to consider 
 what the only motive would be which would induce a woman
 
 SOCIALISTIC SPECULATIONS 453 
 
 to surrender herself to a man, when not only the considerations 
 of money, fortune, position, and family prejudices, but also 
 the various influences necessarily arising from these, had 
 disappeared. When I, in my turn, asked him whence he 
 would obtain persons of great intellect and of artistic ability, 
 if everybody were to be merged in the working classes, he met 
 my objection by replying, that owing to the very fact that 
 everybody would participate in the necessary labour according 
 to his strength and capacity, work would cease to be a burden, 
 and would become simply an occupation which would finally 
 assume an entirely artistic character. He demonstrated this 
 on the principle that, as had already been proved, a field, 
 worked laboriously by a single peasant, was infinitely less 
 productive than when cultivated by several persons in a 
 scientific way. These and similar suggestions, which Rockel X 
 communicated to me with a really delightful enthusiasm, led \ 
 me to further reflections, and gave birth to new plans upon 
 which, to my mind, a possible organisation of the human race, / 
 which would correspond to my highest ideals in art, could alone^,/ 
 be based. In reference to this, I immediately turned my 
 thoughts to what was close at hand, and directed my attention 
 to the theatre. The motive for this came not only from my 
 own feelings, but also from external circumstances. In accord- 
 ance with the latest democratic suffrage laws, a general election 
 seemed imminent in Saxony; the election of extreme radicals, 
 which had now taken place nearly everywhere else, showed us 
 that if the movement lasted, there would be the most extra- 
 ordinary changes even in the administration of the revenue. 
 Apparently a general resolution had been passed to subject 
 the Civil List to a strict revision; all that was deemed super- 
 fluous in the royal household was to be done away with; the 
 theatre, as an unnecessary place of entertainment for a depraved 
 portion of the public, was threatened with the withdrawal of 
 the subsidy granted it from the Civil ListT'T now resolved, 
 in view of the importance which I attached to the theatre, to 
 suggest to the ministers that they should inform the members 
 of parliament, that if the theatre in its present condition were 
 not worth any sacrifice from the state, it would sink to still 
 more doubtful tendencies and might even become dangerous
 
 454: MY LIFE 
 
 to public morals if deprived of that state control which had 
 for its aim the ideal, and, at the same time, felt itself called 
 upon to place culture and education under its beneficial pro- 
 tection. It was of the highest importance to me to secure an 
 organisation of the theatre, which would make the carrying 
 its loftiest ideals not only a possibility but also a certainty. 
 Accordingly I drew up a project by which the same sum as 
 t, that which was allotted from the Civil List for the support of 
 a court theatre should be employed for the foundation and 
 upkeep of a national theatre for the kingdom of Saxony. In 
 owing the practical nature of the well-planned particulars 
 of my scheme, I defined them with such great precision, that 
 I felt assured my work would serve as a useful guide to the 
 ministers as to how they should put this matter before parlia- 
 ment. The point now was to have a personal interview with 
 one of the ministers, and it occurred to me that the best man 
 to apply to in the matter would be Herr von der Pfordten, 
 the Minister of Education. Although he already enjoyed the 
 reputation of being a turncoat in politics, and was said to be 
 struggling to efface the origin of his political promotion, which 
 had taken place at a time of great agitation, the mere fact of 
 his having formerly been a professor was sufficient to make 
 me suppose that he was a man with whom I could discuss the 
 question that I had so much at heart. I learned, however, that 
 the real art institutions of the kingdom, such, for instance, as 
 the Academy of Fine Arts, to whose number I so ardently 
 desired to see the theatre added, belonged to the department 
 of the Minister of the Interior. To this man the worthy 
 though not highly cultivated or artistic Herr Oberlander I 
 submitted my plans, not, however, without having first made 
 myself known to Herr von der Pfordten, in order, for the reasons 
 above stated, to command my project to him. This man, who 
 apparently was very busy, received me in a polite and reassuring 
 manner; but his whole bearing, indeed the very expression 
 of his face, seemed to destroy all hopes I might ever have 
 cherished of finding in him that understanding which I had 
 expected. The minister Oberlander, on the other hand, earned 
 my confidence by the straightforward earnestness with which 
 he promised a thorough inquiry into the matter. Unfortu-
 
 REORGANISING THE THEATRE 455 
 
 nately, however, at the same time, he informed me with the 
 most simple frankness, that he could entertain but very little 
 hope of getting the King's authorisation for any unusual treat- 
 ment of a question hitherto given over to routine. It must 
 be understood that the relations of the King to his ministers 
 were both strained and unconfidential, and that this was more 
 especially so in the case of Oberlander, who never approached 
 the monarch on any other business than that which the strictest 
 discharge of his current duties rendered indispensable. He 
 therefore thought it would be better if my plan could be 
 brought forward, in the first place, by the Chamber of Deputies. 
 As, in the event of the new Civil List being discussed, I was 
 particularly anxious to avoid the question of the continuation 
 of the court theatre being treated in the ignorant and short- 
 sighted radical fashion, which was to be feared above all, I 
 dlcl not despair of making the acquaintance of some of the 
 most influential among the new members of parliament. In 
 this wise I found myself suddenly plunged into quite a new 
 and strange world, and became acquainted with persons and 
 opinions, the very existence of which until then I had not even 
 suspected. I found it somewhat trying always to be obliged 
 to meet these gentlemen at their beer and shrouded in the 
 dense clouds of their tobacco smoke, and to have to discuss 
 with them matters which, though very dear to me, must have 
 seemed a little fantastic to their mind. After a certain Heir 
 von Trjitschler, a very handsome, energetic man, whose serious- 
 ness was almost gloomy, had listened to me calmly for some 
 time, and had told me that he no longer knew anything about 
 the state, but only about society, and that the latter would 
 know, without either his or my aid, how it should act in regard 
 to art and to the theatre, I was filled with such extraordinary 
 feelings, half mingled with shame, that there and then I gave 
 up, not only all my exertions, but all my hopes as well. The 
 only reminder I ever had of the whole affair came some while 
 after when, on meeting Herr von Liittichau, I quickly gathered 
 from his attitude to me that he had got wind of the episode, and 
 that it only inspired him with fresh hostility towards me. 
 
 During my walks, which I now took absolutely alone, I 
 thought ever more deeply and much to the relief of my mind
 
 456 MY LIFE 
 
 over my ideas concerning that state of human society for 
 which the boldest hopes and efforts of the socialists and com- 
 munists, then busily engaged in constructing their system, 
 offered me but the roughest foundation. These efforts could 
 begin to have some meaning and value for me only when they 
 had attained to that political revolution and reconstruction 
 which they aimed at; for it was only then that I, in my turn, 
 could start my reforms in art. 
 
 At the same time my thoughts were busy with a drama, 
 in which the Emperor Frederick I. (surnamed ' Barbarossa ') 
 was to be the hero. In it the model ruler was portrayed in 
 a manner which lent him the greatest and most powerful 
 significance. His dignified resignation at the impossibility of 
 making his ideals prevail was intended not only to present a 
 true transcript of the arbitrary multifariousness of the things 
 of this world, but also to arouse sympathy for the hero. I 
 wished to carry out this drama in popular rhyme, and in the 
 style of the German used by our epic poets of the Middle Ages, 
 and in this respect the poem Alexander, by the priest Lambert, 
 struck me as a good example ; but I never got further with this 
 play than to sketch its outline in the broadest manner possible. 
 The five acts were planned in the following manner: Act i. 
 Imperial Diet in the Roncaglian fields, a demonstration of the 
 significance of imperial power which should extend even to the 
 investiture of water and air; Act ii. the siege and capture of 
 Milan; Act iii. revolt of Henry the Lion and his overthrow 
 at Ligano ; Act iv. Imperial Diet in Augsburg, the humiliation 
 and punishment of Henry the Lion ; Act v. Imperial Diet and 
 grand court assembly at Mainz; peace with the Lombards, 
 reconciliation with the Pope, acceptance of the Cross, and the 
 departure for the East. I lost all interest, however, in the 
 carrying out of this dramatic scheme directly I discovered its 
 resemblance to the subject-matter of the ISTibelungen and Sieg- 
 fried myths, which possessed a more powerful attraction for me. 
 The points of similarity which I recognised between the history 
 and the legend in question then induced me to write a treatise 
 on the subject ; and in this I was assisted by some stimulating 
 monographs (found in the royal library), written by authors 
 whose names have now escaped my memory, but which taught
 
 THE NIBELUNGEN MYTH 457 
 
 me in a very attractive manner a considerable amount about the 
 old original kingdom of Germany. Later on I published this 
 fairly extensive essay with the title of Die Nibelungen, but in 
 working it out I finally lost all inclination to elaborate the 
 historical material for a real drama. 
 
 In direct connection with this I began to sketch' a clear 
 summary of the form which the old original Nibelungen myth 
 had assumed in my mind in its immediate association with the 
 mythological legend of the gods a form which, though full 
 of detail, was yet much condensed in its leading features. 
 Thanks to this work, I was able to convert the chief part of the 
 material itself into a musical drama. It was only by degrees, 
 however, and after long hesitation that I dared to enter more 
 deeply into my plans for this work; for the thought of the 
 practical realisation of such a work on our stage literally 
 appalled me. I must confess that it required all the despair 
 which I then felt of ever having the chance of doing anything 
 more for our theatre, to give me the necessary courage to 
 begin upon this new work. Until that time I simply allowed 
 myself to drift, while I meditated listlessly upon the possibility 
 of things pursuing their course further under the existing cir- 
 cumstances. In regard to Lohengrin, I had got to that point 
 when I hoped for nothing more than the best possible production 
 of it at the Dresden theatre, and felt that I should have to be 
 satisfied in all respects, and for all time, if I were able to achieve 
 even that. I had duly announced the completion of the score to 
 Herr von Liittichau ; but, in consideration of the unfavourable 
 nature of my circumstances at the time, I had left it entirely 
 to him to decide when my work should be produced. 
 
 Meanwhile the time arrived when the keeper of the Archives 
 of the Royal Orchestra called to mind that it was just three 
 hundred years since this royal institution had been founded, 
 and that a jubilee would therefore have to be celebrated. To 
 this end a great concert festival was planned, the programme 
 of which was to be made up of the compositions of all the Saxon 
 orchestral conductors that had lived since the institution had 
 been founded. The whole body of musicians, with both their 
 conductors at their head, were first to present their grateful 
 homage to the King in Pillnitz ; and on this occasion a musician
 
 458 MY LIFE 
 
 was, for the first time, to be elevated to the rank of Knight of 
 the Civil Order of Merit of Saxony. This musician was my 
 colleague Reissiger. Until then he had been treated by the 
 court, and by the manager himself, in the most scornful manner 
 possible, but had, owing to his conspicuous loyalty at this 
 critical time, especially to me, found exceptional favour in 
 the eyes of our committees. When he appeared before the 
 public decorated with the wonderful order, he was greeted 
 with great jubilation by the loyal audience that filled the theatre 
 on the evening of the festival concert. His overture to Yelva 
 was also received with a perfect uproar of enthusiastic applause, 
 such as had never fallen to his lot; whereas the finale of 
 the first act from Lohengrin, which was produced as the work 
 of the youngest conductor, was accorded only an indifferent 
 reception. This was all the more strange as I was quite un- 
 accustomed to such coolness in regard to my work on the part 
 of the Dresden public. Following upon the concert, there was 
 a festive supper, and when this was over, as all kinds of speeches 
 were being made, I freely proclaimed to the orchestra, in a loud 
 and decided tone, my views as to what was desirable for their 
 perfection in the future. Hereupon Marschner, who, as a former 
 musical conductor in Dresden, had been invited to the jubilee 
 celebrations, expressed the opinion that I should do myself a 
 great deal of harm by holding too good an opinion of the 
 musicians. He said I ought just to consider how uncultivated 
 these people were with whom I had to deal ; he pointed out that 
 they were trained simply for the one instrument they played; 
 and asked me whether I did not think that by discoursing to 
 them on the aspirations of art I would produce not only con- 
 fusion, but even perhaps bad blood ? Far more pleasant to 
 me than these festivities is the remembrance of the quiet 
 memorial ceremony which united us on the morning of the 
 Jubilee Day, with the object of placing wreaths on Weber's 
 grave. As nobody could find a word to utter, and even 
 Marschner was able to give expression only to the very driest 
 and most trivial of speeches about the departed master, I felt 
 it incumbent upon me to say a few heartfelt words concerning 
 the memorial ceremony for which we were gathered together. 
 This brief spell of artistic activity was speedily broken by
 
 459 
 
 fresh excitements, which kept pouring in upon us from the 
 political world. The events of October in Vienna awakened 
 our liveliest .sympathy, and our walls daily blazed with red 
 and black placards, with summonses to march on Vienna, with 
 the curse of ' lied Monarchy,' as opposed to the hated ' lied 
 Republic./ and with other equally startling matter. Except 
 for those who were best informed as to the course of events 
 and who certainly did not swarm in our streets these occur- 
 rences aroused great uneasiness everywhere. With the entry 
 of \Yindischgratz into Vienna, the acquittal of Frobel and the 
 execution of Blum, it seemed as though even Dresden were 
 on the eve of an explosion. A vast demonstration of mourning 
 was organised for Blum, with an endless procession through 
 the streets. At the head marched the ministry, among whom 
 the people were particularly glad to see Herr von der Pfordten 
 taking a sympathetic share in the ceremony, as he had already 
 become an object of suspicion to them. From that day 
 gloomy forebodings of disaster grew ever more prevalent on 
 every side. People even went so far as to say,, with little 
 attempt at circumlocution, that the execution of Blum had 
 been an act of friendship on the part of the Archduchess Sophia 
 to her sister, the Queen of Saxony, for during his agitation in 
 Leipzig the man had made himself both hated and feared. 
 Troops of Viennese fugitives, disguised as members of the stu- 
 dent bands, began to arrive in Dresden, and made a formidable 
 addition to its population, which from this time forth paraded 
 the stTeirtS^wttn~eYeT*Tncreasing confidence. One day, as I 
 was on my way to the theatre to conduct a performance of 
 Rienzi, the choir-master informed me that several foreign 
 gentlemen had been asking for me. Thereupon half a dozen 
 persons presented themselves, greeted me as a brother democrat, 
 and begged me to procure them free ent ranee tickets. Ainon^ 
 them I recognised a former dabbler in literature, a man named 
 Hafner, a little hunchback, in a Calabrian hat cocked at a 
 terrific angle, to whom I had been introduced by Uhl on the 
 occasion of my visit to the Vienna political club. Great as 
 was my embarrassment at this visit, which evidently astonished 
 our musicians, I felt in no wise compelled to make any com- 
 promising admission, but quietly went to the booking-office.
 
 460 MY LIFE 
 
 took six tickets and handed them to my strange visitors, who 
 parted from me before all the world with much hearty shaking 
 of hands. Whether this evening call improved my position as 
 musical conductor in Dresden in the minds of the theatrical 
 officials and others, may well be doubted ; but, at all events, on 
 no occasion was I so frantically called for after every act as at 
 this particular performance of Rienzi. 
 
 Indeed, at this time I seemed to have won over to my side a 
 party of almost passionate adherents among the theatre-going 
 public, in opposition to the clique which had shown such 
 marked coldness on the occasion of the gala concert already 
 mentioned. It mattered not whether Tannhduser or Rienzi were 
 being played, I was always greeted with special applause ; and 
 although the political tendencies of this party may have given 
 our management some cause for alarm, yet it forced them to 
 regard me with a certain amount of awe. One day Liittichau 
 proposed to have my Lohengrin performed at an early date. 
 I explained my reasons for not having offered it to him before, 
 but declared myself ready to further his wishes, as I considered 
 the opera company was now sufficiently powerful. The son 
 of my old friend, F. Heine, had just returned from Paris, where 
 he had been sent by the Dresden management to study scene- 
 painting under the artists Desplechin and Dieterle. By way 
 of testing his powers, with a view to an engagement at the 
 Dresden Royal Theatre, the task of preparing suitable scenery 
 for this opera was entrusted to him. He had already asked 
 permission to do this for Lohengrin at the instigation of 
 Liittichau, who wished to call attention to my latest work. 
 Consequently, when I gave my consent, young Heine's wish was 
 granted. 
 
 I regarded this turn of events with no little satisfaction, 
 believing that in the study of this particular work I should 
 find a wholesome and effective diversion from all the excite- 
 ment and confusion of recent events. My horror, therefore, 
 was all the greater, when young Wilhelm Heine one day came 
 to my room with the news that the scenery for Lohengrin had 
 been suddenly countermanded, and instructions given him to 
 prepare for another opera. I did not make any remark, nor 
 ask the reason for this singular behaviour. The assurances
 
 SIEGFRIED'S TOD 4G1 
 
 which Liittichau afterwards made to my wife if they were 
 really true made me regret having laid the chief blame for 
 this mortification at his door, and having thereby irrevocably 
 alienated my sympathy from him. When she asked him about 
 this many years later, he assured her that he had found the 
 court vehemently hostile to me, and that his well-meant 
 attempts to produce my work had met with insuperable 
 obstacles. 
 
 However that may have been, the Jbitterness I now experi- 
 enced wrought a decisive effect upon my feelings. Not only 
 did I relinquish all hope of a reconciliatiou with the theatre 
 authorities by a splendid production of my Lolu'nfjrin, Imt I 
 determined to turn my back for ever on the theatre, and to 
 make no further~"aLteiiipt tU'minlcHe*""ttrith"~ifs concerns. 'By this 
 act I expressed not merely my utter indifference as to whether 
 I kept my position as musical conductor or no, but my artistic 
 ambitions also entirely cut me off from all possibility of ever 
 cultivating modern theatrical conditions again. 
 
 I at once proceeded to execute my long-cherished plans for 
 Siegfried's Tod, which I had been half afraid of before. In 
 this work I no longer gave a thought to the Dresden or any 
 other court theatre in the world; my sole preoccupation was 
 to produce something that should free me, once and for all, 
 from this irrational subservience. As I could get nothing 
 more from Rockel in this connection, I now corresponded 
 exclusively with Eduard Devrient on matters connected with 
 the theatre and dramatic art. When, on the completion of 
 my poem, I read it to him, he listened with amazement, and 
 at once realised the fact that such a production would be an 
 absolute drug in the modern theatrical market, and he natur- 
 ally could not agree to let it remain so. On the other hand, he 
 tried so far to reconcile himself to my work as to try and make 
 it less startling and more adapted for actual production. He 
 proved the sincerity of his intentions by pointing out my error in 
 asking too much of the public, and requiring it to supply from 
 its own knowledge many things necessary for a right under- 
 standing of my subject-matter, at which I had only hinted in 
 brief and scattered suggestions. He showed me, for instance, 
 that before Siegfried and Brunhilda are displayed in a position
 
 462 MY LIFE 
 
 of bitter hostility towards each other, they ought first to have 
 been presented in their true and calmer relationship. I had, 
 in fact, opened the poem of Siegfried's Tod with those scenes 
 which now form the first act of the Gotterdammerung. 
 The details of Siegfried's relation to Brunhilda had been 
 merely outlined to the listeners in a lyrico-episodical dialogue 
 between the hero's wife, whom he had left behind in solitude, 
 and a crowd of Valkyries passing before her rock. To my 
 great joy, Devrient's hint on this point directed my thoughts 
 to those scenes which I afterwards worked out in the prologue 
 of this drama. 
 
 This and other matters of a similar nature brought me into 
 intimate contact with Eduard Devrient, and made our inter- 
 course much more lively and pleasant. He often invited a 
 select circle of friends to attend dramatic readings at his house 
 in which I gladly took part, for I found, to my surprise, that 
 his gift for declamation, which quite forsook him on the stage, 
 here stood out in strong relief. It was, moreover, a consolation 
 to pour into a sympathetic ear my worries about my growing 
 unpopularity with the director. Devrient seemed particularly 
 anxious to prevent a definite breach; but of this there was 
 little hope. With the approach of winter the court had re- 
 turned to town, and once more frequented the theatre, and 
 various signs of dissatisfaction in high quarters with my be- 
 haviour as conductor began to be manifested. On one occasion 
 the Queen thought that I had conducted Norma badly, and on 
 another that I ' had taken the time wrongly ' in Robert the 
 Devil. As Liittichau had to communicate these reprimands to 
 me, it was natural that our intercourse at such times should 
 hardly be of a nature to restore our mutual satisfaction with 
 each other. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, it still seemed possible to prevent 
 matters from coming to a crisis, though everything continued 
 in a state of agitating uncertainty and fermentation. At all 
 events the forces of reaction, which were holding themselves 
 in readiness on every side, were not yet sufficiently certain that 
 the hour of their triumph had come as not to consider it advis- 
 able for the present, at least, to avoid all provocation. Conse- 
 quently our management did not meddle with the musicians
 
 THE ORCHESTRA UNION 463 
 
 of the royal orchestra, who, in obedience to the spirit of the 
 times, had formed a union for debate and the protection of 
 their artistic and civic interests. In this matter one of our 
 youngest musicians, Theodor Uhlig, had been particularly 
 active. He was a young man, still in his early twenties, and 
 was a violinist in the orchestra. His face was strikingly mild, 
 intelligent and noble, and he was conspicuous among his 
 fellows on account of his great seriousness and his quiet but 
 unusually firm character. He had particularly attracted my 
 notice on several occasions by his quick insight and extensive 
 knowledge of music. As I recognised in him a spirit keenly alert 
 in every direction, and unusually eager for culture, it was not 
 long before I chose him as my companion in my regular walks 
 a habit I still continued to cultivate and on which Rockel 
 had hitherto accompanied me. He induced me to come to 
 a meeting of this union of the orchestral company, in order 
 that I might form an opinion about it, and encourage and 
 support so praiseworthy a movement. On this occasion I 
 communicated to its members the contents of my memoran- 
 dum to the director, which had been rejected a year before, 
 and in which I had made suggestions for reforms in the band, 
 and I also explained further intentions and plans arising there- 
 from. At the same time I was obliged to confess that I had 
 lost all hope of carrying out any projects of the kind through 
 the general management, and must therefore recommend them 
 to take the initiative vigorously into their own hands. They 
 acclaimed the idea with enthusiastic approval. Although, as 
 I have said before, Liittichau left these musicians unmolested 
 in their more or less democratic union, yet he took care to be 
 informed through spies of what took place at their highly 
 treasonable gatherings. His chief instrument was a bugler 
 named Lewy, who, much to the disgust of all his comrades 
 in the orchestra, was in particularly high favour with the 
 director. He consequently received precise, or rather exagger- 
 ated, accounts of my appearance there, and thought it waa 
 now high time to let me once more feel the weight of his 
 authority. I was officially summoned to his presence, and 
 had to listen to a long and wrathful tirade which he had been 
 bottling up for some time about several matters. I also learned
 
 464 MY LIFE 
 
 that he knew all about the plan of theatre reform which I 
 had laid before the ministry. This knowledge he betrayed in 
 a popular Dresden phrase, which until then I had never heard ; 
 he knew very well, he said, that in a memorandum respecting 
 the theatre I had ' made him look ridiculous ' (ihm an den Laden 
 gelegt}. In answer to this I did not refrain from telling him 
 how I intended to act in retaliation, and when he threatened 
 to report me to the King and demand my dismissal, I calmly 
 replied that he might do as he pleased, as I was well assured 
 that I could rely on his Majesty's justice to hear, not only his 
 charges, but also my defence. Moreover, I added, this was the 
 only befitting manner for me to discuss with the King the many 
 points on which I had to complain, not only in my own interests, 
 but also in those of the theatre and of art. This was not 
 pleasant hearing for Liittichau, and he asked how it was possible 
 for him to try and co-operate with me, when I for my part had 
 openly declared (to use his own expression) that all labour was 
 wasted upon him (Hopfen und Malz verloren seien). We had 
 at last to part with mutual shruggings of the shoulder. My 
 conduct seemed to trouble my former patron, and he therefore 
 enlisted the tact and moderation of Eduard Devrient in his 
 service, and asked him to use his influence with me to facilitate 
 some further arrangement between us. But, in spite of all 
 his zeal, Devrient had to admit with a smile, after we had 
 discussed his message, that nothing much could be done; and 
 as I persisted in my refusal to meet the director again in con- 
 sultation respecting the service of the theatre, he had at last 
 to recognise that his own wisdom would have to help him out 
 of the difficulty. 
 
 Throughout the whole period during which I was fated to 
 fill the post of conductor at Dresden, the effects of this dislike 
 on the part of the court and the director continued to make 
 themselves felt in everything. The orchestral concerts, which 
 had been organised by me in the previous winter, were this year 
 placed under Reissiger's control, and at once sank to the usual 
 level of ordinary concerts. Public interest quickly waned, and 
 the undertaking could only with difficulty be kept alive. In 
 opera I was unable to carry out the proposed revival of the 
 Fliegender Hollander, for which I had found in Mitterwurzer's
 
 TYKANNY 465 
 
 maturer talent an admirable and promising exponent. My 
 niece Johanna, whom I had destined for the part of Senta, 
 did not like the role, because it offered little opportunity 
 for splendid costumes. She preferred Zampa and Favorita, 
 partly to please her new protector, my erstwhile Rienzi en- 
 thusiast, Tichatschek, partly for the sake of three brilliant 
 costumes which the management had to furnish for each of 
 these parts. In fact, these two ringleaders of the Dresden 
 opera of that day had formed an alliance of rebellion against 
 my vigorous rule in the matter of operatic repertoire. Their 
 opposition, to my great discomfiture, was crowned by success 
 when they secured the production of this Favorita of Donizetti's, 
 the arrangement of which I had once been obliged to undertake 
 for Schlesinger in Paris. I had at first emphatically refused 
 to have anything to do with this opera, although its principal 
 part suited my niece's voice admirably, even in her father's 
 judgment. But now that they knew of my feud with the 
 director, and of my voluntary loss of influence, and finally of 
 my evident disgrace, they thought the opportunity ripe for 
 compelling me to conduct this tiresome work myself, as it 
 happened to be my turn. 
 
 Besides this, my chief occupation at the royal theatre during 
 this period consisted in conducting Flotow's opera Martha, 
 which, although it failed to attract the public, was nevertheless 
 produced with excessive frequency, owing to its convenient 
 cast. On reviewing the results of my labours in Dresden 
 where I had now been nearly seven years I could not help 
 feeling humiliated when I considered the powerful and ener- 
 getic impetus I knew I had given in many directions to the 
 court theatre, and I found myself obliged to confess that, were 
 I now to leave Dresden, not the smallest trace of my influence 
 would remain behind. From various signs I also gathered 
 that, if ever it should come to a trial before the King between 
 the director and myself, even if his Majesty were in my favour, 
 yet out of consideration for the courtier the verdict- would go 
 against me. 
 
 Nevertheless, on Palm Sunday of the new year, 1849, I 
 received ample amends. In order to ensure liberal receipts, >i i r 
 orchestra had again decided to produce Beethoven's Ninth
 
 466 MY LIFE 
 
 Symphony. Every one did his utmost to make this one of 
 our finest performances, and the public took up the matter 
 with real enthusiasm. Michael Bakunin, unknown to the police, 
 had been present at the public rehearsal. At its close he walked 
 unhesitatingly up to me in the orchestra, and said in a loud 
 
 / voice, that if all the music that had ever been written were 
 lost in the expected world-wide conflagration, we must pledge 
 ourselves to rescue this symphony, even at the peril of our lives. 
 
 \Not many weeks after this performance it really seemed as 
 though this world-wide conflagration would actually be kindled 
 in the streets of Dresden, and that Bakunin,with whom I had 
 meanwhile become more closely associated through strange 
 and unusual circumstances, would undertake the office of chief 
 stoker. 
 
 It was long before this date that I first made the acquaintance 
 of this most remarkable man, Eor years I had come across 
 his name in the newspapers, and always under extraordinary 
 circumstances. He turned up in Paris at a Polish gather- 
 ing, but although he was a Russian, he declared that it mattered 
 little whether a man were a Russian or a Pole, so long as he 
 wanted to be a free man, and that this was all that mattered. 
 I heard afterwards, through George Herwegh, that he had 
 renounced all his sources of income as a member of an influential 
 Russian family, and that one day, when his entire fortune 
 consisted of two francs, he had given them away to a beggar 
 on the boulevard, because it was irksome to him to be bound 
 by this possession to take any thought for the morrow. I was 
 informed of his presence in Dresden one day by Rockel, after 
 the latter had become a rampant republican. He had taken 
 the Russian into his house, and invited me to come and make 
 his acquaintance. Bakunin was at that time being persecuted 
 by the Austrian government for his share in the events which 
 took place in Prague in the summer of 1848, and because he was 
 a member of the Slav Congress which had preceded them. 
 He had consequently sought refuge in our city, as he did not 
 wish to settle too far from the Bohemian frontier. The extra- 
 ordinary sensation he had created in Prague arose from the fact 
 that, when the Czechs sought the protection of Russia against 
 the dreaded Germanising policy of Austria, he conjured them
 
 BAKUNIN 467 
 
 to defend themselves with fire and sword against those very 
 Russians, and indeed against any other people who lived under 
 the rule of a despotism like that of the Tsars. This superficial 
 acquaintance with Bakunin's aims had sufficed to change the 
 purely national prejudices of the Germans against him into 
 sympathy. When I met him, therefore, under the humble 
 shelter of Rockel's roof, I was immediately struck by his singular 
 and altogether imposing personality. He was in the full bloom 
 of manhood, anywhere between thirty and forty years of age. 
 Everything about him was colossal, and he was full of a primi- 
 tive exuberance and strength. I never gathered that he set 
 much store by my acquaintance. Indeed, he did not seem 
 to care for merely intellectual men; what he demanded was 
 men of reckless energy. As I afterwards perceived, theory 
 in this case had more weight with him than purely personal 
 sentiment ; and he talked much and expatiated freely on the 
 matter. His general mode of discussion was the Socratic 
 method, and he seemed quite at his ease when, stretched on 
 his host's hard sofa, he could argue discursively with a crowd 
 of all sorts of men on the problems of revolution. On these 
 occasions he invariably got the best of the argument. It was 
 impossible to triumph against his opinions, stated as they were 
 with the utmost conviction, and overstepping in every direction 
 even the extremest bounds of radicalism. So communicative 
 was he, that on the very first evening of our meeting he gave 
 me full details about the various stages of his development 
 He was a Russian officer of high birth, but smarting under the 
 yoke of the narrowest martial tyranny, he had been led by a 
 study of Rousseau's writings to escape to Germany under pre- 
 tence of taking furlough. In Berlin he had flung himself into 
 the study of philosophy with all the zest of a barbarian newly 
 awakened to civilisation. Hegel's philosophy was the one which 
 was the rage at that moment, and he soon became such an 
 expert in it, that he had been able to hurl that master's most 
 famous disciples from the saddle of their own philosophy, in a 
 thesis couched in terms of the strictest Hegelian dialectic. 
 After he had got philosophy off his chest, as he expressed it, 
 he proceeded to Switzerland, where he preached communism, 
 and thence wandered over France and Germany back to the
 
 468 MY LIFE 
 
 borderland of the Slav world, from which quarter he looked 
 for the regeneration of humanity, because the Slavs had been 
 less enervated by civilisation. His hopes in this respect were 
 centred in the more strongly pronounced Slav type character- 
 istic of the Russian peasant class. In the natural detestation 
 of the Russian serf for his cruel oppressor the nobleman, he 
 believed he could trace a substratum of simple-minded brotherly 
 love, and that instinct which leads animals to hate the men 
 who hunt them. In support of this idea he cited the childish, 
 almost demoniac delight of the Russian people in fire, a quality 
 on which Rostopschin calculated in his strategic burning of 
 Moscow. He argued that all that was necessary to set in 
 motion a world-wide movement was to convince the Russian 
 peasant, in whom the natural goodness of oppressed human 
 nature had preserved its most childlike characteristics, that 
 it was perfectly right and well pleasing to God for them to burn 
 their lords' castles, with everything in and about them The 
 least that could result from such a movement would be the 
 destruction of all those things which, rightly considered, must 
 appear, even to Europe's most philosophical thinkers, the real 
 source of all the misery of the modern world. To set these 
 destructive forces in action appeared to him the only object 
 worthy of a sensible man's activity. (Even while he was 
 preaching these horrible doctrines, Bakunin, noticing that my 
 eyes troubled me, shielded them with his outstretched hand 
 from the naked light for a full hour, in spite of my protesta- 
 tions.) This annihilation of all civilisation was the goal upon 
 which his heart was set. Meanwhile it amused him to utilise 
 every lever of political agitation he could lay hands on for the 
 advancement of this aim, and in so doing he often found cause 
 for ironical merriment. In his retreat he received people be- 
 longing to every shade of revolutionary thought. Nearest to 
 him stood those of Slav nationality, because these, he thought, 
 would be the most convenient and effective weapons he could 
 use in the uprooting of Russian despotism. In spite of their 
 republic and their socialism a la Proudhon, he thought nothing 
 of the French, and as for the Germans, he never mentioned 
 them to me. Democracy, republicanism, and anything else 
 of the kind he regarded as unworthy of serious consideration.
 
 BAKUNIN '460 
 
 Every objection raised by those who had the slightest wish to 
 reconstruct what had been demolished, he met with over- 
 whelming criticism. I well remember on one occasion that a 
 Pole, startled by his theories, maintained that there must be 
 an organised state to guarantee the individual in the possession 
 of the fields he had cultivated. < What ! ' he answered ; ' would 
 you carefully fence in your field to provide a livelihood for the 
 police again ! ' This shut the mouth of the terrified Pole. He 
 comforted himself by saying that the creators of the new order 
 of things would arise of themselves, but that our sole business 
 in the meantime was to find the power to destroy. Was anv 
 one of us so mad as to fancy that he would survive the desired 
 destruction? We ought to imagine the whole of Europe with 
 St. Petersburg, Paris, and London transformed into a vast 
 rubbish-heap. How could we expect the kindlers of such a 
 fire to retain any consciousness after so vast a devastation? 
 He used to puzzle any who professed their readiness for self- 
 sacrifice by telling them it was not the so-called tyrants who 
 were so obnoxious, but the smug Philistines. As a type of these 
 he pointed to a Protestant parson, and declared that he would 
 not believe he had really reached the full stature of a man until 
 he saw him commit his own parsonage, with his wife and child, 
 to the flames. 
 
 I was all the more perplexed for a while, in the face of such 
 dreadful ideas, by the fact that Bakunin in other respects proved 
 a really amiable and tender-hearted man. He was fully alive 
 to my own anxiety and despair with regard to the risk I ran 
 of forever destroying mv ideals and hopes for the future of 
 art. It is true, lie declined to receive any further instruction 
 concerning these artistic schemes, and would not even look 
 at my work on the JNibelungen saga. I had just then been 
 inspired by a study of the Gospels to conceive the plan of a 
 tragedy for the ideal stage of the future, entitled Jesus of 
 Nazareth. Bakunin begged me to spare him any details; and 
 when I sought to win him over to my project by a few verbal 
 hints, he wished me luck, but insisted that I must at all costa 
 make Jesus appear as a weak character. As for the music 
 of the piece, he advised me, amid all the variations, to use only 
 one set of phrases, namely : for the tenor, ' Off with His head ! ' ;
 
 470 MY LIFE 
 
 for the soprano, ' Hang Him ! ' ; and for the bnsso contimio, 
 'Fire! fire!' And yet I felt more sympathetically drawn 
 towards this prodigy of a man when I one day induced him to 
 hear me play and sing the first scenes of luy Fliegender 
 Hollander. After listening with more attention than most 
 people gave, he exclaimed, during a momentary pause, ' That is 
 stupendously fine ! ' and wanted to hear more. 
 
 As his life of permanent concealment was very dull, I occa- 
 sionally invited him to spend an evening with me. For supper 
 my wife set before him finely cut slices of sausage and meat, 
 which he at once devoured wholesale, instead of spreading 
 them frugally on his bread in Saxon fashion. Noticing Minna's 
 alarm at this, I was guilty of the weakness of telling him how 
 we were accustomed to consume such viands, whereupon he 
 reassured me with a laugh, saying that it was quite enough, 
 only he would like to eat what was set before him in his own 
 way. I was similarly astonished at the manner in which he 
 drank wine from our ordinary-sized small glasses. As a matter 
 of fact he detested wine, which only satisfied his craving for 
 alcoholic stimulants in such paltry, prolonged, and subdivided 
 doses; whereas a stiff glass of brandy, swallowed at a gulp, 
 at once produced the same result, which, after all, was only 
 temporarily attained. Above all, he scorned the sentiment 
 which seeks to prolong enjoyment by moderation, arguing that 
 a true man should only strive to still the cravings of nature, and 
 that the only real pleasure in life worthy of a man was love. 
 
 These and other similar little characteristics showed clearly 
 that in this remarkable man the purest impulses of an ideal 
 humanity conflicted strangely with a savagery entirely inimical 
 to all civilisation, so that my feelings during my intercourse 
 with him fluctuated between involuntary horror and irresistible 
 attraction. I frequently called for him to share my lonely 
 wanderings. This he gladly did, not only for the sake of 
 necessary bodily exercise, but also because he could do so in this 
 part of the world without fear of meeting his pursuers. My 
 attempts during our conversations to instruct him more fully 
 regarding my artistic aims remained quite unavailing as long 
 as we were unable to quit the field of mere discussion. All 
 these things seemed to him premature. He refused to admit
 
 BAKUNIN 
 
 471 
 
 that out of the very needs of the evil present all laws for the 
 future would have to be evolved, and that these, moreover, must 
 be moulded upon quite different ideas of social culture. Seeing 
 that he continued to urge destruction, and again destruction, 
 I had at last to inquire how my wonderful friend proposed to 
 set this work of destruction in operation. It then soon became 
 clear, as I had suspected it would, and as the event soon proved, 
 that with this man of boundless activity everything rested 
 upon the most impossible hypotheses. Doubtless I, with my 
 hopes of a future artistic remodelling of human society, ap- 
 peared to him to be floating in the barren air; yet it soon 
 became obvious to me that his assumptions as to the unavoid- 
 able demolition of all the institutions of culture were at least 
 equally visionary. My first idea was that Bakunin was the 
 centre of an international conspiracy; but his practical plans 
 seem originally to have been restricted to a project for revolu- 
 tionising Prague, where he relied merely on a union formed 
 among a handful of students. Believing that the time had 
 now come to strike a blow, he prepared himself one evening 
 to go there. This proceeding was not free from danger, and 
 he set off under the protection of a passport made out for an 
 English merchant. First of all, however, with the view of 
 adapting himself to the most Philistine culture, he had to sub- 
 mit his huge beard and bushy hair to the tender mercies of the 
 razor and shears. As no barber was available, Kockel had to 
 undertake the task. A small group of friends watched the 
 operation, which had to be executed with a dull razor, causing 
 no little pain, under which none but the victim himself remained 
 passive. We bade farewell to Bakunin with the firm conviction 
 that we should never see him again alive. But in a week he 
 was back once more, as he had realised immediately what a 
 distorted account he had received as to the state of things in 
 Prague, where all he found ready for him was a mere handful 
 of childish students. These admissions made him the butt 
 of RockePs good-humoured chaff, and after this he won the 
 reputation among us of being a mere revolutionary, who was 
 content with theoretical conspiracy. Very similar to hi* 
 expectations from the Prague students were his presumption-; 
 with regard to the Russian people. These also afterwards
 
 472 MY LIFE 
 
 proved to be entirely groundless, and based merely on gratuitous 
 assumptions drawn from the supposed nature of things. I 
 consequently found myself driven to explain the universal 
 belief in the terrible dangerousness of this man by his theo- 
 retical views, as expressed here and elsewhere, and not as 
 arising from any actual experience of his practical activity. 
 But I was soon to become almost an eye-witness of the fact 
 that his personal conduct was never for a moment swayed by 
 prudence, such as one is accustomed to meet in those whose 
 theories are not seriously meant. This was shortly to be proved 
 in the momentous insurrection of May, 1849. 
 
 The winter of this year, up to the spring of 1849, passed in 
 a many-sided development of my position and temper, as I 
 have described them, that is to say, in a sort of dull agitation. 
 My latest artistic occupation had been the five-act drama, 
 Jesus of Nazareth, just mentioned. Henceforth I lingered on 
 in a state of brooding instability, full of expectation, yet with- 
 out any definite wish. I felt fully convinced that my activity 
 in Dresden, as an artist, had come to an end, and I was only 
 waiting for the pressure of circumstances to shake myself free. 
 On the other hand, the whole political situation, both in Saxony 
 and the rest of Germany, tended inevitably towards a catas- 
 trophe. Day by day this drew nearer, and I flattered myself 
 into regarding my own personal fate as interwoven with this 
 universal unrest. Now that the powers of reaction were every- 
 where more and more openly bracing themselves for conflict, 
 the final decisive struggle seemed indeed close at hand. My 
 feelings of partisanship were not sufficiently passionate to make 
 me desire to take any active share in these conflicts. I was 
 merely conscious of an impulse to give myself up recklessly to 
 the stream of events, no matter whither it might lead. 
 
 Just at this moment, however, an entirely new influence 
 forced itself in a most strange fashion into my fortunes, and 
 was at first greeted by me with a smile of scepticism. Liszt 
 wrote announcing an early production in "Weimar of my Tann- 
 Jiduser under his own conductorship the first that had taken 
 place outside Dresden and he added with great modesty that 
 this was merely a fulfilment of his own personal desire. In 
 order to ensure success he had sent a special invitation to
 
 TANNHAUSER AT WEIMAR 473 
 
 Tichatschek to be his guest for the two first performances. 
 When the latter returned he said that the production had, on 
 the whole, been a success, which surprised me very much. I 
 received a gold snuff-box from the Grand Duke as a keepsake, 
 which I continued to use until the year 1864. All this was new 
 and strange to me, and I was still inclined to regard this other- 
 wise agreeable occurrence as a fleeting episode, due to the 
 friendly feeling of a great artist. ' What does this mean for 
 me ? ' I asked myself. ' Has it come too early or too late ? ' 
 But a very cordial letter from Liszt induced me to visit Weimar 
 for a few days later on, for a third performance of Tannhduser, 
 which was to be carried out entirely by native talent, with a 
 view to the permanent addition of this opera to the repertoire. 
 For this purpose I obtained leave of absence from my manage- 
 ment for the second week in May. 
 
 Only a few days elapsed before the execution of this little 
 plan; but they were destined to be momentous ones. On the 
 1st of May the Chambers were dissolved by the new Beust 
 ministry, which the King had charged with carrying out his 
 proposed reactionary policy. This event imposed upon me 
 the friendly task of caring for Rockel and his family. Hitherto 
 his position as a deputy had shielded him from the danger 
 of criminal prosecution; but as soon as the Chambers were 
 dissolved this protection was withdrawn, and he had to escape 
 by flight from being arrested again. As I could do little to help 
 him in this matter, I promised at least to provide for the con- 
 tinued publication of his popular Volksblatt, mainly because 
 the proceeds from this would support his family. Scarcely 
 was Rockel safely across the Bohemian frontier, while I was 
 still toiling at great inconvenience to myself in the printer's 
 office, in order to provide material for an issue of his paper, 
 when the long-expected storm burst over Dresden. Emergency 
 deputations, nightly mob demonstrations, stormy meetings of 
 the various unions, and all the other signs that precede a swift 
 decision in the streets, manifested themselves. On the 3rd 
 May the demeanour of the crowds moving in our thoroughfares 
 plainly showed that this consummation would soon be reached, 
 as was undoubtedly desired. Each local deputation which 
 petitioned for the recognition of the German constitution,
 
 474 MY LIFE 
 
 which was the universal cry, was refused an audience by the 
 government, and this with a peremptoriness which at last be- 
 came startling. I was present one afternoon at a committee 
 meeting of the Vaterlands-Verein, although merely as a repre- 
 sentative of Rockel's VolTcsblatt, for whose continuance, both 
 from economic as well as humane motives, I felt pledged. 
 Here I was at once absorbed in watching the conduct and 
 demeanour of the men whom popular favour had raised to the 
 leadership of such unions. It was quite evident that events had 
 passed beyond the control of these persons; more particularly 
 were they utterly at a loss as to how to deal with that peculiar 
 terrorism exerted by the lower classes which is always so ready 
 to react upon the representatives of democratic theories. On 
 every side I heard a medley of wild proposals and hesitating 
 responses. One of the chief subjects under debate was the 
 necessity of preparing for defence. Arms, and how to procure 
 them, were eagerly discussed, but all in the midst of great 
 disorder; and when at last they discovered that it was time 
 to break up, the only impression I received was one of the 
 wildest confusion. I left the hall with a young painter named 
 Kaufmann, from whose hand I had previously seen a series of 
 cartoons in the Dresden Art Exhibition, illustrating ' The His- 
 tory of the Mind.' One day I had seen the King of Saxony 
 standing before one of these, representing the torture of a heretic 
 under the Spanish Inquisition, and observed him turn away with 
 a disapproving shake of the head from so abstruse a subject. 
 I was on my way home, deep in conversation with this man, 
 whose pale face and troubled look betrayed that he foresaw 
 the disaster that was imminent, when, just as we reached the 
 Postplatz, near the fountain erected from Semper's design, the 
 clang of bells from the neighbouring tower of St. Arm's Church 
 suddenly sounded the tocsin of revolt. With a terrified cry, 
 ' Good God, it has begun ! ' my companion vanished from my 
 side. He wrote to me afterwards to say that he was living 
 as a fugitive in Berne, but I never saw his face again. 
 
 The clang of this bell, so close at hand, made a profound 
 impression upon me also. It was a very sunny afternoon, and 
 I at once noticed the same phenomenon which Goethe describes 
 in his attempt to depict his own sensations during the bom-
 
 THE TOCSIN OF KEVOLT 475 
 
 bardment of Valmy. The whole square looked as though it 
 were illuminated by a dark yellow, almost brown, light, such 
 as I had once before seen in Magdeburg during an eclipse of 
 the sun. My most pronounced sensation beyond this was one 
 of great, almost extravagant, satisfaction. I felt a sudden 
 strange longing to play with something hitherto regarded as 
 dangerous and important My first idea, suggested probably 
 by the vicinity of the square, was to inquire at Tichatschek's 
 house for the gun which, as an enthusiastic Sunday sportsman, 
 he was accustomed to use. I only found his wife at home, as 
 he was away on a holiday tour. Her evident terror as to what 
 was going to happen provoked me to uncontrollable laughter. 
 I advised her to lodge her husband's gun in a place of safety, 
 by handing it to the committee of the Vaterlands-Verein in 
 return for a receipt, as it might otherwise soon be requisitioned 
 by the mob. I have since learned that my eccentric behaviour 
 on this occasion was afterwards reckoned against me as a 
 serious crime. I then returned to the streets, to see whether 
 anything beyond a ringing of bells and a yellowish eclipse of 
 the sun might be going on in the town. I first made my way 
 to the Old Market-place, where I noticed a group of men 
 gathered round a vociferous orator. It was also an agreeable sur- 
 prise to me to see Schroder-Devrient descending at the door of 
 a hotel. She had just arrived from Berlin, and was keenly 
 excited by the news which had reached her, that the populace 
 had already been fired upon. As she had only recently seen 
 an abortive insurrection crushed by arms in Berlin, she was 
 indignant to find the same things happening in her 'peaceful 
 Dresden/ as she termed it. 
 
 When she turned to me from the stolid crowd, which had 
 complacently been listening to her passionate outpourings, she 
 seemed relieved at finding some one to whom she could appeal 
 to oppose these horrible proceedings with all his might. I 
 met her on another occasion at the house of my old friend 
 Heine, where she had taken refuge. When she noticed my 
 indifference she again adjured me to use every possible effort 
 to prevent the senseless, suicidal conflict. I heard afterwards 
 that a charge of high treason on account of sedition had been 
 brought against Schroder-Devrient by reason of her conduct
 
 476 MY LIFE 
 
 in regard to this matter. She had to prove her innocence in 
 a court of law, so as to establish beyond dispute her claim to 
 the pension which she had been promised by contract for her 
 many years' service in Dresden as an opera-singer. 
 
 On the 3rd of May I betook myself direct to that quarter of 
 the town where I heard unpleasant rumours of a sanguinary 
 conflict having taken place. I afterwards learned that the 
 actual cause of the dispute between the civil and military power 
 had arisen when the watch had been changed in front of the 
 Arsenal. At that moment the mob, under a bold leader, had 
 seized the opportunity to take forcible possession of the 
 armoury. A display of military force was made, and the 
 crowd was fired upon by a few cannon loaded with grape-shot. 
 As I approached the scene of operations through the Kampische 
 Gasse, I met a company of the Dresden Communal Guards, 
 who, although they were quite innocent, had apparently been 
 exposed to this fire. I noticed that one of the citizen guards, 
 leaning heavily on the arm of a comrade, was trying to hurry 
 along, in spite of the fact that his right leg seemed to be drag- 
 ging helplessly behind him. Some of the crowd, seeing the 
 blood on the pavement behind him, shouted ' He is bleeding.' 
 In the midst of this excitement I suddenly became conscious of 
 the cry raised on all sides : ' To the barricades ! to the barri- 
 cades ! ' Driven by a mechanical impulse I followed the stream 
 of people, which moved once more in the direction of the Town 
 Hall in the Old Market-place. Amid the terrific tumult I par- 
 ticularly noticed a significant group stretching right across the 
 street, and striding along the Rosmaringasse. It reminded me, 
 though the simile was rather exaggerated, of the crowd that had 
 once stood at the doors of the theatre and demanded free en- 
 trance to Rienzi; among them was a hunchback, who at once 
 suggested Goethe's Vansen in Egmont, and as the revolutionary 
 cry rose about his ears, I saw him rub his hands together in 
 great glee over the long-desired ecstasy of revolt which he had 
 realised at last 
 
 I recollect quite clearly that from that moment I was at- 
 tracted by surprise and interest in the drama, without feeling 
 any desire to join the ranks of the combatants. However, the 
 agitation caused by my sympathy as a mere spectator increased
 
 AT THE TOWN HALL 477 
 
 with every step I felt impelled to take. I was able to press 
 right into the rooms of the town council, escaping notice in the 
 tumultuous crowd, and it seemed to me as if the officials were 
 guilty of collusion with the mob. I made my way unobserved 
 into the council-chamber; what I saw there was utter disorder 
 and confusion. When night fell I wandered slowly through 
 the hastily made barricades, consisting chiefly of market stalls, 
 back to my house in the distant Friedrichstrasse, and next 
 morning I again watched these amazing proceedings with sym- 
 pathetic interest. 
 
 On Thursday, 4th May, I could see that the Town Hall was 
 gradually becoming the undoubted centre of the revolution. 
 That section of the people who had hoped for a peaceful under- 
 standing with the monarch was thrown into the utmost con- 
 sternation by the news that the King and his whole court, acting 
 on the advice of his minister Beust, had left the palace, and had 
 gone by ship down the Elbe to the fortress of Konigstein. In 
 these circumstances the town council saw they were no longer 
 able to face the situation, and thereupon took part in summon- 
 ing those members of the Saxon Chamber who were still in 
 Dresden. These latter now assembled in the Town Hall to de- 
 cide what steps should be taken for the protection of the state. 
 A deputation was sent to the ministry, but returned with the 
 report that they were nowhere to be found. At the same moment 
 news arrived from all sides that, in accordance with a previous 
 compact, the King of Prussia's troops would advance to occupy 
 Dresden. A general outcry immediately arose for measures 
 to be adopted to prevent this incursion of foreign troops. 
 
 Simultaneously with this, came the intelligence of the na- 
 tional uprising in Wiirtemberg, where the troops themselves had 
 frustrated the intentions of the government by their declaration 
 of fidelity to the parliament, and the ministry had been com- 
 pelled against their will to acknowledge the Pan-German Con- 
 stitution. The opinion of our politicians, who were assembled 
 in consultation, was that the matter might still be settled by 
 peaceful means, if it were possible to induce the Saxon troops 
 to take up a similar attitude, as by this means the King would 
 at least be placed under the wholesome necessity of offering 
 patriotic resistance to the Prussian occupation of his country.
 
 4Y8 MY LIFE 
 
 Everything seemed to depend on making the Saxon battalions 
 in Dresden understand the paramount importance of their 
 action. As this seemed to me the only hope of an honourable 
 peace in this senseless chaos, I confess that, on this one occasion, 
 VI did allow myself to be led astray so far as to organise a 
 demonstration which, however, proved futile. 
 
 I induced the printer of Rockel's Volksblatt, which was for 
 the moment at a standstill, to employ all the type he would 
 have used for his next number, in printing in huge characters 
 on strips of paper the words: Seid Ihr mit uns gegen fremde 
 Truppen? (' Are you on our side against the foreign troops ? '). 
 Placards bearing these words were fixed on those barricades 
 which it was thought would be the first to be assaulted, and 
 were intended to bring the Saxon troops to a halt if they were 
 commanded to attack the revolutionaries. Of course no one 
 took any notice of these placards except intending informers. 
 On that day nothing but confused negotiations and wild excite- 
 ment took place which threw no light on the situation. The 
 Old Town of Dresden, with its barricades, was an interesting 
 enough sight for the spectators. I looked on with amazement 
 and disgust, but my attention was suddenly distracted by 
 seeing Bakunin emerge from his hiding-place and wander 
 among the barricades in a black frockcoat. But I was very 
 much mistaken in thinking he would be pleased with what he 
 saw; he recognised the childish inefficiency of all the measures 
 that had been taken for defence, and declared that the only 
 satisfaction he could feel in the state of affairs was that he need 
 not trouble about the police, but could calmly consider the 
 question of going elsewhere, as he found no inducement to take 
 part in an insurrection conducted in such a slovenly fashion. 
 While he walked about smoking his cigar, and making fun of 
 the naivete of the Dresden revolution, I watched the Communal 
 Guards assembling under arms in front of the Town Hall at the 
 summons of their commandant. From the ranks of its most 
 popular corps, the Schiitzen-Compagnie, I was accosted by 
 Rietschel, who was most anxious about the nature of the rising, 
 and also by Semper. Rietschel, who seemed to think I was 
 better informed of the facts than he was, assured me that he 
 felt his position was a very difficult one. He said the select
 
 THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 479 
 
 company to which he belonged was very democratic, and as 
 his professorship at the Fine Arts Academy placed him in a 
 peculiar position, he did not know how to reconcile the senti- 
 ments he shared with his company with his duty as a citizen. 
 The word ' citizen ' amused me ; I glanced sharply at Semper 
 and repeated the word ' citizen.' Semper responded with a 
 peculiar smile, and turned away without further comment. 
 
 The next day (Friday the 5th of May), when I again took 
 my place as a passionately interested spectator of the pro- 
 ceedings at the Town Hall, events took a decisive turn. The 
 remnant of the leaders of the Saxon people there assembled 
 thought it advisable to constitute themselves into a provisional 
 government, as there was no Saxon government in existence 
 with which negotiations could be conducted. Professor Kochly, 
 who was an eloquent speaker, was chosen to proclaim the 
 new administration. He performed this solemn ceremony 
 from the balcony of the Town Hall, facing the faithful remnant 
 of the Communal Guards and the not very numerous crowd. 
 At the same time the legal existence of the Pan-German Con- 
 stitution was proclaimed, and allegiance to it was sworn by the 
 armed forces of the nation. I recollect that these proceedings 
 did not seem to me imposing, and Bakunin's reiterated opinion 
 about their triviality gradually became more comprehensible. 
 Even from a technical point of view these reflections were 
 justified when, to my great amusement and surprise, Semper, 
 in the full uniform of a citizen guard, with a hat bedecked 
 with the national colours, asked for me at the Town Hall, and 
 informed me of the extremely faulty construction of the bar- 
 ricades in the Wild Strufergasse and the neighbouring Briider- 
 gasse. To pacify his artistic conscience as an engineer I 
 directed him to the office of the ' Military Commission for the 
 Defence.' He followed my advice with conscientious satis- 
 faction; possibly he obtained the necessary authorisation to 
 give instructions for the building of suitable works of defence 
 at that neglected point. After that I never saw him again 
 in Dresden; but I presume that he carried out the strategic 
 works entrusted to him by that committee with all the con- 
 scientiousness of a Michael Angelo or a Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 The rest of the day passed in continuous negotiations over
 
 480 MY LIFE 
 
 the truce which, by arrangement with the Saxon troops, was 
 to last until noon of the next day. In this business I noticed 
 the very pronounced activity of a former college friend, Mar- 
 schall von Bieberstein, a lawyer who, in his capacity as senior 
 officer of the Dresden Communal Guard, distinguished him- 
 self by his boundless zeal amid the shouts of a mighty band of 
 fellow-orators. On that day a certain Heinz, formerly a Greek 
 colonel, was placed in command of the armed forces. These pro- 
 ceedings did not seem at all satisfactory to Bakunin, who put in 
 an occasional appearance. While the provisional government 
 placed all its hopes on finding a peaceful settlement of the 
 conflict by moral persuasion, he, on the contrary, with his 
 clear vision foresaw a well-planned military attack by the 
 Prussians, and thought it could only be met by good strategic 
 measures. He therefore urgently pressed for the acquisition 
 of some experienced Polish officers who happened to be in 
 Dresden, as the Saxon revolutionaries appeared to be abso- 
 lutely lacking in military tactics. Everybody was afraid to 
 take this course; on the other hand, great expectations were 
 entertained from negotiations with the Frankfort States As- 
 sembly, which was on its last legs. Everything was to be 
 done as far as possible in legal form. The time passed pleas- 
 antly enough. Elegant ladies with their cavaliers promenaded 
 the barricaded streets during those beautiful spring evenings. 
 It seemed to be little more than an entertaining drama. The 
 unaccustomed aspect of things even afforded me genuine pleas- 
 ure, combined with a feeling that the whole thing was not 
 quite serious, and that a friendly proclamation from the gov- 
 ernment would put an end to it. So I strolled comfortably 
 home through the numerous barricades at a late hour, thinking 
 as I went of the material for a drama, Achilleus, with which 
 I had been occupied for some time. 
 
 At home I found my two nieces, Clara and Ottilie Brockhaus, 
 the daughters of my sister Louisa. They had been living for 
 a year with a governess in Dresden, and their weekly visits 
 and contagious good spirits delighted me. Every one was in 
 a high state of glee about the revolution; they all heartily 
 approved of the barricades, and felt no scruples about desiring 
 victory for their defenders. Protected by the truce, this state
 
 THE OPENING OF HOSTILITIES (1849) 481 
 
 of mind remained undisturbed the whole of Friday (5th May). 
 From all parts came news which led us to believe in a universal 
 uprising throughout Germany. Baden and the Palatinate were 
 in the throes of a revolt on behalf of the whole of Germany. 
 Similar rumours came in from free towns like Breslau. In 
 Leipzig, volunteer student corps had mustered contingents for 
 Dresden, which arrived amid the exultation of the populace. 
 A fully equipped defence department was organised at the 
 Town Hall, and young Heine, disappointed like myself in his 
 hopes of the performance of Lohengrin/ had also joined this 
 body. Vigorous promises of support came from the Saxon 
 Erzgebirge, as well as announcements that armed contingents 
 were forthcoming. Every one thought, therefore, that if only 
 the Old Town were kept well barricaded, it could safely defy 
 the threat of foreign occupation. Early on Saturday, 6th May, 
 it was obvious that the situation was becoming more serious. 
 Prussian troops had marched into the New Town, and the 
 Saxon troops, which it had not been considered advisable to 
 use for an attack, were kept loyal to the flag. The truce expired 
 at noon, and the troops, supported by several guns, at once 
 opened the attack on one of the principal positions held by the 
 people on the Neumarkt. 
 
 So far I had entertained no other conviction than that the 
 matter would be decided in the most summary fashion as soon 
 as it came to an actual conflict, for there was no evidence in 
 the state of my own feelings (or, indeed, in what I was able to 
 gather independently of them) of that passionate seriousness 
 of purpose, without which tests as severe as this have never 
 been successfully withstood. It was irritating to me, while I 
 heard the sharp rattle of fire, to be unable to gather anything 
 of what was going on, and I thought by climbing the Kn-u/. 
 tower I might get a good view. Even from this elevation I 
 could not see anything clearly, but I gathered enough to satisfy 
 myself that after an hour of heavy firing the advance artillery 
 of the Prussian troops had retired, and had at last been com- 
 pletely silenced, their withdrawal being signalled by a loud 
 shout of jubilation from the populace. Apparently the first 
 attack had exhausted itself; and now my interest in what \\:H 
 going on began to assume a more and more vivid hue. To
 
 482 MY LIFE 
 
 obtain information in greater detail I hurried back to the Town 
 Hall. I could extract nothing, however, from the boundless 
 confusion which I met, until at last I came upon Bakunin in 
 the midst of the main group of speakers. He was able to give 
 me an extraordinarily accurate account of what had hap- 
 pened. Information had reached headquarters from a barricade 
 in the Neumarkt where the attack was most serious, that 
 everything had been in a state of confusion there before the on- 
 slaught of the troops; thereupon my friend Marschall von 
 Bieberstein, together with Leo von Zichlinsky, who were officers 
 in the citizen corps, had called up some volunteers and con- 
 ducted them to the place of danger. Kreis-Amtmann Heubner 
 of Freiberg, without a weapon to defend himself, and with 
 bared head, jumped immediately on to the top of the barricade, 
 which had just been abandoned by all its defenders. He was 
 the sole member of the provisional government to remain on the 
 spot, the leaders, Todt and Tschirner, having disappeared at 
 the first sign of a panic. Heubner turned round to exhort the 
 volunteers to advance, addressing them in stirring words. His 
 success was complete, the barricade was taken again, and a 
 fire, as unexpected as it was fierce, was directed upon the 
 troops, which, as I myself saw, were forced to retire. Bakunin 
 had been in close touch with this action, he had followed 
 the volunteers, and he now explained to me that however nar- 
 row might be the political views of Heubner (he belonged to the 
 moderate Left of the Saxon Chamber), he was a man of noble 
 character, at whose service he had immediately placed his own 
 life. 
 
 Bakunin had only needed this example to determine his own 
 line of conduct ; he had decided to risk his neck in the attempt 
 and to ask no further questions. Heubner too was now bound 
 to recognise the necessity for extreme measures, and no longer 
 recoiled from any proposal on the part of Bakunin w T hich was 
 directed to this end. The military advice of experienced 
 Polish officers was brought to bear on the commandant, whose 
 incapacity had not been slow to reveal itself; Bakunin, who 
 openly confessed that he understood nothing of pure strategy, 
 never moved from the Town Hall, but remained at Heubner's 
 side, giving advice and information in every direction with
 
 MY VIGIL IN THE KREUZ TOWER 483 
 
 wonderful sangfroid. For the rest of the day the battle con- 
 fined itself to skirmishes by sharpshooters from the various 
 positions. I was itching to climb the Kreuz tower again, so 
 as to get the widest possible survey over the whole field of 
 action. In order to reach this tower from the Town Hall, one 
 had to pass through a space which was under a cross-fire of 
 rifle-shots from the troops posted in the royal palace. At a 
 moment when this square was quite deserted, I yielded to my 
 daring impulse, and crossed it on my way to the Kreuz tower 
 at a slow pace, remembering that in such circumstances the 
 young soldier is advised never to hurry, because by so doing 
 he may draw the shot upon himself. On reaching this post of 
 vantage I found several people who had gathered there, some 
 of them driven by a curiosity like my own, others in obedience 
 to an order from the headquarters of the revolutionaries to 
 reconnoitre the enemy's movements. Amongst them I made 
 the acquaintance of a schoolmaster called Berthold, a man of 
 quiet and gentle disposition, but full of conviction and deter- 
 mination. I lost myself in an earnest philosophical discussion 
 with him which extended to the widest spheres of religion. At 
 the same time he showed a homely anxiety to protect us from 
 the cone-shaped bullets of the Prussian sharpshooters by plac- 
 ing us ingeniously behind a barricade consisting of one of the 
 straw mattresses which he had cajoled out of the warder. The 
 Prussian sharpshooters were posted on the distant tower of 
 the Frauenkirche, and had chosen the height occupied by us 
 as their target. At nightfall I found it impossible to make up 
 my mind to go home and leave my interesting place of refuge, 
 so I persuaded the warder to send a subordinate to Friedrich- 
 stadt with a few lines to my wife, and with instructions to ask 
 her to let me have some necessary provisions. Thus I spent 
 one of the most extraordinary nights of my life, taking turns 
 with Berthold to keep watch and sleep, close beneath the great 
 bell with its terrible groaning clang, and with the accompani- 
 ment of the continuous rattle of the Prussian shot as it beat 
 against the tower walls. 
 
 Sunday (the 7th of May) was one of the most beautiful days 
 in the year. I was awakened by the song of a nightingale, which 
 rose to our ears from the Schutze garden close by. A sacred
 
 484 MY LIFE 
 
 calm and peacefulness lay over the town and the wide suburbs 
 of Dresden, which were visible from my point of vantage. 
 Towards sunrise a mist settled upon the outskirts, and suddenly 
 through its folds we could hear the music of the Marseillaise 
 making its way clearly and distinctly from the district of the 
 Tharanderstrasse. As the sound drew nearer and nearer, the 
 mist dispersed, and the glow of the rising sun spread a glittering 
 light upon the weapons of a long column which was winding 
 its way towards the town. It was impossible not to feel deeply 
 impressed at the sight of this continuous procession,. Suddenly 
 a perception of that element which I had so long missed in the 
 German people was borne in upon me in all its essential fresh- 
 ness and vital colour. The fact that until this moment I had 
 been obliged to resign myself to its absence, had contributed 
 not a little to the feelings by which I had been swayed. Here 
 I beheld some thousand men from the Erzgebirge, mostly miners, 
 well armed and organised, who had rallied to the defence of 
 Dresden. Soon we saw them march up the Altmarkt opposite 
 the Town Hall, and after receiving a joyful welcome, bivouac 
 there to recover from their journey. Reinforcements continued 
 to pour in the whole day long, and the heroic achievement of 
 the previous day now received its reward in the shape of a 
 universal elevation of spirits. A change seemed to have been 
 made in the plan of attack by the Prussian troops. This could 
 be gathered from the fact that numerous simultaneous attacks, 
 but of a less concentrated type, were made upon various posi- 
 tions. The troops which had come to reinforce us brought 
 with them four small cannon, the property of a certain Herr 
 Thade von Burgk, whose acquaintance I had made before on 
 the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the Dresden 
 Choral Society, when he had made a speech which was well 
 intentioned but wearisome to the point of being ludicrous. 
 The recollection of this speech returned to me with peculiar 
 irony, now that his cannon were being fired from the barricade 
 upon the enemy. I felt a still deeper impression, however, 
 when, towards eleven o'clock, I saw the old Opera House, in 
 which a few weeks ago I had conducted the last performance 
 of the Ninth Symphony, burst into flames. As I have had 
 occasion to mention before, the danger from fire to which this
 
 THE OLD OPERA HOUSE IN FLAMES 485 
 
 building was exposed, full as it was with wood and all kind of 
 textile fabric, and originally built only for a temporary pur- 
 pose, had always been a subject of terror and apprehension to 
 those who visited it. 
 
 I was told that the Opera House had been set alight on strate- 
 gical grounds, in order to face a dangerous attack on this ex- 
 posed side, and also to protect the famous * Semper ' barricade 
 from an overpowering surprise. From this I concluded that 
 reasons of this kind act as far more powerful motives in the 
 world than aesthetic considerations. For a long time men of 
 taste had vainly cried aloud for abolition of this ugly building 
 which was such an eyesore by the side of the elegant propor- 
 tions of the Zwinger Gallery in its neighbourhood. In a few 
 moments the Opera House (which as regards size was, it is 
 true, an imposing edifice), together with its highly inflammable 
 contents, was a vast sea of flames. When this reached the 
 metal roofs of the neighbouring wings of the Zwinger, and 
 enveloped them in wonderful bluish waves of fire, the first 
 expression of regret made itself audible amongst the spectators. 
 What a disaster! Some thought that the Natural History col- 
 lection was in danger; others maintained that it was the 
 Armoury, upon which a citizen soldier retorted that if such 
 were the case, it would be a very good job if the l stuffed noble- 
 men ' were burnt to cinders. But it appeared that a keen sense 
 of the value of art knew how to curb the fire's lust for further 
 dominion, and, as a matter of fact, it did but little damage in 
 that quarter. Finally our post of observation, which until now 
 had remained comparatively quiet, was filled itself with swarms 
 and swarms of armed men, who had been ordered thither to 
 defend the approach from the church to the Altmarkt, upon 
 which an attack was feared from the side of the ill-secured 
 Kreuzgasse. Unarmed men were now in the way; moreover, 
 I had received a message from my wife summoning me home 
 after the long and terrible anxiety she had suffered. 
 
 At last, after meeting with innumerable obstacles and over- 
 coming a host of difficulties, I succeeded, by means of all sorts 
 of circuitous routes, in reaching my remote suburb, from which 
 I was cut off by the fortified portions of the town, and especially 
 by a cannonade directed from the Zwinger. My lodgings were
 
 486 MY LIFE 
 
 full to overflowing with excited women who had collected round 
 Minna ; among them the panic-stricken wife of Rockel, who sus- 
 pected her husband of being in the very thick of the fight, as she 
 thought that on the receipt of the news that Dresden had risen he 
 would probably have returned. As a matter of fact, I had 
 heard a rumour that Rockel had arrived on this very day, but as 
 yet I had not obtained a glimpse of him. My young nieces 
 helped once more to raise my spirits. The firing had put them 
 into a high state of glee, which to some extent infected my wife, 
 as soon as she was reassured as to my personal safety. All of 
 them were furious with the sculptor Hanel, who had never 
 ceased insisting upon the expedience of bolting the house to pre- 
 vent an entry of the revolutionaries. All the women without 
 exception were joking about his abject terror at the sight of 
 some men armed with scythes who had appeared in the street In 
 this way Sunday passed like a sort of family jollification. 
 
 On the following morning (Monday, 8th May) I tried again 
 to get information as to the state of affairs by forcing my way 
 to the Town Hall from my house, which was cut off from the 
 place of action. As in the course of my journey I was making 
 my way over a barricade near St. Ann's Church, one of the 
 Communal Guard shouted out to me, ' Hullo, conductor, 
 your der Freude schoner Gotterfuriken l has indeed set fire to 
 things. The rotten building is rased to the ground.' Obvi- 
 ously the man was an enthusiastic member of the audience 
 at my last performance of the Ninth Symphony. Coming upon 
 me so unexpectedly, this pathetic greeting filled me with a 
 curious sense of strength and freedom. A little further on, 
 in a lonely alley in the suburb of Plauen, I fell in with the 
 musician Hiebendahl, the first oboist in the royal orchestra, 
 and a man who still enjoyed a very high reputation ; he was in 
 the uniform of the Communal Guards, but carried no gun, and 
 was chatting with a citizen in a similar costume. As soon as he 
 saw me, he felt he must immediately make an appeal to me to 
 use my influence against Rockel, who, accompanied by ordnance 
 officers of the revolutionary party, was instituting a search for 
 guns in this quarter. As soon as he realised that I was making 
 
 1 These words refer to the opening of the Ninth Symphony chorus: 
 'Freude, Freude, Freude, schoner gotterfunken Tochter aus Elysium' 
 (Praise her, praise oh praise Joy, the god-descended daughter of Elysium.) 
 English version by Natalia Macfarren. EDITOR.
 
 ROCKEL IN ACTION 487 
 
 sympathetic inquiries about Rockel, he drew back frightened, 
 and said to me in tones of the deepest anxiety : ' But, con- 
 ductor, have you no thought for your position, and what you 
 may lose by exposing yourself in this fashion ? ' This remark 
 had the most drastic effect upon me ; I burst into a loud laugh, 
 and told him that my position was not worth a thought one 
 way or the other. This indeed was the expression of my real 
 feelings, which had long been suppressed, and now broke out 
 into almost jubilant utterance. At that moment I caught sight 
 of Rockel, with two men of the citizen army who were carrying 
 some guns, making his way towards me. He gave me a most 
 friendly greeting, but turned at once to Hiebendahl and his com- 
 panion and asked him why he was idling about here in uniform 
 instead of being at his post. When Hiebendahl made the 
 excuse that his gun had been requisitioned, Rockel cried out to 
 him, ' You 're a fine lot of fellows ! ' and went away laughing. 
 He gave me a brief account as we proceeded of what had hap- 
 pened to him since I had lost sight of him, and thus spared me 
 the obligation of giving him a report of his Volksblatt. We were 
 interrupted by an imposing troop of well-armed young students 
 of the gymnasium who had just entered the city and wished to 
 have a safe conduct to their place of muster. The sight of these 
 serried ranks of youthful figures, numbering several hundreds, 
 who were stepping bravely to their duty, did not fail to make 
 the most elevating impression upon me. Rockel undertook to 
 accompany them over the barricade in safety to the mustering 
 place in front of the Town Hall. He took the opportunity of 
 lamenting the utter absence of true spirit which he had hitherto 
 encountered in those in command. He had proposed, in case 
 of extremity, to defend the most seriously threatened barri- 
 cades by firing them with pitch brands ; at the mere word the 
 provisional government had fallen into a veritable state of 
 panic. I let him go his way in order that I might enjoy the 
 privilege of a solitary person and reach the Town Hall by a 
 short cut, and it was not until thirteen years later that I again 
 set eyes upon him. 
 
 In the Town Hall I learned from Bakunin that the provisional 
 government had passed a resolution, on his advice, to abandon 
 the position in Dresden, which had been entirely neglected
 
 488 MY LIFE 
 
 from the beginning, and was consequently quite untenable for 
 any length of time. This resolution proposd an armed retreat 
 to the Erzgebirge, where it would be possible to concentrate 
 the reinforcements pouring in from all sides, especially from 
 Thuringia, in such strength, that the advantageous position 
 could be used to inaugurate a German civil war that would 
 sound no hesitating note at its outset. To persist in defending 
 isolated barricaded streets in Dresden could, on the other hand, 
 lend little but the character of an urban riot to the contest, 
 although it was pursued with the highest courage. I must 
 confess that this idea seemed to me magnificent and full of 
 meaning. Up to this moment I had been moved only by a 
 feeling of sympathy for a method of procedure entered upon at 
 first with almost ironical incredulity, and then pursued with 
 the vigour of surprise. Now, however, all that had before 
 seemed incomprehensible, unfolded itself before my vision in 
 the form of a great and hopeful solution. Without either feel- 
 ing that I was in any way being compelled, or that it was my 
 vocation to get some part or function allotted to me in these 
 events, I now definitely abandoned all consideration for my 
 personal situation, and determined to surrender myself to the 
 stream of developments which flowed in the direction towards 
 which my feelings had driven me with a delight that was full 
 of despair. Still, I did not wish to leave my wife helpless in 
 Dresden, and I rapidly devised a means of drawing her into 
 the path which I had chosen, without immediately informing 
 her of what my resolve meant. During my hasty return to 
 Friedrichstadt I recognised that this portion of the town had 
 been almost entirely cut off from the inner city by the occu- 
 pation of the Prussian troops; I saw in my mind's eye our 
 own suburb occupied, and the consequences of a state of military 
 siege in their most repulsive light. It was an easy job to per- 
 suade Minna to accompany me on a visit, by way of the Thar- 
 anderstrasse, which was still free, to Chemnitz, where my mar- 
 ried sister Clara lived. It was only a matter of a moment for 
 her to arrange her household orders, and she promised to follow 
 me to the next village in an hour with the parrot. I went on 
 in advance with my little dog Peps, in order to hire a carriage 
 in which to proceed on our journey to Chemnitz. It was A
 
 DEPARTURE FROM DRESDEN 489 
 
 smiling spring morning when I traversed for the last time the 
 paths I had so often trod on my lonely walks, with the knowl- 
 edge that I should never wander along them again. While 
 the larks were soaring to dizzy heights above my head, and 
 singing in the furrows of the fields, the light and heavy artil- 
 lery did not cease to thunder down the streets of Dresden. The 
 noise of this shooting, which had continued uninterruptedly for 
 several days, had hammered itself so indelibly upon my nerves, 
 that it continued to re-echo for a long time in my brain; just 
 as the motion of the ship which took me to London had made 
 me stagger for some time afterwards. Accompanied by this 
 terrible music, I threw my parting greeting to the towers of 
 the city that lay behind me, and said to myself with a smile, 
 that if, seven years ago, my entry had taken place under 
 thoroughly obscure auspices, at all events my exit was con- 
 ducted with some show of pomp and ceremony. 
 
 When at last I found myself with Minna in a one-horse 
 carriage on the way to the Erzgebirge, we frequently met armed 
 reinforcements on their way to Dresden. The sight of them 
 always kindled an involuntary joy in us; even my wife could 
 not refrain from addressing words of encouragement to the 
 men; at present it seemed not a single barricade had been 
 lost. On the other hand, a gloomy impression was made upon 
 us by a company of regulars which was making its way towards 
 Dresden in silence. We asked some of them whither they were 
 bound ; and their answer, l To do their duty,' had been obvi- 
 ously impressed upon them by command. At last we reached 
 my relations in Chemnitz. I terrified all those near and dear 
 to me when I declared my intention to return to Dresden on 
 the following day at the earliest possible hour, in order to 
 ascertain how things were going there. In spite of all attempts 
 to dissuade me, I carried out my decision, pursued by a sus- 
 picion that I should meet the armed forces of the Dresden 
 people on the country highroad in the act of retreat. The 
 nearer I approached the capital, the stronger became the con- 
 firmation of the rumours that, as yet, there was no thought in 
 Dresden of surrender or withdrawal, but that, on the contrary, 
 the contest was proving very favourable for the national party. 
 All this appeared to me like one miracle after another. On
 
 490 MY LIFE 
 
 this day, Tuesday, 9th of May, I once more forced my way in 
 a high state of excitement over ground which had become more 
 and more inaccessible. All the highways had to be avoided, 
 and it was only possible to make progress through such houses 
 as had been broken through. At last I reached the Town Hall 
 in the Altstadt, just as night was falling. A truly terrible 
 spectacle met my eyes, for I crossed those parts of the town in 
 which preparations had been made for a house-to-house fight. 
 The incessant groaning of big and small guns reduced to an 
 uncanny murmur all the other sounds that came from armed 
 men ceaselessly crying out to one another from barricade to 
 barricade, and from one house to another, which they had 
 broken through. Pitch brands burnt here and there, pale- 
 faced figures lay prostrate around the watch-posts, half dead 
 with fatigue, and any unarmed wayfarer forcing a path for 
 himself was sharply challenged. Nothing, however, that I 
 have lived through can be compared with the impression that 
 I received on my entry into the chambers of the Town Hall. 
 Here was a gloomy, and yet fairly compact and serious mass 
 of people; a look of unspeakable fatigue was upon all faces; 
 not a single voice had retained its natural tone. There was a 
 hoarse jumble of conversation inspired by a state of the highest 
 tension. The only familiar sight that survived was to be found 
 in the old servants of the Town Hall in their curious antiquated 
 uniform and three-cornered hats. These tall men, at other 
 times an object of considerable fear, I found engaged partly 
 in buttering pieces of bread, and cutting slices of ham and 
 sausage, and partly in piling into baskets immense stores of 
 provisions for the messengers sent by the defenders of tho 
 barricades for supplies. These men had turned into veritable 
 nursing mothers of the revolution. 
 
 As I proceeded further, I came at last upon the members of 
 the provisional government, among whom Todt and Tschirner, 
 after their first panic-stricken flight, were once more to be 
 found gliding to and fro, gloomy as spectres, now that they 
 were chained to the performance of their heavy duties. 
 Heubner alone had preserved his full energy; but he was a 
 really piteous sight : a ghostly fire burned in his eyes which had 
 not had a wink of sleep for seven nights. He was delighted
 
 BAKUNIN AT THE TOWN HALL 491 
 
 to see me again, as he regarded my arrival as a good omen for 
 the cause which he was defending; while on the other hand, 
 in the rapid succession of events, he had come into contact 
 with elements about which no conclusion could shape itself 
 to his complete satisfaction. I found Bakunin's outlook un- 
 disturbed, and his attitude firm and quiet. He did not show 
 the smallest change in his appearance, in spite of having had 
 no sleep during the whole time, which I afterwards heard was a 
 fact. With a cigar in his mouth he received me, seated on one 
 of the mattresses which lay distributed over the floor of the 
 Town Hall. At his side was a very young Pole (a Galician) 
 named Hairnberger, a violinist whom he had once asked me 
 to recommend to Lipinsky, in order that he might give him 
 lessons, as he did not want this raw and inexperienced boy, 
 who had become passionately attached to him, to get drawn 
 into the vortex of the present upheavals. Now that Haim- 
 berger had shouldered a gun, and presented himself for service 
 at the barricades, however, Bakunin had greeted him none the 
 less joyfully. He had drawn him down to sit by his side on 
 the couch, and every time the youth shuddered with fear at 
 the violent sound of the cannon-shot, he slapped him vigor- 
 ously on the back and cried out : ' You are not in the com- 
 pany of your fiddle here, my friend. What a pity you did n't 
 stay where you were ! ' Bakunin then gave me a short and 
 precise account of what had happened since I had left him 
 on the previous morning. The retreat which had then been 
 decided upon soon proved unadvisable, as it would have dis- 
 couraged the numerous reinforcements which had already ar- 
 rived on that day. Moreover, the desire for fighting had been 
 so great, and the force of the defenders so considerable, that 
 it had been possible to oppose the enemy's troops successfully 
 so far. But as the latter had also got large reinforcements, 
 they again had been able to make an effective combined attack 
 on the strong Wildstruf barricade. The Prussian troops had 
 avoided fighting in the streets, choosing instead the method of 
 fighting from house to house by breaking through the walls. 
 This had made it clear that all defence by barricades had 
 become useless, and that the enemy would succeed slowly 
 but surely in drawing near the Town Hall, the seat of the
 
 492 MY LIFE 
 
 provisional government. Bakunin had now proposed that all 
 the powder stores should be brought together in the lower rooms 
 of the Town Hall, and that on the approach of the enemy it 
 should be blown up. The town council, who were still in con- 
 sultation in a back room, had remonstrated with the greatest 
 vehemence. Bakunin, however, had insisted with great firm- 
 ness on the execution of the measure, but in the end had 
 been completely outwitted by the removal of all the powder 
 stores. Moreover, Heubner, to whom Bakunin could refuse 
 nothing, had been won over to the other side. It was now 
 decided that as everything was ready, the retreat to the Erz- 
 gebirge, which had originally been intended for the previous 
 day, should be fixed for the early morrow. Young Zichlinsky 
 had already received orders to cover the road to Plauen so as 
 to make it strategically safe. When I inquired after Eockel, 
 Bakunin replied swiftly that he had not been seen since the 
 previous evening, and that he had most likely allowed himself 
 to be caught: he was in such a nervous state. I now gave 
 an account of what I had observed on my way to and from 
 Chemnitz, describing the great masses of reinforcements, 
 amongst which was the communal guard of that place, several 
 thousands strong. In Freiberg I had met four hundred reserv- 
 ists, who had come in excellent form to back the citizen 
 army, but could not proceed further, as they were tired out by 
 their forced march. It seemed obvious that this was a case 
 in which the necessary energy to requisition wagons had been 
 lacking, and that if the bounds of loyalty were transgressed 
 in this matter, the advent of fresh forces would be consider- 
 ably promoted. I was begged to make my way back at once, 
 and convey the opinion of the provisional government to the 
 people whose acquaintance I had made. My old friend Mar- 
 schall von Bieberstein immediately proposed to accompany me. 
 I welcomed his offer, as he was an officer of the provisional 
 government, and was consequently more fitted than I was to 
 communicate orders. This man, who had been almost extrav- 
 agant in his enthusiasm before, was now utterly exhausted 
 by sleeplessness, and unable to emit another word from his 
 hoarse throat. He now made his way with me from the Town 
 Hall to his house in the suburb of Plauen by the devious ways
 
 RETREAT OF PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 493 
 
 that had been indicated to us, in order to requisition a carriage 
 for our purpose from a coachman he knew, and to bid farewell 
 to his family, from whom he assumed he would in all probabil- 
 ity have to separate himself for some time. 
 
 While we were waiting for the coachman we had tea and 
 supper, talking the while, in a fairly calm and composed 
 manner, with the ladies of the house. We arrived at Freiberg 
 early the following morning, after various adventures, and I 
 set out forthwith to find the leaders of the reservist contingent 
 with whom I was already acquainted. Marschall advised them 
 to requisition horses and carts in the villages wherever they 
 could do so. When they had all set off in marching order for 
 Dresden, and while I was feeling impelled by my passionate 
 interest in the fate of that city to return to it once more, 
 Marschall conceived the desire to carry his commission further 
 afield, and for this purpose asked to be allowed to leave me. 
 Whereupon I again turned my back on the heights of the Erz- 
 gebirge, and was travelling by special coach in the direction of 
 Tharand, when I too was overcome with sleep, and was only 
 awakened by violent shouts and the sound of some one holding 
 a parley with the postillion. On opening my eyes I found, to 
 my astonishment, that the road was filled with armed revolu- 
 tionaries marching, not towards, but away from Dresden, and 
 some of them were trying to commandeer the coach to relieve 
 their weariness on the way back. 
 
 ' What is the matter ? ' I cried. ' Where are you going ? ' 
 
 1 Home,' was the reply. ' It is all over in Dresden. The 
 provincial government is close behind us in that carriage down 
 there.' 
 
 I shot out of the coach like a dart, leaving it at the disposal 
 of the tired men, and hurried on, down the steeply sloping road, 
 to meet the ill-fated party. And there I actually found them 
 Heubner, Bakunin, and Martin, the energetic post-office clerk, 
 the two latter armed with muskets in a smart hired carriage 
 from Dresden which was coming slowly up the hill. On the box 
 were, as I supposed, the secretaries, while as many as possible 
 of the weary National Guard struggled for seats behind. I 
 hastened to swing myself into the coach, and so came in for a 
 conversation which thereupon took place between the driver,
 
 494 MY LIFE 
 
 who was also the owner of the coach, and the provisional govern- 
 ment. The man was imploring them to spare his carriage, 
 which, he said, was very lightly sprung and quite unequal to 
 carrying such a load; he begged that the people should be told 
 not to seat themselves behind and in front. But Bakunin 
 remained quite unconcerned, and elected to give me a short 
 account of the retreat from Dresden, which had been success- 
 fully achieved without loss. He had had the trees in the newly 
 planted Maximilian Avenue felled early in the morning to form 
 a barricade against a possible flank attack of cavalry, and had 
 been immensely entertained by the lamentations of the in- 
 habitants, who during the process did nothing but bewail their 
 Scheene Beeme. 1 All this time our driver's lamentations over 
 his coach were growing more importunate. Finally he broke 
 into loud sobs and tears, upon which Bakunin, regarding him 
 with positive pleasure, called out : t The tears of a Philistine 
 are nectar for the gods.' He would not vouchsafe him a word, 
 but Heubner and I found the scene tiresome, whereupon he 
 asked me whether we two at least should not get out, as he could 
 not ask it of the others. As a matter of fact, it was high time 
 to leave the coach, as some new contingents of revolutionaries 
 had formed up in rank and file all along the highway to salute 
 the provisional government and receive orders. Heubner 
 strode down the line with great dignity, acquainted the leaders 
 with the state of affairs, and exhorted them to keep their trust 
 in the righteousness of the cause for which so many had shed 
 their blood. All were now to retire to Freiberg, there to await 
 further orders. 
 
 A youngish man of serious mien, now stepped forward from 
 the ranks of the rebels to place himself under the special 
 protection of the provisional government. He was a certain 
 Menzdorff, a German Catholic priest whom I had had the 
 advantage of meeting in Dresden. (It was he who, in the 
 course of a significant conversation, had first induced me to 
 read Feuerbach. ) He had been dragged along as a prisoner and 
 abominably treated by the Chemnitz municipal guard on this 
 particular march, having originally been the instigator of a 
 demonstration to force that body to take up arms and march 
 
 1 Saxon corruption of schone Baume, beautiful trees. EDITOR.
 
 ARRIVAL IN FREIBERG 495 
 
 to Dresden. He owed his freedom only to the chance meeting 
 with other better disposed volunteer corps. We saw this 
 Chemnitz town guard ourselves, stationed far away on a hill. 
 They sent representatives to beseech Heubner to tell them 
 how things stood. When they had received the information 
 rquired, and had been told that the fight would be continued 
 in a determined manner, they invited the provisional govern- 
 ment to quarter at Chemnitz. As soon as they rejoined their 
 main body we saw them wheel round and turn back. 
 
 With many similar interruptions the somewhat disorganised 
 procession reached Freiberg. Here some friends of Heubner's 
 came to meet him in the streets with the urgent request not to 
 plunge their native place into the misery of desperate street- 
 fighting by establishing the provisional government there. 
 Heubner made no reply to this, but requested Bakunin and 
 myself to accompany him into his house for a consultation. 
 First we had to witness the painful meeting between Heubner 
 and his wife; in a few words he pointed out the gravity and 
 importance of the task assigned to him, reminding her that 
 it was for Germany and the high destiny of his country that 
 he was staking his life. 
 
 Breakfast was then prepared, and after the meal, during 
 which a fairly cheerful mood prevailed, Heubner made a short 
 speech to Bakunin, speaking quietly but firmly. ' My dear 
 Bukanin,' he said (his previous acquaintance with Bakunin was 
 so slight that he did not even know how to pronounce his name), 
 ' before we decide anything further, I must ask you to state 
 clearly whether your political aim is really the Red Republic, of 
 which they tell me you are a partisan. Tell me frankly, so that 
 I may know if I can rely on your friendship in the future ? ' 
 
 Bakunin explained briefly that he had no scheme for any 
 political form of government, and would not risk his life for 
 any of them. As for his own far-reaching desires and hopes, 
 they had nothing whatever to do with the street-fighting in 
 Dresden and all that this implied for Germany. He had looked 
 upon the rising in Dresden as a foolish, ludicrous movement 
 until he realised the effect of Heubner's noble and courageous 
 example. From that moment every political consideration 
 and aim had been put in the background by his sympathy with
 
 496 MY LIFE 
 
 this heroic attitude, and he had immediately resolved to assist 
 this excellent man with all the devotion and energy of a friend. 
 He knew, of course, that he belonged to the so-called moderate 
 party, of whose political future he was not able to form an 
 opinion, as he had not profited much by his opportunities of 
 studying the position of the various parties in Germany. 
 
 Heubner declared himself satisfied by this reply, and pro- 
 ceeded to ask Bakunin's opinion of the present state of things 
 whether it would not be conscientious and reasonable to dismiss 
 the men and give up a struggle which might be considered 
 hopeless. In reply Bakunin insisted, with his usual calm assur- 
 ance, that whoever else threw up the sponge, Heubner must 
 certainly not do so. He had been the first member of the 
 provisional government, and it was he who had given the call 
 to arms. The call had been obeyed, and hundreds of lives 
 had been sacrificed; to scatter the people again would look 
 as if these sacrifices had been made to idle folly. Even if 
 they were the only two left, they still ought not to forsake 
 their posts. If they went under their lives might be forfeit, 
 but their honour must remain unsullied, so that a similar ap- 
 peal in the future might not drive every one to despair. 
 
 This was quite enough for Heubner. He at once made out 
 a summons for the election of a representative assembly for 
 Saxony, to be held at Chemnitz. He thought that, with the 
 assistance of the populace and of the numerous insurgent bands 
 who were arriving from all quarters, he would be able to hold 
 the town as the headquarters of a provisional government until 
 the general situation in Germany had become more settled. 
 In the midst of these discussions, Stephan Born walked into the 
 room to report that he had brought the armed bands right into 
 Freiberg, in good order and without any losses. This young 
 man was a compositor who had contributed greatly to Heubner's 
 peace of mind during the last three days in Dresden by taking 
 over the chief command. His simplicity of manner made a very 
 encouraging impression on us, particularly when we heard his 
 report. When, however, Heubner asked whether he would 
 undertake to defend Freiberg against the troops which might be 
 expected to attack at any moment, he declared that this was 
 an experienced officer's job, and that he himself was no soldier
 
 AT THE TOWN HALL AT FREIBERG 497 
 
 and knew nothing of strategy. Under these circumstances it 
 seemed better, if only to gain time, to fall back on the more 
 thickly populated town of Chemnitz. The first thing to be 
 done, however, was to see that the revolutionaries, who were 
 assembled in large numbers at Freiberg, were properly cared 
 for, and Born went off immediately to make preliminary ar- 
 rangements. Heubner also took leave of us, and went to refresh 
 his tired brain by an hour's sleep. I was left alone on the sofa 
 with Bakunin, who soon fell towards me, overcome by irresist- 
 ible drowsiness, and dropped the terrific weight of his head 
 on to my shoulder. As I saw that he would not wake if I 
 shook off this burden, I pushed him aside with some difficulty, 
 and took leave both of the sleeper and of Heubner' s house; 
 for I wished to see for myself, as I had done for many days past, 
 what course these extraordinary events were taking. I there- 
 fore went to the Town Hall, where I found the townspeople 
 entertaining to the best of their ability a blustering horde 
 of excited revolutionaries both within and without the walls. 
 To my surprise, I found Heubner there in the full swing of 
 work. I thought he was asleep at home, but the idea of 
 leaving the people even for an hour without a counsellor had 
 driven away all thought of rest. He had lost no time in 
 superintending the organisation of a sort of commandant's 
 office, and was again occupied with drafting and signing 
 documents in the midst of the uproar that raged on all sides. 
 It was not long before Bakunin too put in an appearance, 
 principally in search of a good officer who was not, however, 
 forthcoming. The commandant of a large contingent from 
 the Vogtland, an oldish man, raised Bakunin's hopes by the 
 impassioned energy of his speeches, and he would have had 
 him appointed commandant-general on the spot. But it seemed 
 as if any real decision were impossible in that frenzy and 
 confusion, and as the only hope of mastering it seemed to be 
 in reaching Chemnitz, Heubner gave the order to march on 
 towards that town as soon as every one had had food. Once 
 this was settled, I told my friends I should go on in advance of 
 their column to Chemnitz, where I should find them again next 
 day; for I longed to be quit of this chaos. I actually caught 
 the coach, the departure of which was fixed for that time, and
 
 498 MY LIFE 
 
 obtained a seat in it. But the revolutionaries were just march- 
 ing off on the same road, and we were told that we must wait 
 until they had passed to avoid being caught in the whirlpool. 
 This meant considerable delay, and for a long while I watched 
 the peculiar bearing of the patriots as they marched out. I 
 noticed in particular a Vogtland regiment, whose marching step 
 was fairly orthodox, following the beat of a drummer who 
 tried to vary the monotony of his instrument in an artistic 
 manner by hitting the wooden frame alternately with the 
 drumhead. The unpleasant rattling tone thus produced re- 
 minded me in ghostly fashion of the rattling of the skeletons' 
 bones in the dance round the gallows by night which Berlioz 
 had brought home to my imagination with such terrible 
 realism in his performance of the last movement of his Sinfonie 
 Fantastique in Paris. 
 
 Suddenly the desire seized me to look up the friends I had 
 left behind, and travel to Chemnitz in their company if possible. 
 I found they had quitted the Town Hall, and on reaching 
 Heubner's house I was told that he was asleep. I therefore 
 went back to the coach, which, however, was still putting off 
 its departure, as the road was blocked with troops. I walked 
 nervously up and down for some time, then, losing faith in 
 the journey by coach, I went back again to Heubner's house to 
 offer myself definitely as a travelling companion. But Heubner 
 and Bakunin had already left home, and I could find no traces 
 of them. In desperation I returned once more to the coach, 
 and found it by this time really ready to start. After various 
 delays and adventures it brought me late at night to Chem- 
 nitz, where I got out and betook myself to the nearest inn. 
 At five o'clock the next morning I got up (after a few hours' 
 sleep) and set out to find my brother-in-law Wolfram's house, 
 which was about a quarter of an hour's walk from the town, 
 On the way I asked a sentinel of the town guard whether 
 he knew anything about the arrival of the provisional 
 government. 
 
 ' Provisional government ? ' was the reply. ' Why, it 's all 
 up with that.' I did not understand him, nor was I able to 
 learn anything about the state of things when I first reached 
 the house of my relatives, for my brother-in-law had been sent
 
 TREACHERY AT CHEMNITZ 499 
 
 into the town as special constable. It was only on his return 
 home, late in the afternoon, that I heard what had taken place 
 in one hotel at Chemnitz while I had been resting in another 
 inn. Heubner, IJakunin, and the man called Martin, whom I 
 have mentioned already, had, it seemed, arrived before me in a 
 hackney-coach at the gates of Chemnitz. On being asked for 
 their names Heubner had announced himself in a tone of 
 authority, and had bidden the town councillors come to him 
 at a certain hotel. They had no sooner reached the hotel 
 than they all three collapsed from excessive fatigue. Suddenly 
 the police broke into the room and arrested them in the name 
 of the local government, upon which they only begged to have 
 a few hours' quiet sleep, pointing out that flight was out of the 
 question in their present condition. I heard further that they 
 had been removed to Altenburg under a strong military escort. 
 My brother-in-law was obliged to confess that the Chem- 
 nitz municipal guard, which had been forced to start for 
 Dresden much against its will, and had resolved at the very 
 outset to place itself at the disposal of the royal forces on 
 arriving there, had deceived Heubner by inviting him to 
 Chemnitz, and had lured him into the trap. They had reached 
 Chemnitz long before Heubner, and had taken over the guard 
 at the gates with the object of seeing him arrive and of prepar- 
 ing for his arrest at once. My brother-in-law had been very 
 anxious about me too, as he had been told in furious tones by 
 the leaders of the town guard that I had been seen in close 
 association with the revolutionaries. He thought it a wonderful 
 intervention of Providence that I had not arrived at Chemnitz 
 with them and gone to the same inn, in which case their fate 
 would certainly have been mine. The recollection of my escape 
 from almost certain death in duels with the most experienced 
 swordsmen in my student days flashed across me like a flash of 
 lightning. This last terrible experience made such an impres- 
 sion on me that I was incapable of breathing a word in connec- 
 tion with what had happened. My brother-in-law, in response 
 to urgent appeals from my wife in particular, who was much 
 concerned for my personal safety undertook to convey me to 
 Altenburg in his carriage by night. From there I continued my 
 journey by coach to Weimar, where I had originally planned
 
 500 MY LIFE 
 
 to spend my holidays, little thinking that I should arrive by 
 such devious ways. 
 
 The dreamy unreality of my state of mind at this time is 
 best explained by the apparent seriousness with which, on 
 meeting Liszt again, I at once began to discuss what seemed to 
 be the sole topic of any real interest to him in connection with 
 me the forthcoming revival of Tannbauser at Weimar. I 
 found it very difficult to confess to this friend that I had not 
 left Dresden in the regulation way for a conductor of the 
 royal opera. To tell the truth, I had a very hazy conception 
 of the relation in which I stood to the law of my country (in 
 the narrow sense). Had I done anything criminal in the eye 
 of the law or not? I found it impossible to come to any 
 conclusion about it. Meanwhile, alarming news of the terrible 
 conditions in Dresden continued to pour into Weimar. Genast, 
 the stage manager, in particular, aroused great excitement by 
 spreading the report that Rockel, who was well known at 
 Weimar, had been' guilty of arson. Liszt must soon have 
 gathered from my conversation, in which I did not take the 
 trouble to dissimulate, that I too was suspiciously connected 
 with these terrible events, though my attitude with regard to 
 them misled him for some time. For I was not by any means 
 prepared to proclaim myself a combatant in the recent fights, 
 and that for reasons quite other than would have seemed valid 
 in the eyes of the law. My friend was therefore encouraged 
 in his delusion by the unpremeditated effect of my attitude. 
 When we met at the house of Princess Caroline of Wittgen- 
 stein, to whom I had been introduced the year before when she 
 paid her flying visit to Dresden, we were able to hold stimulat- 
 ing conversations on all sorts of artistic topics. One afternoon, 
 for instance, a lively discussion sprang up from a description 
 I had given of a tragedy to be entitled Jesus of Nazareth. Liszt 
 maintained a discreet silence after I had finished, whereas the 
 Princess protested vigorously against my proposal to bring such 
 a subject on to the stage. From the lukewarm attempt I made 
 to support the paradoxical theories I had put forward, I realised 
 the state of my mind at that time. Although it was not very 
 evident to onlookers, I had been, and still was, shaken to the 
 very depths of my being by my recent experiences.
 
 SOJOURN" WITH LISZT 501 
 
 In due course an orchestral rehearsal of Tannliauser took 
 place, which in various ways stimulated the artist in me afresh. 
 Liszt's conducting, though mainly concerned with the musical 
 rather than the dramatic side, filled me for the first time with 
 the flattering warmth of emotion roused by the consciousness of 
 being understood by another mind in full sympathy with my 
 own. At the same time I was able, in spite of my dreamy 
 condition, to observe critically the standard of capacity ex- 
 hibited by the singers and their chorus-master. After the 
 rehearsal I, together with the musical director, Stohr, and Gotze 
 the singer, accepted Liszt's invitation to a simple dinner, at a 
 different inn from the one where he lived. I thus had occasion 
 to take alarm at a trait in his character which was entirely 
 new to me. After being stirred up to a certain pitch of excite- 
 ment his mood became positively alarming, and he almost 
 gnashed his teeth in a passion of fury directed against a certain 
 section of society which had also aroused my deepest indigna- 
 tion. I was strongly affected by this strange experience with 
 this wonderful man, but I was unable to see the association of 
 ideas which had led to his terrible outburst. I was therefore left 
 in a state of amazement, while Liszt had to recover during the 
 night from a violent attack of nerves which his excitement had 
 produced. Another surprise was in store for me the next 
 morning, when I found my friend fully equipped for a journey 
 to Karlsruhe the circumstances which made it necessary being 
 absolutely incomprehensible to me. Liszt invited Director 
 Stohr and myself to accompany him as far as Eisenach. On 
 our way there we were stopped by Beaulieu, the Lord Chamber- 
 lain, who wished to know whether I was prepared to be received 
 by the Grand Duchess of Weimar, a sister of the Emperor 
 Nicolas, at Eisenach castle. As my excuse on the score of 
 unsuitable travelling costume was not admitted, Liszt accepted 
 in my name, and I really met with a surprisingly kind reception 
 that evening from the Grand Duchess, who chatted witli me 
 in the friendliest way, and introduced me to her chamberlain 
 with all due ceremony. Liszt maintained afterwards that his 
 noble patroness had been informed that I should be wanted 
 by the authorities in Dresden within the next few days, and 
 had therefore hastened to make my personal acquaintance
 
 502 MY LIFE 
 
 at once, knowing that it would compromise her too heavily- 
 later on. 
 
 Liszt continued his journey from Eisenach, leaving me to 
 be entertained and looked after by Stohr and the musical 
 director Kiihmstedt, a diligent and skilful master of counter- 
 point with whom I paid my first visit to the Wartburg, which 
 had not then been restored. I was filled with strange musings 
 as to my fate when I visited this castle. Here I was actually 
 on the point of entering, for the first time, the building which 
 was so full of meaning for me; here, too, I had to tell myself 
 that the days of my further sojourn in Germany were numbered. 
 And in fact the news from Dresden, when we returned to Wei- 
 mar the next day, was serious indeed. Liszt, on his return on 
 the third day, found a letter from my wife, who had not dared to 
 write direct to me. She reported that the police had searched 
 my house in Dresden, to which she had returned, and that she 
 had, moreover, been warned on no account to allow me to return 
 to that city, as a warrant had been taken out against me, and I 
 was shortly to be served with a writ and arrested. Liszt, who 
 was now solely concerned for my personal safety, called in a 
 friend who had some experience of law, to consider what should 
 be done to rescue me from the danger that threatened me. 
 Von Watzdorf, the minister whom I had already visited, had 
 been of opinion that I should, if required, submit quietly to 
 being taken to Dresden, and that the journey would be made 
 in a respectable private carriage. On the other hand, reports 
 which had reached us of the brutal way in which the Prussian 
 troops in Dresden had gone to work in applying the state of 
 siege were of so alarming a nature that Liszt and his friends in 
 council urged my speedy departure from Weimar, where it 
 would be impossible to protect me. But I insisted on taking 
 leave of my wife, whose anxiety was great, before leaving 
 Germany, and begged to be allowed to stay a little longer at 
 least in the neighbourhood of Weimar. This was taken into 
 consideration, and Professor Siebert suggested my taking 
 temporary shelter with a friendly steward at the village of 
 Magdala, which was three hours distant, I drove there the 
 following morning to introduce myself to this kind steward and 
 protector as Professor Werder from Berlin, who, with a letter
 
 AT MAGDALA (1849) 503 
 
 of recommendation from Professor Siebert, had come to turn 
 his financial studies to practical account in helping to ad- 
 minister these estates. Here in rural seclusion I spent three 
 days, entertainment of a peculiar nature being provided by 
 the meeting of a popular assembly, which consisted of the 
 remainder of the contingent of revolutionaries which had 
 marched off towards Dresden and had now returned in disorder. 
 I listened with curious feelings, amounting almost to contempt, 
 to the speeches on this occasion, which were of every kind and 
 description. On the second day of my stay my host's wife 
 came back from Weimar (where it was market-day) full of a 
 curious tale: the composer of an opera which was being 
 performed there on that very day had been obliged to leave 
 Weimar suddenly because the warrant for his arrest had arrived 
 from Dresden. My host, who had been let into my secret by 
 Professor Seibert, asked playfully what his name was. As his 
 wife did not seem to know, he came to her assistance with the 
 suggestion that perhaps it was Rockel whose name was familiar 
 at Weimar. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said, ' Rb'ckel, that was his name, quite 
 right.' 
 
 My host laughed loudly, and said that he would not be so 
 stupid as to let them catch him, in spite of his opera. 
 
 At last, on 22nd May, my birthday, Minna actually arrived 
 at Magdala. She had hastened to Weimar on receiving my 
 letter, and had proceeded from there according to instructions, 
 bent on persuading me at all costs to flee the country immedi- 
 ately and for good. No attempt to raise her to the level of my 
 own mood was successful; she persisted in regarding me as 
 an ill-advised, inconsiderate person who had plunged both 
 himself and her into the most terrible situation. It had been 
 arranged that I should meet her the next evening in the house 
 of Professor Wolff at Jena to take a last farewell. She was to 
 go by way of Weimar, while I took the footpath from Magdala. 
 I started accordingly on my walk of about six hours, and came 
 over the plateau into the little university town (which now 
 received me hospitably for the first time) at sunset. I found 
 my wife again at the house of Professor Wolff, who, thanks to 
 Liszt, was already my friend, and with the addition of a certain
 
 504 MY LIFE 
 
 Professor Widmann another conference was held on the subject 
 of my further escape. A writ was actually out against me for 
 being strongly suspected of participation in the Dresden rising, 
 and I could not under any circumstances depend on a safe 
 refuge in any of the German federal states. Liszt insisted on 
 my going to Paris, where I could find a new field for my work, 
 while Widmann advised me not to go by the direct route through 
 Frankfort and Baden, as the rising was still in full swing there, 
 and the police would certainly exercise praiseworthy vigilance 
 over incoming travellers, with suspicious-looking passports. 
 The way through Bavaria would be the safest, as all was quiet 
 there again; I could then make for Switzerland, and the 
 journey to Paris from there could be engineered without any 
 danger. As I needed a passport for the journey, Professor 
 Widmann offered me his own, which had been issued at Tubin- 
 gen and had not been brought up to date. My wife was quite in 
 despair, and the parting from her caused me real pain. I set 
 off in the mail-coach and travelled, without further hindrance, 
 through many towns (amongst them Rudolstadt, a place full 
 of memories for me) to the Bavarian frontier. From there I 
 continued my journey by mail-coach straight to Lindau. At 
 the gates I, together with the other passengers, was asked for 
 my passport. I passed the night in a state of strange, feverish 
 excitement, which lasted until the departure of the steamer on 
 Lake Constance early in the morning. My mind was full of 
 the Swabian dialect, as spoken by Professor Widmann, with 
 whose passport I was travelling. I pictured to myself my 
 dealings with the Bavarian police should I have to converse 
 with them in accordance with the above-mentioned irregularities 
 in that document. A prey to feverish unrest, I spent the whole 
 night trying to perfect myself in the Swabian dialect, but, as I 
 was amused to find, without the smallest success. I had braced 
 myself to meet the crucial moment early the next morning, 
 when the policeman came into my room and, not knowing to 
 whom the passports belonged, gave me three at random to choose 
 from. With joy in my heart I seized my own, and dismissed 
 the dreaded messenger in the most friendly way. Once on 
 board the steamer I realised with true satisfaction that I had 
 now stepped on to Swiss territory. It was a lovely spring
 
 ARRIVAL IN ZURICH 505 
 
 morning; across the broad lake I could gaze at the Alpine 
 landscape as it spread itself before my eyes. When I steppr-l 
 on to Republican soil at Rorschach, I employed the first 
 moments in writing a few lines home to tell of my safe arrival 
 in Switzerland and my deliverance from all danger. The 
 coach drive through the pleasant country of St. Gall to Zurich 
 cheered me up wonderfully, and when I drove down from 
 Oberstrass into Zurich that evening, the last day in May, at six 
 o'clock, and saw for the first time the Glarner Alps that encircle 
 the lake gleaming in the sunset, I at once resolved, though 
 without being fully conscious of it, to avoid everything that 
 could prevent my settling here. 
 
 I had been the more willing to accept my friends' suggestion 
 to take the Swiss route to Paris, as I knew I should find an old 
 acquaintance, Alexander Miiller, at Zurich. I hoped with his 
 help to obtain a passport to France, as I was anxious not to 
 arrive there as a political refugee. I had been on very friendly 
 terms with Miiller once upon a time at Wiirzburg. He had 
 been settled at Zurich for a long time as a teacher of music; 
 this I learned from a pupil of his, Wilhelm Baumgartner, who 
 had called on me in Dresden some years back to bring me a 
 greeting from this old friend. On that occasion I entrusted the 
 pupil with a copy of the score of Tanrihauser for his master, 
 by way of remembrance, and this kind attention had not fallen 
 on barren soil: Miiller and Baumgartner, whom I visited 
 forthwith, introduced me at once to Jacob Sulzer and Franz 
 Hagenbuch, two cantonal secretaries who were the most likely, 
 among all their good friends, to compass the immediate fulfil- 
 ment of my desire. These two people, who had been joined by 
 a few intimates, received me with such respectful curiosity and 
 sympathy that I felt at home with them at once. The great 
 assurance and moderation with which they commented on the 
 persecutions which had overtaken me, as seen from their usual 
 simple republican standpoint, opened to me a conception of 
 civil life which seemed to lift me to an entirely new sphere. 
 I felt so safe and protected here, whereas in my own country 
 I had, without quite realising it, come to be considered a 
 criminal owing to the peculiar connection between my disgust 
 at the public attitude towards art and the general political
 
 506 MY LIFE 
 
 disturbances. To prepossess the two secretaries entirely in my 
 favour (one of them, Sulzer, had enjoyed an excellent classical 
 education), my friends arranged a meeting one evening at 
 which I was to read my poem on the Death of Siegfried. I am 
 prepared to swear that I never had more attentive listeners, 
 among men, than on that evening. The immediate effect of 
 my success was the drawing up of a fully valid federal passport 
 for the poor German under warrant of arrest, armed with which 
 I started gaily on my journey to Paris after quite a short stay 
 at Zurich. From Strassburg, where I was enthralled by the 
 fascination of the world-famous minster, I travelled towards 
 Paris by what was then the best means of locomotion, the 
 so-called malle-poste. I remember a remarkable phenomenon 
 in connection with this conveyance. Till then the noise of 
 the cannonade and musketry in the fighting at Dresden had 
 been persistently re-echoing in my ears, especially in a half- 
 waking condition ; now the humming of the wheels, as we rolled 
 rapidly along the highroad, cast such a spell upon me that for 
 the whole of the journey I seemed to hear the melody of Freude, 
 schoner Gotterfuriken * from the Ninth Symphony being played, 
 as it were, on deep bass instruments. 
 
 From the time of my entering Switzerland till my arrival in 
 Paris my spirits, which had sunk into a dreamlike apathy, rose 
 gradually to a level of freedom and comfort that I had never 
 enjoyed before. I felt like a bird in the air whose destiny is 
 not to founder in a morass ; but soon after my arrival in Paris, 
 in the first week of June, a very palpable reaction set in. I had 
 had an introduction from Liszt to his former secretary Belloni, 
 who felt it his duty, in loyalty to the instructions received, to 
 put me into communication with a literary man, a certain Gus- 
 tave Vaisse, with the object of being commissioned to write an 
 opera libretto for production in Paris. I did not, however, make 
 the personal acquaintance of Vaisse. The idea did not please 
 me, and I found sufficient excuse for warding off the negotiations 
 by saying I was afraid of the epidemic of cholera which was said 
 to be raging in the city. I was staying in the Rue Notre Dame 
 de Lorette for the sake of being near Belloni. Through this 
 street funeral processions, announced by the muffled drum 
 1 See note on page 486.
 
 MEETING WITH MEYERBEER 507 
 
 beats of the National Guard, passed practically every hour. 
 Though the heat was stifling, I was strictly forbidden to touch 
 water, and was advised to exercise the greatest precaution with 
 regard to diet in every respect. Besides this weight of uneasi- 
 ness on my spirits, the whole outward aspect of Paris, as it then 
 appeared, had the most depressing effect on me. The motto, 
 liberte, egalite, fraternite, was still to be seen on all the public 
 buildings and other establishments, but, on the other hand, 
 I was alarmed at seeing the first garqons caissiers making their 
 way from the bank with their long money-sacks over their 
 shoulders and their large portfolios in their hands. I had never 
 met them so frequently as now, just when the old capitalist 
 regime, after its triumphant struggle against the once dreaded 
 socialist propaganda, was exerting itself vigorously to regain 
 the public confidence by its almost insulting pomp. I had 
 gone, as it were, mechanically into Schlesinger's music-shop, 
 where a successor was now installed a much more pronounced 
 type of Jew named Brandus, of a very dirty appearance. The 
 only person there to give me a friendly welcome was the old 
 clerk, Monsieur Henri. After I had talked to him in loud tones 
 for some time, as the shop was apparently empty, he at length 
 asked me with some embarrassment whether I had not seen 
 my master (votre maitre} Meyerbeer. 
 
 ' Is Monsieur Meyerbeer here ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' Certainly,' was the even more embarrassed reply ; ' quite 
 near, over there behind the desk.' 
 
 And, sure enough, as I walked across to the desk Meyer- 
 beer came out, covered with confusion. He smiled and made 
 some excuse about pressing proof-sheets. He had been hiding 
 there quietly for over ten minutes since first hearing my voice. 
 I had had enough after my strange encounter with this appari- 
 tion. It recalled so many things affecting myself which 
 reflected suspicion on the man, in particular the significance 
 of his behaviour towards me in Berlin on the last occasion. 
 However, as I had now nothing more to do with him, I greeted 
 him with a certain easy gaiety induced by the regret I felt at 
 seeing his manifest confusion on becoming cognisant of my 
 arrival in Paris. He took it for granted that I should again 
 seek my fortune there, and seemed much surprised when I
 
 508 MY LIFE 
 
 assured him, on the contrary, that the idea of having any work 
 there was odious to me. 
 
 ' But Liszt published such a brilliant article about you in the 
 Journal des Debats' he said. 
 
 ' Ah,' I replied, l it really had not occurred to me that the 
 enthusiastic devotion of a friend should be regarded as a mutual 
 speculation.' 
 
 ' But the article made a sensation. It is incredible that you 
 should not seek to make any profit out of it.' 
 
 This offensive meddlesomeness roused me to protest to 
 Meyerbeer with some violence that I was concerned with any- 
 thing rather than with the production of artistic work, particu- 
 larly just at that time when the course of events seemed to 
 indicate that the whole world was undergoing a reaction. 
 
 ' But what do you expect to get out of the revolution ? ' he 
 replied. * Are you going to write scores for the barricades ? ' 
 
 Whereupon I assured him that I was not thinking of writing 
 any scores at all. We parted, obviously without having arrived 
 at a mutual understanding. 
 
 In the street I was also stopped by Moritz Schlesinger, who, 
 being equally under the influence of Liszt's brilliant article, 
 evidently considered me a perfect prodigy. He too thought I 
 must be counting on making a hit in Paris, and was sure that 
 I had a very good chance of doing so. 
 
 ' Will you undertake my business ? ' I asked him. ' I have 
 no money. Do you really think the performance of an opera 
 by an unknown composer can be anything but a matter of 
 money ? ' 
 
 ' You are quite right/ said Moritz, and left me on the spot. 
 
 I turned from these disagreeable encounters in the plague- 
 stricken capital of the world to inquire the fate of my Dresden 
 companions, for some of those with whom I was intimate had 
 also reached Paris, when I called on Desplechins, who had 
 painted the scenery for Tannli'duser. I found Semper there, who 
 had, like myself, been deposited in this city. We met again with 
 no little pleasure, although we could not help smiling at our 
 grotesque situation. Semper had retired from the battle when 
 the famous barricade, which he in his capacity of architect kept 
 under close observation, had been surrounded. (He thought it
 
 IN THE COUNTRY WITH BELLOXI 500 
 
 impossible for it to be captured.) All the same, he considered 
 that he had exposed himself quite sufficiently to make it 
 unsafe for him to stay after the Prussians had announced a 
 state of siege and were occupying Dresden. He considered 
 himself lucky as a native of Holstein to be dependent, not on 
 the German, but on the Danish government for a passport, 
 as this had helped him to reach Paris without difficulty. When 
 I expressed my real and heartfelt regret at the turn of affairs 
 which had torn him from a professional undertaking on which 
 he had just started the completion of the Dresden Museum 
 he refused to take it too seriously, saying it had given him 
 a great deal of worry. In spite of our trying situation, it 
 was with Semper that I spent the only bright hours of my stay 
 in Paris. We were soon joined by another refugee, young 
 Heine, who had once wished to paint my Lohengrin scenery. 
 He had no qualms about his future, for his master Desplechins 
 was willing to give him employment. I alone felt I had been 
 pitched quite aimlessly into Paris. I had a passionate desire 
 to -leave this cholera-laden atmosphere, and Belloni offered me 
 an opportunity which I promptly and joyfully seized. He 
 invited me to follow himself and his family to a country place 
 near La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, where I could be refreshed by pure 
 air and absolute quiet, and wait for a change for the better in 
 my position. I made the short journey to Rueil after another 
 week in Paris, and took for the time being a poor lodging (one 
 room, built with recesses) in the house of Monsieur Raphael, 
 a wine merchant, close by the village mairie where the Belloni 
 family were staying. Here I waited further developments. 
 During the period when all news from Germany ceased I tried 
 to occupy myself as far as possible with reading. After going 
 through Proudhon's writings, and in particular his De la 
 propriete, in such a manner as to glean comfort for my situation 
 in curiously divers ways, I entertained myself for a consider- 
 able time with Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins, a most 
 alluring and attractive work. One day Belloni brought me in-\v< 
 of the unfortunate rising in Paris, which had been attempt. -.1 
 on the 13th June by the Republicans under Ledru-Kollin upiinst 
 the provisional government, which was then in the full tide of 
 reaction. Great as was the indignation with which the i.
 
 510 MY LIFE 
 
 was received by my host and the mayor of the place (a relative 
 of his, at whose table we ate our modest daily meal), it made, on 
 the whole, little impression on me, as my attention was still 
 fixed in great agitation on the events which were taking place 
 on the Khine, and particularly on the grand-duchy of Baden, 
 which had been made forfeit to a provisional government. 
 When, however, the news reached me from this quarter also 
 that the Prussians had succeeded in subduing a movement which 
 had not at first seemed hopeless, I felt extraordinarily 
 downcast. 
 
 I was compelled to consider my position carefully, and the 
 necessity of conquering my difficulties helped to allay the 
 excitement to which I was a prey. The letters from my 
 Weimar friends, as well as those from my wife, now brought me 
 completely to my senses. The former expressed themselves 
 very curtly about my behaviour with regard to recent events. 
 The opinion was, that for the moment there would be nothing 
 for me to do, and especially not in Dresden, or at the grand- 
 ducal court, l as one could not very well knock at battered 
 doors'; ' on ne frappe pas a des portes enfoncees' (Princess 
 von Wittgenstein to Belloni). 
 
 I did not know what to reply, for I had never dreamt of 
 expecting anything to come from their intervening on my 
 behalf in that quarter; consequently I was quite satisfied that 
 they sent me temporarily financial assistance. With this money 
 I made up my mind to leave for Zurich and ask Alex Miiller to 
 give me shelter for a while, as his house was sufficiently large 
 to accommodate a guest. My saddest moment came when, after 
 a long silence, I at last received a letter from my wife. She 
 \ wrote that she could not dream of living with me again; that 
 after I had so unscrupulously thrown away a connection and 
 position, the like of which would never again present itself to 
 me, no woman could reasonably be expected to take any further 
 interest in my future enterprises. 
 
 I fully appreciated my wife's unfortunate position ; I could 
 in no way assist her, except by advising her to sell our Dresden 
 furniture, and by making an appeal on her behalf to my relatives 
 in Leipzig. 
 
 Until then I had been able to think more lightly of the
 
 MINNA'S ESTRANGEMENT 511 
 
 i | .1 -TTTIT-*t__u_^^^^ 
 
 misery of her position, simply because I had imagined her to 
 be more deeply in sympathy with what agitated me. Often 
 during the recent extraordinary events I had even believed that 
 she understood my feelings. Now, however, she had disillu- 
 sioned me on this point: she could see in me no more than 
 what the public saw, and the one redeeming point of her severe 
 judgment was that she excused my behaviour on the score that 
 I was reckless. After I had begged Liszt to do what he could 
 for my wife, I soon began to regard her unexpected behaviour 
 with more equanimity. In reply to her announcement that 
 she would not write to me again for the present, I said that I 
 had also resolved to spare her all further anxiety about my very 
 doubtful fate, by ceasing from communicating with her. I sur- 
 veyed the panorama of our long years of association critically 
 in my mind's eye, beginning with that first stormy year of our 
 married life, that had been so full of sorrow. Our youthful 
 days of worry and care in Paris had undoubtedly been of 
 benefit to us both. The courage and patience with which she 
 had faced our difficulties, while I on my part had tried to end 
 them by dint of hard work, had linked us together with bonds 
 of iron. Minna was rewarded for all these privations by 
 Dresden successes, and more especially by the highly enviable 
 position I had held there. Her position as wife of the con- 
 ductor (Frau Kapellmeisterin) had brought her the fulfilment 
 of her dearest wishes, and all those things which conspired to 
 make my work in this official post so intolerable to me, were to 
 her no more than so many threats directed against her smug 
 content. The course I had adopted with regard to Tannhauser 
 had already made her doubtful of my success at the theatres, 
 and had robbed her of all courage and confidence in our future. 
 The more I deviated from the path which she regarded as the 
 only profitable one, due partly to the change of my views 
 (which I grew ever less willing to communicate to her), and 
 partly to the modification in my attitude towards the stage, the 
 more she retreated from that position of close fellowship with me 
 which she had enjoyed in former years, and which she thought 
 herself justified in connecting in some way with my successes. 
 She looked upon my conduct with regard to the Dresden 
 catastrophe as the outcome of this deviation from the right
 
 512 MY LIFE 
 
 path, and attributed it to the influence of unscrupulous per- 
 sons (particularly the unfortunate Rockel), who were sup- 
 posed to have dragged me with them to ruin, by appealing 
 to my vanity. Deeper than all these disagreements, however, 
 which, after all, were concerned only with external circum- 
 stances, was the consciousness of our fundamental incom- 
 patibility, which to me had become ever more and more 
 apparent since the day of our reconciliation. From the very 
 beginning we had had scenes of the most violent description; 
 never once after these frequent quarrels had she admitted 
 herself in the wrong or tried to be friends again. 
 
 The necessity of speedily restoring our domestic peace, as 
 well as my conviction (confirmed by every one of her extrava- 
 gant outbursts) that, in view of the great disparity of our 
 characters and especially of our educations, it devolved upon 
 me to prevent such scenes by observing great caution in my 
 behaviour, always led me to take the entire blame for what 
 had happend upon myself, and to mollify Minna by showing 
 her that I was sorry. Unfortunately, and to my intense grief, 
 I was forced to recognise that by acting in this way I lost all 
 my po'wer over her affections, and especially over her character. 
 Now we stood in a position in which I could not possibly resort 
 to the same means of reconciliation, for it would have meant my 
 being inconsistent in all my views and actions. And then I 
 found myself confronted by such hardness in the woman whom 
 I had spoilt by my leniency, that it was out of the question to 
 expect her to acknowledge the injustice done to myself. Suffice 
 it to say that the wreck of my married life had contributed not 
 inconsiderably to the ruin of my position in Dresden, and to 
 the careless manner in which I treated it, for instead of finding 
 help, strength, and consolation at home, I found my wife 
 j unwittingly conspiring against me, in league with all the other 
 ! hostile circumstances which then beset me. After I had got 
 f over the first shock of her heartless behaviour, I was absolutely 
 clear about this. I remember that I did not suffer any great 
 sorrow, but that on the contrary, with the conviction of being 
 now quite helpless, an almost exalted calm came over me when 
 I realised that up to the present my life had been built on a 
 foundation of sand and nothing more. At all events, the fact 

 
 MULLER'S HOUSE AT ZURICH 513 
 
 that I stood absolutely alone did much towards restoring my 
 peace of mind, and in my distress I now found strength and 
 comfort even in the fact of my dire poverty. At last assistance 
 arrived from Weimar. I accepted it eagerly, and it was the 
 means of extricating me from my present useless life and- 
 stranded hopes. 
 
 My next move was to find a place of refuge one, however, 
 which had but little attraction for me, seeing that in it there 
 was not the slightest hope of my being able to make any 
 further headway in the paths along which I had hitherto 
 progressed. This refuge was Zurich, a town devoid of all art 
 in the public sense, and where for the first time I met simple- 
 hearted people who knew nothing about me as a musician, but 
 who, as it appeared, felt drawn towards me by the power of 
 my personality alone. I arrived at Miiller's house and asked 
 him to let me have a room, at the same time giving him what 
 remained of my capital, namely twenty francs. I quickly 
 discovered that my old friend was embarrassed by my perfectly 
 open confidence in him, and that he was at his wit's end to know 
 what to do with me. I soon gave up the large room containing 
 a grand piano, which he had allotted to me on the impulse of the 
 moment, and retired to a modest little bedroom. The meals 
 were my great trial, not because I was fastidious, but because 
 I could not digest them. Outside my friend's house, on the 
 contrary, I enjoyed what, considering the habits of the locality, 
 was the most luxurious reception. The same young men who 
 had been so kind to me on my first journey through Ziirich 
 again showed themselves anxious to be continually in my 
 company, and this was especially the case with one young 
 fellow called Jakob Sulzer. He had to be thirty years of age 
 before he was entitled to become a member of the Ziirich 
 government, and he therefore still had several years to wait 
 In spite of his youth, however, the impression he made on all 
 those with whom he came in contact was that of a man of riper 
 years, whose character was formed. When I was asked lonir 
 afterwards whether I had ever met a man who, morally 
 speaking, was the beau-ideal of real character and uprightness, 
 I could, on reflection, think of none other than this newly gained 
 friend, Jakob Sulzer.
 
 514: MY LIFE 
 
 He owed his early appointment as permanent Cantonal Secre- 
 tary (Staatsschreiber}, one of the most excellent government 
 posts in the canton of Zurich, to the recently returned liberal 
 party, led by Alfred Escher. As this party could not employ 
 the more experienced members of the older conservative side 
 in the public offices, their policy was to choose exceptionally 
 gifted young men for these positions. Sulzer showed extra- 
 ordinary promise, and their choice accordingly soon lighted on 
 "him. He had only just returned from the Berlin and Bonn 
 universities with the intention of establishing himself as 
 professor of philology at the university in his native town, 
 when he was made a member of the new government. To fit 
 himself for his post he had to stay in Geneva for six months to 
 perfect himself in the French language, which he had neglected 
 during his philological studies. He was quick-witted and 
 industrious, as well as independent and firm, and he never 
 allowed himself to be swayed by any party tactics. Conse- 
 quently he rose very rapidly to high positions in the govern- 
 ment, to which he rendered valuable and important services, 
 first as Minister of Finance, a post he held for many years, and 
 later with particular distinction as member of the School Federa- 
 tion. His unexpected acquaintance with me seemed to place 
 him in a sort of dilemma; from the philological and classical 
 studies which he had entered upon of his own choice, he sud- 
 denly found himself torn away in the most bewildering manner 
 by this unexpected summons from the government. It almost 
 seemed as if his meeting with me had made him regret having 
 accepted the appointment. As he was a person of great culture, 
 my poem, Siegfried's Death, naturally revealed to him my know- 
 ledge of German antiquity. He had also studied this subject, 
 but with greater philological accuracy than I could possibly 
 have aspired to. When, later on, he became acquainted with 
 my manner of writing music, this peculiarly serious and reserved 
 man became so thoroughly interested in my sphere of art, so far 
 removed from his own field of labour, that, as he himself con- 
 fessed, he felt it his duty to fight against these disturbing 
 influences by being intentionally brusque and curt with me. 
 In the beginning of my stay in Zurich, however, he delighted 
 in being led some distance astray in the realms of art. The
 
 JAKOB SULZER 515 
 
 old-fashioned official residence of the first Cantonal Secretary 
 was often the scene of unique gatherings, composed of people 
 such as I would be sure to attract. It might even be said that 
 these social functions occurred rather more frequently than was 
 advisable for the reputation of a civil servant of this little 
 philistine state. What attracted the musician Baumgartner 
 more particularly to these meetings was the product of Sulzer's 
 vineyards in Winterthur, to which our hosts treated his guests 
 with the greatest liberality. When in my moods of mad 
 exuberance I gave vent in dithyrambic effusions to my most 
 extreme views on art and life, my listeners often responded in a 
 manner which, more often than not, I was perfectly right in 
 ascribing to the effects of the wine rather than to the power of 
 my enthusiasm. Once when Professor Ettmiiller, the Germanist 
 and Edda scholar, had been invited to listen to a reading of my 
 Siegfried and had been led home in a state of melancholy 
 enthusiasm, there was a regular outburst of wanton spirits 
 among those who had remained behind. I conceived the absurd 
 idea of lifting all the doors of the state official's house off their 
 hinges. 
 
 Herr Hagenbuch, another servant of the state, seeing what 
 exertion this cost me, offered me the help of his gigantic 
 physique, and with comparative ease we succeeded in removing 
 every single door, and laying it aside, a proceeding at which 
 Sulzer merely smiled good-naturedly. The next day, however, 
 when we made inquiries, he told us that the replacing of those 
 doors (which must have been a terrible strain on his delicate 
 constitution) had taken him the whole night, as he had made up 
 his mind to keep the knowledge of our orgies from the sergeant, 
 who always arrived at a very early hour in the morning. 
 
 The extraordinary birdlike freedom of my existence had the 
 effect of exciting me more and more. I was often frightened 
 at the excessive outbursts of exaltation to which I was prone 
 no matter whom I was with and which led me to indulge in 
 the most extraordinary paradoxes in my conversation. Soon 
 after I had settled in Zurich I began to write down my various 
 ideas about things at which I had arrived through my private 
 and artistic experiences, as well as through the influence of the 
 political unrest of the day. As I had no choice but to try, to
 
 516 MY LIFE 
 
 the best of my ability, to earn something by my pen, I thought 
 of sending a series of articles to a great French journal such as 
 the National, which in those days was still extant. In these 
 articles I meant to propound my ideas (in my revolutionary 
 way) on the subject of modern art in its relation to society. 
 I sent six of them to an elderly friend of mine, Albert Franck, 
 requesting him to have them translated into French and to get 
 them published. This Franck was the brother of the better- 
 known Hermann Franck, now the head of the Franco-German 
 bookselling firm, which had originally belonged to my brother- 
 in-law, Avenarius. He sent me back my work with the very 
 natural remark that it was out of the question to expect the 
 Parisian public to understand or appreciate my articles, especi- 
 ally at such a critical moment. 
 
 I headed the manuscript Kunst und Revolution ('Art and 
 Revolution ') and sent it to Otto Wigand in Leipzig, who 
 actually undertook to publish it in the form of a pamphlet, and 
 sent me five louis d'or for it. This unexpected success induced 
 me to continue to exploit my literary gifts. I looked among my 
 papers for the essay I had written the year before as the out- 
 come of my historical studies of the ' Nibelungen y legend ; I 
 gave it the title of Die Nibelungen Weltgeschichte aus der 
 Sage, and again tried my luck by sending it to Wigand. 
 
 The sensational title of Kunst und Revolution, as well as the 
 notoriety the ' royal conductor ' had gained as a political 
 refugee, had made the radical publisher hope that the scandal 
 that would arise on the publication of my articles would re- 
 dound to his benefit! I soon discovered that he was on the 
 point of issuing a second edition of Kunst und Revolution, with- 
 out, however, informing me of the fact. He also took over my 
 new pamphlet for another five louis d'or. This was the first 
 time I had earned money by means of published work, and I 
 now began to believe that I had reached that point when I 
 should be able to get the better of my misfortunes. I thought 
 it over, and decided to give public lectures in Zurich on subjects 
 related to my writings during the coming winter, hoping in 
 that free and haphazard fashion to keep body and soul together 
 for a little while, although I had no fixed appointment and did 
 not intend to work at music.
 
 'THE ART-WORK OF THE FUTURE > 517 
 
 It seemed necessary for me to resort to these means, as I did 
 not know how otherwise to keep myself alive. Shortly after 
 my arrival in Zurich I had witnessed the coming of the frag- 
 ments of the Baden army, dispersed over Swiss territory, and 
 accompanied by fugitive volunteers, and this had made a painful 
 and uncanny impression upon me. The news of the surrender 
 near Villages by Gorgey paralysed the last hopes as to the issue 
 of the great European struggle for liberty, which so far had 
 been left quite undecided. With some misgiving and anxiety 
 I now turned my eyes from all these occurrences in the outside 
 world inwards to my own soul. 
 
 I was accustomed to patronise the cafe litieraire, where I 
 took my coffee after my heavy mid-day meal, in a smoky 
 atmosphere surrounded by a merry and joking throng of 
 men playing dominoes and ' fast.' One day I stared at 
 its common wall-paper representing antique subjects, which 
 in some inexplicable way recalled a certain water-colour by 
 Genelli to my mind, portraying ' The education of Dionysoa 
 by the Muses.' I had seen it at the house of my brother- 
 in-law Brockhaus in my young days, and it had made a deep 
 impression on me at the time. At this same place I conceived 
 the first ideas of my Kunstwerk der Zukunft (' The Art- Work 
 of the Future'), and it seemed a significant omen to me to 
 be roused one day out of one of my post-prandial dreams by 
 the news that Schrb'der-Devrient was staying in Zurich. I 
 immediately got up with the intention of calling on her at the 
 neighbouring hotel, ' Zum Schwerte,' but to my great dismay 
 heard that she had just left by steamer. I never saw her again, 
 and long afterwards only heard of her painful death from my 
 wife, who in later years became fairly intimate with her in 
 Dresden. 
 
 After I had spent two remarkable summer months in this 
 wild and extraordinary fashion, I at last received reassuring 
 news of Minna, who had remained in Dresden. Although her 
 manner of taking leave of me had been both harsh and wounding, 
 I could not bring myself to believe I had completely parted from 
 her. In a letter I wrote to one of her relations, and which I 
 presumed they would forward, I made sympathetic inquiries 
 about her, while I had already done all that lay in my power,
 
 518 MY LIFE 
 
 through repeated appeals to Liszt, to ensure her being well 
 cared for. I now received a direct reply, which, in addition to 
 the fact that it testified to the vigour and activity with which 
 she had fought her difficulties, at the same time showed me that 
 she earnestly desired to be reunited with me. It was almost 
 in terms of contempt that she expressed her grave doubts as to 
 the possibility of my being able to make a living in Zurich, but 
 she added that, inasmuch as she was my wife, she wished to give 
 me another chance. She also seemed to take it for granted that 
 I intended making Zurich only our temporary home, and that 
 I would do my utmost to promote my career as a composer 
 of opera in Paris. Whereupon she announced her intention of 
 arriving at Rorschach in Switzerland on a certain date in 
 September of that year, in the company of the little dog Peps, 
 the parrot Papo, and her so-called sister Nathalie. After 
 having engaged two rooms for our new home, I now prepared 
 to set out on foot for St. Gall and Rorschach through the lovely 
 and celebrated Toggenburg and Appenzell, and felt very touched 
 after all when the peculiar family, which consisted half of pet 
 animals, landed at the harbour of Rorschach. I must honestly 
 confess that the little dog and the bird made me very happy. 
 My wife at once threw cold water on my emotions, however, by 
 declaring that in the event of my behaving badly again she was 
 ready to return to Dresden any moment, and that she had 
 numerous friends there, who would be glad to protect and 
 succour her if she were forced to carry out her threat. Be this 
 as it may, one look at her convinced me hc>v greatly she had 
 aged in this short time, and how much I ought to pity her, 
 and this feeling succeeded in banishing all bitterness from my 
 heart. 
 
 I did my utmost to give her confidence and to make her 
 believe that our present misfortunes were but momentary. 
 This was no easy task, as she would constantly compare the 
 diminutive aspect of the town of Zurich with the more noble 
 majesty of Dresden, and seemed to feel bitterly humiliated. 
 The friends whom I introduced to her found no favour in her 
 eyes. She looked upon the Cantonal Secretary, Sulzer, as a 
 ' mere town clerk who would not be of any importance in 
 Germany ' ; and the wife of my host Miiller absolutely dis-
 
 OUR NEW HOME IN ZURICH 519 
 
 gusted her when, in answer to Minna's complaints about my 
 terrible position, she replied that my greatness lay in the very 
 fact of my having faced it. Then again Minna appeased me 
 by telling me of the expected arrival of some of my Dresden 
 belongings, which she thought would be indispensable to our 
 new home. 
 
 The property of which she spoke consisted of a Breitkopf and 
 Hartel grand-piano that looked better than it sounded, and of 
 the ' title-page ' of the Nibelungen by Cornelius in a Gothic 
 frame that used to hang over my desk in Dresden. 
 
 With this nucleus of household effects we now decided to take 
 small lodgings in the so-called ' hinteren Escherhausern ' in the 
 Zeltweg. With great cleverness Minna had succeeded in selling 
 the Dresden furniture to advantage, and out of the proceeds of 
 this sale she had brought three hundred marks with her to 
 Zurich to help towards setting up our new home. She told me 
 that she had saved my small but very select library for me by 
 giving it into the safe custody of the publisher, Heinrich Brock- 
 haus (brother of my sister's husband and member of the Saxon 
 Diet), who had insisted upon looking after it. Great, therefore, 
 was her dismay when, upon asking this kind friend to send her 
 the books, he replied that he was holding them as security for 
 a debt of fifteen hundred marks which I had contracted with him 
 during my days of trouble in Dresden, and that he intended to 
 keep them until that sum was returned. As even after the 
 lapse of many years I found it impossible to refund this money, 
 these books, collected for my own special wants, were lost to 
 me for ever. 
 
 Thanks more particularly to my friend Sulzer, the Cantonal 
 Secretary, whom my wife at first despised so much on account 
 of his title which she misunderstood, and who, although he was 
 far from well-off himself, thought it only natural that he should 
 help me, however moderately, out of my difficulties, we soon 
 succeeded in making our little place look so cosy that my simple 
 Zurich friends felt quite at home in it. My wife, with all her 
 undeniable talents, here found ample scope in which to dis- 
 tinguish herself, and I remember how ingeniously she made a 
 little what-not out of the box in which she had kindly brought 
 my music and manuscript to Ziirich.
 
 520 MY LIFE 
 
 But it was soon time to think of how to earn enough money 
 to provide for us all. My idea of giving public lectures was 
 treated with contempt by my wife, who looked upon it as an 
 insult to her pride. She could acquiesce only in one plan, that 
 suggested by Liszt, namely, that I should write an opera for 
 Paris. To satisfy her, and in view of the fact that I could see 
 no chance of a remunerative occupation close at hand, I actu- 
 ally reopened a correspondence on this matter with my great 
 friend and his secretary Belloni in Paris. In the meantime I 
 could not be idle, so I accepted an invitation from the Zurich 
 musical society to conduct a classical composition at one of their 
 concerts, and to this end I worked with their very poor orchestra 
 at Beethoven's Symphony in A major. Although the result 
 was successful, and I received five napoleons for my trouble, 
 it made my wife very unhappy, for she could not forget the 
 excellent orchestra, and the much more appreciative public, 
 which a short time before in Dresden would have seconded and 
 rewarded similar efforts on my part. Her one and only ideal 
 for me was that, by hook or by crook, and with a total disregard 
 of all artistic scruples, I should make a brilliant reputation for 
 myself in Paris. While we were both absolutely at a loss to 
 discover whence we should obtain the necessary funds for our 
 journey to Paris and our sojourn there, I again plunged into 
 my philosophical study of art, as being the only sphere still left 
 open to me. 
 
 Harrassed by the cares of a terrible struggle for existence, I 
 wrote the whole of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft in the chilly 
 atmosphere of a sunless little room on the ground floor during 
 the months of November and December of that year. Minna 
 had no objection to this occupation when I told her of the suc- 
 cess of my first pamphlet, and the hope I had of receiving even 
 better pay for this more extensive work. 
 
 Thus for a while I enjoyed comparative peace, although in 
 my heart a spirit of unrest had begun to reign, thanks to my 
 growing acquaintance with Feuerbach's works. I had always 
 had an inclination to fathom the depths of philosophy, just as 
 I had been led by the mystic influence of Beethoven's Ninth 
 Symphony to search the deepest recesses of music. My first 
 efforts at satisfying this longing had failed. None of the Leipzig
 
 LUDWIG FEUERBACH 521 
 
 professors had succeeded in fascinating me with their lectures 
 on fundamental philosophy and logic. I had procured 
 Schelling's work, Transcendental Idealism, recommended to me 
 by Gustav Schlesinger, a friend of Laube's, but it was in vain 
 that I racked my brains to try and make something out of the 
 first pages, and I always returned to my Ninth Symphony. 
 
 During the latter part of my stay in Dresden I had returned 
 to these old studies, the longing for which suddenly revived 
 within me, and to these I added the deeper historical studies 
 which had always fascinated me. As an introduction to phil- 
 osophy I now chose Hegel's Philosophy of History. A good deal 
 of this impressed me deeply, and it now seemed as if I should 
 ultimately penetrate into the Holy of Holies along this path. 
 The more incomprehensible many of his speculative conclusions 
 appeared, the more I felt myself desirous of probing the question 
 of the ' Absolute ' and everything connected therewith to the 
 core. For I so admired Hegel's powerful mind that it seemed 
 to me he was the very keystone of all philosophical thought. 
 
 The revolution intervened; the practical tendencies of a 
 social reconstruction distracted my attention, and as I have 
 already stated, it was a German Catholic priest and political 
 agitator (formerly a divinity student named Menzdorff, who 
 used to wear a Calabrian hat) * who drew my attention to ' the 
 only real philosopher of modern times/ Ludwig Feuerbach. 
 My new Zurich friend, the piano teacher, Wilhelm Baumgartner, 
 made me a present of Feuerbach's book on Tod und Unster- 
 Uichkeit ('Death and Immortality'). The well-known and 
 stirring lyrical style of the author greatly fascinated me as a 
 layman. The intricate questions which he propounds in this 
 book as if they were being discussed for the first time by him, 
 and which he treats in a charmingly exhaustive manner, had 
 often occupied my mind since the very first days of my ac- 
 quaintance with Lehrs in Paris, just as they occupy the mi in I 
 of every imaginative and serious man. With me, however, tins 
 was not lasting, and I had contented myself with the poetic 
 suggestions on these important subjects which appear here and 
 there in the works of our great poets. 
 
 1 A broad-rimmed, tall, white felt hat, tapering to a point, originally worn by 
 the inhabitants of Calabria, and in 1848 a sign of Republicanism. EDITOR.
 
 522 MY LIFE 
 
 The frankness with which Feuerbach explains his views on 
 these interesting questions, in the more mature parts of his 
 book, pleased me as much by their tragic as by their social- 
 radical tendencies. It seemed right that the only true im- 
 mortality should be that of sublime deeds and great works of 
 art. It was more difficult to sustain any interest in Das Wesen 
 des Christenthums (' The Essence of Christianity ') by the same 
 author, for it was impossible whilst reading this work not to 
 become conscious, however involuntarily, of the prolix and 
 unskilful manner in which he dilates on the simple and funda- 
 mental idea, namely, religion explained from a purely subjective 
 and psychological point of view. Nevertheless, from that day 
 onward I always regarded Feuerbach as the ideal exponent 
 of the radical release of the individual from the thraldom of 
 accepted notions, founded on the belief in authority. The 
 initiated will therefore not wonder that I dedicated my Kunst- 
 werk der Zukunft to Feuerbach and addressed its preface to him. 
 
 My friend Sulzer, a thorough disciple of Hegel, was very sorry 
 to see me so interested in Feuerbach, whom he did not even 
 recognise as a philosopher at all. He said that the best thing 
 that Feuerbach had done for me was that he had been the means 
 of awakening my ideas, although he himself had none. But 
 what had really induced me to attach so much importance to 
 Feuerbach was the conclusion by means of which he had seceded 
 from his master Hegel, to wit, that the best philosophy was to 
 have no philosophy a theory which greatly simplified what I 
 had formerly considered a very terrifying study and secondly, 
 that only that was real which could be ascertained by the 
 senses. 
 
 The fact that he proclaimed what we call ' spirit ' to be an 
 aesthetic perception of our senses, together with his statement 
 concerning the futility of philosophy these were the two things 
 in him which rendered me such useful assistance in my con- 
 ceptions of an all-embracing work of art, of a perfect drama 
 which should appeal to the simplest and most purely human 
 emotions at the very moment when it approached its fulfilment 
 as Kunstwerk der Zukunft. It must have been this which 
 Sulzer had in his mind when he spoke deprecatingly of Feuer- 
 bach's influence over me. At all events, after a while I certainly
 
 PLANS FOR PARIS 523 
 
 could not return to his works, and I remember that his newly 
 published book, Ubcr das Wesen der Religion (' Lectures on the 
 Essence of Religion'), scared me to such an extent by the 
 dullness of its title alone, that when Herwegh opened it for 
 my benefit, I closed it with a bang under his very nose. 
 
 At that time I was working with great enthusiasm upon the 
 draft of a connected essay, and was delighted one day to receive 
 a visit from the novelist and Tieckian scholar, Eduard von Billow 
 (the father of my young friend Billow), who was passing 
 through Zurich. In my tiny little room I read him my chapter 
 on poetry, and could not help noticing that he was greatly 
 startled at my ideas on literary drama and on the advent of 
 the new Shakespeare. I thought this all the more reason why 
 Wigand the publisher should accept my new revolutionary book, 
 and expected him to pay me a fee which would be in proportion 
 to the greater size of the work. I asked for twenty lous d'or, 
 and this sum he agreed to pay me. 
 
 The prospect of receiving this amount induced me to carry 
 out the plan, which need had forced upon me, of travelling to 
 Paris and of trying my luck there as a composer of opera. 
 This plan had very serious drawbacks; not only did I hate the 
 idea, but I knew that I was doing an injustice to myself by 
 believing in the success of my enterprise, for I felt that I could 
 never seriously throw myself into it heart and soul. Every- 
 thing, however, combined to make me try the experiment, and 
 it was Liszt in particular who, confident of this being my only 
 way to fame, insisted upon my reopening the negotiations into 
 which Belloni and I had entered during the previous summer. 
 To show with what earnestness I tried to consider the chances 
 of carrying out my plan, I drafted out the plot of the opera, 
 which the French poet would only have to put into verse, be- 
 cause I never for a moment fancied that it would be possible 
 for him to think out and write a libretto for which I would only 
 .need to compose the music. I chose for my subject the legend 
 of Wieland der Schmied, upon which I commented with some 
 stress at the end of my recently finished Kunstwerk der Zukunft, 
 and the version of which by Simrock, taken from the Wilkyna 
 legend, had greatly attracted me. 
 
 I sketched out the complete scenario with precise indication
 
 624 MY LIFE 
 
 of the dialogue for three acts, and with a heavy heart decided to 
 hand it over to my Parisian author to be worked out. Liszt 
 thought he saw a means of making my music known through 
 his relations with Seghers, the musical director of a society then 
 known as the * Concerts de St. Cecile.' In January of the fol- 
 lowing year the Tanriliauser Overture was to be given under his 
 baton, and it therefore seemed advisable that I should reach 
 Paris some time before this event. This undertaking, which 
 appeared to be so difficult owing to my complete lack of funds, 
 was at last facilitated in a manner quite unexpected. 
 
 I had written home for help, and had appealed to all the old 
 friends I could think of, but in vain. By the family of my 
 brother Albert in particular, whose daughter had recently entered 
 upon a brilliant theatrical career, I was treated in much the 
 same way as one treats an invalid by whom one dreads to become 
 infected. In contrast to their harshness I was deeply touched 
 by the devotion of the Hitter family, who had remained in 
 Dresden; for, apart from my acquaintance with young Karl, 
 I scarcely knew these people at all. Through the kindness of 
 my old friend Heine, who had been informed of my position, 
 Frau Julie Hitter, the venerable mother of the family, had 
 thought it her duty to place, through a business friend, the 
 sum of fifteen hundred marks at my disposal. At about the 
 same time I received a letter from Mme. Laussot, who had 
 called upon me in Dresden the year before, and who now in 
 the most affecting terms assured me of her continued sympathy. 
 
 These were the first signs of that new phase in my life upon 
 which I entered from this day forth, and in which I accustomed 
 myself to look upon the outward circumstances of my existence 
 as being merely subservient to my will. And by this means 
 I was able to escape from the hampering narrowness of my 
 home life. 
 
 For the moment the proffered financial assistance was very 
 distasteful to me, for it seemed to forbid my raising any further 
 objections to the realisation of the detested Paris schemes. 
 When, however, on the strength of this favourable change in 
 my affairs, I suggested to my wife that we might, after all, 
 content ourselves with remaining in Ziirich, she flew into the 
 most violent passion over my weakness and lack of spirit, and
 
 DEPARTURE FOR PARIS 625 
 
 declared that if I did not make up my mind to achieve some- 
 thing in Paris, she would lose all faith in me. She said, more- 
 over, that she absolutely refused to be a witness of my misery 
 and grief as a wretched literary man and insignificant con- 
 ductor of local concerts in Zurich. 
 
 We had entered upon the year 1850 ; I had decided to go to 
 Paris, if only for the sake of peace^ but had to postpone my 
 journey on account of ill-health. The reaction following upon 
 the terrible excitement of recent times had not failed to have 
 its effect on my overwrought nerves, and a state of complete 
 exhaustion had followed. The continual colds, in spite of which 
 I had been obliged to work in my very unhealthy room, had 
 at last given rise to alarming symptoms. A certain weakness 
 of the chest became apparent, and this the doctor (a political 
 refugee) undertook to cure by the application of pitch plasters. 
 As the result of this treatment and the irritating effect it had 
 upon my nerves, I lost my voice completely for a while ; where- 
 upon I was told that I must go away for a change. On going 
 out to buy my ticket for the journey, I felt so weak and broke 
 out into such terrible perspiration that I hastened to return 
 to my wife in order to consult her as to the advisability, in 
 the circumstances, of abandoning the idea of the expedition 
 altogether. She, however, maintained (and perhaps rightly) 
 not only that my condition was not dangerous, but that it was 
 to a large extent due to imagination, and that, once in the right 
 place, I would soon recover. 
 
 An inexpressible feeling of bitterness stimulated my nerves 
 as in anger and despair I quickly left the house to buy the 
 confounded ticket for the journey, and in the beginning of 
 February I actually started on the road to Paris. I was filled 
 with the most extraordinary feelings, but the spark of hope 
 which was then kindled in my breast certainly had nothing what- 
 ever to do with the belief that had been imposed upon me from 
 without, that I was to make a success in Paris as a composer 
 of operas. 
 
 I was particularly anxious to find quiet rooms, for peace had 
 now become my first necessity, no matter where I happened to 
 be staying. The cabman v/ho drove me from street to 8 
 through the most isolated quarters, and whom I at last accused
 
 526 MY LIFE 
 
 of keeping always to the most animated parts of the city, finally 
 protested in despair that one did not come to Paris to live in a 
 convent. At last it occurred to me to look for what I wanted 
 in one of the cites through which no vehicle seemed to drive, and 
 I decided to engage rooms in the Cite de Provence. 
 
 True to the plans which had been forced upon me, I at once 
 called on Herr Seghers about the performance of the Tannliduser 
 Overture. 
 
 It turned out that in spite of my late arrival I had missed 
 nothing, for they were still racking their brains as to how to 
 procure the necessary orchestral parts. 
 
 I therefore had to write to Liszt, asking him to order the 
 copies, and had to wait for their arrival. Belloni was not in 
 town, things were therefore at a standstill, and I had plenty of 
 time to think over the object of my visit to Paris, while an 
 unceasing accompaniment was poured out to my meditations 
 by the barrel-organs which infest the cites of Paris. 
 
 I had much difficulty in convincing an agent of the govern- 
 ment, from whom I received a visit soon after my arrival, that 
 my presence in Paris was due to artistic reasons, and not to my 
 doubtful position as a political refugee. 
 
 Fortunately he was impressed by the score, which I showed 
 him, as well as by Liszt's article on the Tannhduser Overture, 
 written the year before in the Journal des Debats, and he left 
 me, politely inviting me to continue my avocations peacefully 
 and industriously, as the police had no intention of disturbing 
 me. 
 
 I also looked up my older Parisian acquaintances. At the 
 hospitable house of Desplechins I met Semper, who was trying 
 to make his position as tolerable as possible by writing some 
 inferior artistic work. He had left his family in Dresden, from 
 which town we soon received the most alarming news. The 
 prisons were gradually filling there with the unfortunate vic- 
 tims of the recent Saxon movement. Of Rockel, Bakunin, and 
 Heubner, all we could hear was that they had been charged 
 with high treason, and that they were awaiting the death 
 sentence. 
 
 In view of the tidings which continually arrived concerning 
 the cruelty and brutality with wjiich the soldiers treated the
 
 KIETZ AND ANDERS 527 
 
 prisoners, we could not help considering our own lot a very 
 happy one. 
 
 My intercourse with Semper, whom I saw frequently, was 
 generally enlivened by a gaiety which was occasionally of rather 
 a risky nature; he was determined to rejoin his family in 
 London, where the prospect of various appointments was open 
 to him. My latest attempts at writing, and the thoughts ex- 
 pressed in my work, interested him greatly, and gave rise to 
 animated conversations in which we were joined by Kietz, who 
 was at first amusing, but evidently boring Semper considerably. 
 I found the former in the identical position in which I had 
 left him many years ago: he had made no headway with his 
 painting, and would have been glad if the revolution had taken 
 a more decided turn, so that, under cover of the general con- 
 fusion, he might have escaped from his embarrassing position 
 with his landlord. He made at this time quite a good pastel 
 portrait of me in his very best and earliest style. While I was 
 sitting I unfortunately spoke to him about my Das Kunstwerk 
 der Zukunft, and thereby laid the foundation for him of troubles 
 that lasted many years, as he tried to instil my new ideas into 
 the Parisian bourgeoisie at whose tables he had hitherto been 
 a welcome guest. Notwithstanding, he remained as of old a 
 good, obliging, true-hearted fellow, and even Semper could not 
 help putting up with him cheerfully. I also looked up my 
 friend Anders. It was a difficult matter to find him at any 
 hour of the day, since out of sleeping hours he was closeted in 
 the library, where he could receive no one, and afterwards retired 
 to the reading-room to spend his hours of rest, and generally 
 went to dine with certain bourgeois families where he gave 
 music lessons. He had aged considerably, but I was glad to 
 find him, comparatively speaking, in better health than the 
 state in which I had last seen him had allowed me to hope, as 
 when I left Paris before he had seemed to be in a decline. 
 Curiously enough, a broken leg had been the means of improving 
 his health, the treatment necessary for it having taken him to 
 a hydro, where his condition had much improved. His one idea 
 was to see me achieve a great success in Paris, and he wished 
 to secure a seat in advance for the first performance of my 
 opera, which he took for granted was to appear, and kept re-
 
 528 MY LIFE 
 
 peating that it would be so very trying for him to occupy a 
 place in any part of the theatre where there would be likely to 
 be a crush. He could not see the use of my present literary 
 work; in spite of this I was again engaged on it exclusively, 
 as I soon ascertained there was no likelihood of my overture 
 to Tanrihauser being produced. Liszt had shown the greatest 
 zeal in obtaining and forwarding the orchestral parts ; but Herr 
 Seghers informed me that as far as his own orchestra was con- 
 cerned, he found himself in a republican democracy where each 
 instrument had an equal right to voice its opinion, and it had 
 been unanimously decided that for the remainder of the winter 
 season, which was now drawing to a close, my overture could 
 be dispensed with. I gathered enough from this turn of affairs 
 to realise how precarious my position was. 
 
 It is true, the result of my writings was hardly less discour- 
 aging. A copy of the Wigand edition of my KunstwerTc der 
 Zukunft was forwarded to me full of horrible misprints, and 
 instead of the expected remuneration of twenty louis d'or, my 
 publisher explained that for the present he could only pay me 
 half this sum, as, owing to the fact that at first the sale of the 
 Kunst und Revolution had been very rapid, he had been led to 
 attach too high a commercial value to my writings, a mistake 
 he had speedily discovered when he found there was no demand 
 for Die Nibelungen. 
 
 On the other hand, I received an offer of remunerative work 
 from Adolph Kolatsche*k, who was also a fugitive, and was just 
 going to bring out a German monthly journal as the organ 
 of the progressive party. In response to this invitation I wrote 
 a long essay on Kunst und Klima ('Art and Climate'), in 
 which I supplemented the ideas I had already touched upon 
 in my Kunstwerk der Zukunft. Besides this I had, since my 
 arrival in Paris, worked out a more complete sketch of Wieland 
 der Schmied. It is true that this work had no longer any value, 
 and I wondered with apprehension what I could write home to 
 my wife, now that the last precious remittance had been so 
 aimlessly sacrificed. The thought of returning to Zurich was 
 as distasteful to me as the prospect of remaining any longer 
 in Paris. My feelings with regard to the latter alternative were 
 intensified by the impression made upon me by Meyerbeer's
 
 MEYERBEER'S 'PROPHET' 629 
 
 opera The Prophet, which had just been produced and which 
 I had not heard before. Rearing itself on the ruins of the hopes 
 for new and more noble endeavour which had animated the 
 better works of the past year the only result of the negotia- 
 tions of the provisional French republic for the encouragement 
 of art I saw this work of Meyerbeer's break upon the world 
 like the dawn heralding this day of disgraceful desolation. I 
 was so sickened by this performance, that though I was unfortu- 
 nately placed in the centre of the stalls and would willingly 
 have avoided the disturbance necessarily occasioned by one of 
 the audience moving during the middle of an act, even this 
 consideration did not deter me from getting up and leaving the 
 house. When the famous mother of the prophet finally gives 
 vent to her grief in the well-known series of ridiculous roulades, 
 I was filled with rage and despair at the thought that I should 
 be called upon to listen to such a thing, and never again did I 
 pay the slightest heed to this opera. 
 
 But what was I to do next? Just as the South American 
 republics had attracted me during my first miserable sojourn 
 in Paris, so now my longing was directed towards the East, 
 where I could live my life in a manner worthy of a human 
 being far away from this modern world. While I was in this 
 frame of mind I was called upon to answer another inquiry as 
 to my state of health from Mme. Laussot in Bordeaux. It 
 turned out that my answer prompted her to send me a kind 
 and pressing invitation to go and stay at her house, at least for 
 a short time, to rest and forget my troubles. In any circum- 
 stances an excursion to more southerly regions, which I had not 
 yet seen, and a visit to people who, though utter strangers, 
 showed such friendly interest in me, could not fail to prove 
 attractive and flattering. I accepted, settled my affairs in Puri-, 
 and went by coach via Orleans, Tours, and Angouleme, down 
 the Gironde to the unknown town, where I was received \\iili 
 great courtesy and cordiality by the young wine merchant Eugene 
 Laussot, and presented to my sympathetic young friend, his \vi fc. 
 A closer acquaintance with the family, in which Mrs. Taylor, 
 Mme. Laussot's mother, was now also include"!, led to a clearer 
 understanding of the character of the sympathy bestowed upon 
 me in such a cordial and unexpected manner by people hit!.
 
 530 MY LIFE 
 
 unknown to me. Jessie, as the young wife was called at home, 
 had, during a somewhat lengthy stay in Dresden, become very 
 intimate with the Bitter family, and I had no reason to doubt 
 the assurance given me, that the Laussots' interest in me and my 
 work was principally owing to this intimacy. After my flight 
 from Dresden, as soon as the news of my difficulties had reached 
 the Hitters, a correspondence had been carried on between Dres- 
 den and Bordeaux with a view to ascertaining how best to 
 assist me. Jessie attributed the whole idea to Frau Julie Hitter 
 who, while not being well enough off herself to make me a suffi- 
 cient allowance, was endeavouring to come to an understanding 
 with Jessie's mother, the well-to-do widow of an English lawyer, 
 whose income entirely supported the young couple in Bordeaux. 
 This plan had so far succeeded, that shortly after my arrival 
 in Bordeaux Mrs. Taylor informed me that the two families 
 had combined, and that it had been decided to ask me to 
 accept the help of three thousand francs a year until the 
 return of better days. My one object now was to enlighten 
 my benefactors as to the exact conditions under which I 
 should be accepting such assistance. I could no longer reckon 
 upon achieving any success as a composer of opera either in 
 Paris or elsewhere; what line I should take up instead I 
 did not know; but, at all events, I was determined to keep 
 myself free from the disgrace which would reflect upon my 
 whole life if I used such means as this offer presented to 
 secure success. I feel sure I am not wrong in believing that 
 Jessie was the only one who understood me, and though I 
 only experienced kindness from the rest of the family, I soon 
 discovered the gulf by which she, as well as myself, was 
 separated from her mother and husband. While the husband, 
 who was a handsome young man, was away the greater part 
 of the day attending to his business, and the mother's deafness 
 excluded her to a great extent from our conversations, we soon 
 discovered by a rapid exchange of ideas that we shared the 
 same opinions on many important matters, and this led to a 
 great feeling of friendship between us. Jessie, who was at 
 that time about twenty-two, bore little resemblance to her 
 mother, and no doubt took after her father, of whom I heard 
 most flattering accounts. A large and varied collection of books
 
 JESSIE LAUSSOT 531 
 
 left by this man to his daughter showed his tastes, for besides 
 carrying on his lucrative profession as a lawyer, he had devoted 
 himself to the study of literature and science. From him 
 Jessie had also learned German as a child, and she spoke that 
 language with great fluency. She had been brought up on 
 Grimm's fairy-tales, and was, moreover, thoroughly acquainted 
 with German poetry, as well as with that of England and 
 France, and her knowledge of them was as thorough as the most 
 advanced education could demand. French literature did not 
 appeal to her much. Her quick powers of comprehension were 
 astonishing. Everything which I touched upon she immediately 
 grasped and assimilated. It was the same with music: she 
 read at sight with the greatest facility, and was an accomplished 
 player. During her stay in Dresden she had been told that I 
 was still in search of the pianist who could play Beethoven's 
 great Sonata in B flat major, and she now astonished me by 
 her finished rendering of this most difficult piece. The emotion 
 aroused in me by finding such an exceptionally developed talent 
 suddenly changed to anxiety when I heard her sing. Her 
 sharp, shrill voice, in which there was strength but no real 
 depth of feeling, so shocked me that I could not refrain from 
 begging her to desist from singing in future. With regard to 
 the execution of the sonata, she listened eagerly to my instruc- 
 tions as to how it should be interpreted, though I could not 
 feel that she would succeed in rendering it according to my 
 ideas. I read her my latest essays, and she seemed to under- 
 stand even the most extraordinary descriptions perfectly. My 
 poem on Siegfried's Tod moved her deeply, but she preferred 
 my sketch of Wieland der Schmied. She admitted aftcrwanls 
 that she would prefer to imagine herself filling the role of 
 Wieland's worthy bride than to find herself in the position and 
 forced to endure the fate of Gutrune in Siegfried. It follow. I 
 inevitably that the presence of the other members of the family 
 proved embarrassing when we wanted to talk over and discuss 
 these various subjects. If we felt somewhat troubled at having 
 to confess to ourselves that Mrs. Taylor would certainly never 
 be able to understand why I was being offered assistance, I was 
 still more disconcerted at realising after a time the complHo 
 want of harmony between the young couple, particularly from
 
 532 MY LIFE 
 
 an intellectual point of view. The fact that Laussot had 
 for some time been well aware of his wife's dislike for him 
 was plainly shown when he one day so far forgot himself 
 as to complain loudly and bitterly that she would not even 
 love a child of his if she had one, and that he therefore thought 
 it fortunate that she was not a mother. Astonished and sad- 
 dened, I suddenly gazed into an abyss which was hidden here, 
 as is often the case, under the appearance of a tolerably happy 
 married life. About this time, and just as my visit, which 
 had already lasted three weeks, was drawing to a close, I re- 
 ceived a letter from my wife that could not have had a more 
 unfortunate effect on my state of mind. She was, on the 
 whole, pleased at my having found new friends, but at the 
 same time explained that if I did not immediately return to 
 Paris, and there endeavour to secure the production of my 
 overture with the results anticipated, she would not know 
 what to think of me, and would certainly fail to understand me 
 if I returned to Zurich without having effected my purpose. 
 At the same time my depression was intensified in a terrible 
 way by a notice in the papers announcing that Rockel, Bakunin, 
 and Heubner had been sentenced to death, and that the date 
 of their execution was fixed. I wrote a short but stirring letter 
 of farewell to the two first, and as I saw no possibility of having 
 it conveyed to the prisoners, who were confined in the fortress 
 of Konigstein, I decided to send it to Frau von Liittichau, to 
 be forwarded to them by her, because I thought she was the 
 only person in whose power it might lie to do this for me, 
 while at the same time she had sufficient generosity and inde- 
 pendence of mind to enable her to respect and carry out my 
 wishes, in spite of any possible difference of opinion she might 
 entertain. I was told some time afterwards that Liittichau 
 had got hold of the letter and thrown it into the fire. For the 
 time being this painful impression helped me to the determina- 
 tion to break with every one and everything, to lose all desire 
 to learn more of life or of art, and, even at the risk of having 
 to endure the greatest privations, to trust to chance and put 
 myself beyond the reach of everybody. The small income 
 settled upon me by my friends I wished to divide between 
 myself and my wife, and with my half go to Greece or Asia
 
 JESSIE LAUSSOT r , : ,., 
 
 Minor, and there, Heaven alone knew how, seek to forget and 
 be forgotten. I communicated this plan to the only confidante 
 I had left to me, chiefly in order that she might be able to 
 enlighten my benefactors as to how I intended disposing of 
 the income they had offered me. She seemed pleased with the 
 idea, and the resolve to abandon herself to the same fate seemed 
 to her also, in her resentment against her position, to be quite 
 an easy matter. She expressed as much by hints and a word 
 dropped here and there. Without clearly realising what it 
 would lead to, and without coming to any understanding with 
 her, I left Bordeaux towards the end of April, more excited 
 than soothed in spirit, and filled with regret and anxiety. I 
 returned to Paris, for the time being, stunned and full of un- 
 certainty as to what to do next. Feeling very unwell, exhausted, 
 and at the same time excited from want of sleep, I reached my 
 destination and put up at the Hotel Valois, where I remained 
 a week, struggling to gain my self-control and to face my 
 strange position. Even if I had wished to resume the plans 
 which had been instrumental in bringing me to Paris, I soon 
 convinced myself that little or nothing could be done. I was 
 filled with distress and anger at being called upon to waste 
 my energies in a direction contrary to my tastes, merely to 
 satisfy the unreasonable demands made upon me. I was at 
 length obliged to answer my wife's last pressing communi- 
 cation, and wrote her a long and detailed letter in which I 
 kindly, but at the same time frankly, retraced the whole of our 
 life together, and explained that I was fully determined to set 
 her free from any immediate participation in my fate, as I felt 
 quite incapable of so arranging it so as to meet with her 
 approval. I promised her the half of whatever means I should 
 have at my disposal now or in the future, and told her she must 
 accept this arrangement with a good grace, because the occasion 
 had now arisen to take that step of parting from me which, 
 on our first meeting again in Switzerland, she had declared 
 herself ready to do. I ended my letter without bidding her 
 a final farewell. I thereupon wrote to Bordeaux immediately 
 to inform Jessie of the step I had taken, though my means did 
 not as yet allow of my forming any definite plan which I 
 could communicate to her for my complete flight from the
 
 534: MY LIFE 
 
 world. In return she announced that she was determined to 
 do likewise, and asked for my protection, under which she 
 intended to place herself when once she had set herself free. 
 Much alarmed, I did all in my power to make her realise that 
 it was one thing for a man, placed in such a desperate situation 
 as myself, to cut himself adrift in the face of insurmountable 
 difficulties, but quite another matter for a young woman, at 
 least to all outward appearances, happily settled, to decide to 
 break up her home, for reasons which probably no one except 
 myself would be in a position to understand. Regarding the 
 unconventionality of her resolve in the eyes of the world, she 
 assured me that it would be carried out as quietly as possible, 
 and that for the present she merely thought of arranging to 
 visit her friends the Hitters in Dresden. I felt so upset by all 
 this that I yielded to my craving for retirement, and sought it 
 at no great distance from Paris. Towards the middle of April 
 I went to Montmorency, of which I had heard many agreeable 
 accounts, and there sought a modest hiding-place. "With great 
 difficulty I dragged myself to the outskirts of the little town, 
 where the country still bore a wintry aspect, and turned into 
 the little strip of garden belonging to a wine merchant, which 
 was filled with visitors only on Sundays, and there refreshed 
 myself with some bread and cheese and a bottle of wine. A 
 crowd of hens surrounded me, and I kept throwing them pieces 
 of bread, and was touched by the self-sacrificing abstemiousness 
 with which the cock gave all to his wives though I aimed par- 
 ticularly at him. They became bolder and bolder, and finally 
 flew on to the table and attacked my provisions ; the cock flew 
 after them, and noticing that everything was topsy-turvy, 
 pounced upon the cheese with the eagerness of a craving long 
 unsatisfied. When I found myself being driven from the table 
 by this chaos of fluttering wings, I was filled with a gaiety 
 to which I had long been a stranger. I laughed heartily, and 
 looked round for the signboard of the inn. I thereby dis- 
 covered that my host rejoiced in the name of Homo. This 
 seemed a hint from Fate, and I felt I must seek shelter here 
 at all costs. An extraordinarily small and narrow bedroom 
 was shown me, which I immediately engaged. Besides the 
 bed it held a rough table and two cane-bottomed chairs. I
 
 MINNA COMES TO PARIS 535 
 
 arranged one of these as a washhand-stand, and on the table I 
 placed some books, writing materials, and the score of Lohen- 
 grin, and almost heaved a sigh of content in spite of my ex- 
 tremely cramped accommodation. . Though the father re- 
 mained uncertain and the woods with their leafless trees did 
 not seem to offer the prospect of very enticing walks, I still 
 felt that here there was a possibility of my being forgotten, 
 and being also in my turn allowed to forget the events that 
 had lately filled me with such desperate anxiety. My old 
 artistic instinct awoke again. I looked over my Lohengrin 
 score, and quickly decided to send it to Liszt and leave it to 
 him to bring it out as best he could. Now that I had got rid 
 of this score also, I felt as free as a bird and as careless as 
 Diogenes about what might befall me. I even invited Kietz to 
 come and stay with me and share the pleasures of my retreat. 
 He did actually come, as he had done during my stay in 
 Meudon; but he found me even more modestly installed than 
 I had been there. He was quite prepared to take pot-luck, how- 
 ever, and cheerfully slept on an improvised bed, promising to 
 keep the world in touch with me upon his return to Paris. I 
 was suddenly startled from my state of complacency by the news 
 that my wife had come to Paris to look me up. I had an hour's 
 painful struggle with myself to settle the course I should pur- 
 sue, and decided not to allow the step I had taken in regard to 
 her to be looked upon as an ill-considered and excusable vagary. 
 I left Montmorency and betook myself to Paris, summoned 
 Kietz to my hotel, and instructed him to tell my wife, who 
 had already been trying to gain admittance to him, that he 
 knew nothing more of me except that I had left Paris. The 
 poor fellow, who felt as much pity for Minna as for me, was 
 so utterly bewildered on this occasion, that he declared that he 
 felt as though he were the axis upon which all the misery in 
 the world turned. But he apparently realised the significance 
 and importance of my decision, as it was necessary he should, 
 and acquitted himself in this delicate matter with intelligence 
 and good feeling. That night I left Paris by train for Clennont- 
 Tonnerre, from whence I travelled on to Geneva, there to await 
 news from Frau Bitter in Dresden. My exhaustion was such 
 that, even had I possessed the necessary means, I could not as
 
 536 MY LIFE 
 
 yet have contemplated undergoing the fatigue of a long journey. 
 By way of gaining time for further developments I retired to 
 Villeneuve, at the other end of the Lake of Geneva, where I 
 put up at the Hotel Byron, which was quite empty at the time. 
 Here I learned that Karl Hitter had arrived in Zurich, as he 
 said he would, with the intention of paying me a visit. Impress- 
 ing upon him the necessity for the strictest secrecy, I invited 
 him to join me at the Lake of Geneva, and in the second week 
 in May we met at the Hotel Byron. The characteristic which 
 pleased me in him was his absolute devotion, his quick compre- 
 hension of my position and the necessity of my resolutions, as 
 well as his readiness to submit without question to all my 
 arrangements, even where he himself was concerned. He was 
 full of my latest literary efforts, told me what an impression 
 they had made on his acquaintances, and thereby induced me 
 to spend the few days of rest I was enjoying in preparing my 
 poem of Siegfried's Tod for publication. 
 
 I wrote a short preface dedicating this poem to my friends as 
 a relic of the time when I had hoped to devote myself entirely 
 to art, and especially to the composition of music. I sent this 
 manuscript to Herr Wigand in Leipzig, who returned it to me 
 after some time with the remark, that if I insisted on its being 
 printed in Latin characters he would not be able to sell a single 
 copy of it. Later on I discovered that he deliberately refused 
 to pay me the ten louis d'or due to me for Das Kunsiwerk der 
 Zukunft, which I had directed him to send to my wife. Dis- 
 appointing as all this was, I was nevertheless unable to engage 
 in any further work, as only a few days after Karl's arrival the 
 realities of life made themselves felt in an unexpected manner, 
 most upsetting to my tranquillity of mind. I received a wildly 
 excited letter from Mme. Laussot to tell me that she had not 
 been able to resist telling her mother of her intentions, that 
 in so doing she had immediately aroused the suspicion that 
 I was to blame, and in consequence of this her disclosure had 
 been communicated to M. Laussot, who vowed he would search 
 everywhere for me in order to put a bullet through my 
 body. The situation was clear enough, and I decided to go to 
 Bordeaux immediately in order to come to an understanding 
 with my opponent I at once wrote fully to M. Eugene,
 
 JOURNEY TO BORDEAUX 537 
 
 endeavouring to make him see matters in their true light, but 
 at the same time declared myself incapable of understanding 
 how a man could bring himself to keep a woman with him by 
 force, when she no longer wished to remain. I ended by inform- 
 ing him that I should reach Bordeaux at the same time as my 
 letter, and immediately upon my arrival there would let him 
 know at what hotel to find me; also that I would not tell his 
 wife of the step I was taking, and that he could consequently 
 act without restraint. I did not conceal from him, what indeed 
 was the fact, that I was undertaking this journey under great 
 difficulties, as under the circumstances I considered it impossible 
 to wait to have my passport endorsed by the French envoy. 
 At the same time I wrote a few lines to Mme. Laussot, exhorting 
 her to be calm and self-possessed, but, true to my purpose, 
 refrained from even hinting at any movement on my part 
 (When, years afterwards, I told Liszt this story, he declared 
 I had acted very stupidly in not telling Mme. Laussot of my 
 intentions.) I took leave of Karl the same day, in order to set 
 out next morning from Geneva on my tedious journey across 
 France. But I was so exhausted by all this that I could not 
 help thinking I was going to die. That same night I wrote to 
 Frau Hitter in Dresden, to this effect, giving her a short account 
 of the incredible difficulties I had been drawn into. As a 
 matter of fact, I suffered great inconvenience at the French 
 frontier on account of my passport; I was made to give my 
 exact place of destination, and it was only upon my assuring 
 them that pressing family affairs required my immediate 
 presence, that the authorities showed exceptional leniency and 
 allowed me to proceed. 
 
 I travelled by Lyons through Auvergne by stage-coach for 
 three days and two nights, till at length I reached Bordeaux. 
 It was the middle of May, and as I surveyed the town from a 
 height at early dawn I saw it lit up by a fire that had broken 
 out. I alighted at the Hotel Quatre Soaurs, and at once sent 
 a note to M. Laussot, informing him that I held myself at 
 his disposal and would remain in all day to receive him. 
 was nine o'clock in the morning when I sent him this message. 
 I waited in vain for an answer, till at last, late in the after- 
 noon, I received a summons from the police-station to present
 
 538 MY LIFE 
 
 myself immediately. There I was first of all asked whether my 
 passport was in order. I acknowledged the difficulty I found 
 myself in with regard to it, and explained that family matters 
 had necessitated my placing myself in this position. 
 
 I was thereupon informed that precisely this family matter, 
 which had no doubt brought me there, was the cause of their 
 having to deny me the permission to remain in Bordeaux any 
 longer. In answer to my question, they did not conceal the 
 fact that these proceedings against me were being carried out 
 at the express wish of the family concerned. This extraordinary 
 revelation immediately restored my good-humour. I asked the 
 police inspector whether, after such a trying journey, I might 
 not be allowed a couple of days' rest before returning; this 
 request he readily granted, and told me that in any case there 
 could be no chance of my meeting the family in question, as 
 they had left Bordeaux at mid-day. I used these two days to 
 recover from my fatigue, and also wrote a letter to Jessie, in 
 which I told her exactly what had taken place, without con- 
 cealing my contempt at the behaviour of her husband, who 
 could expose his wife's honour by a denunciation to the police. 
 I also added that our friendship could certainly not continue 
 until she had released herself from so humiliating a position. 
 The next thing was to get this letter safely delivered. The 
 information furnished me by the police officials was not suffi- 
 cient to enlighten me as to what had exactly taken place in 
 the Laussot family, whether they had left home for some length 
 of time or merely for a day, so I simply made up my mind to 
 go to their house. I rang the bell and the door sprang open; 
 without meeting any one I walked up to the first-floor flat, 
 the door of which stood open, and went from room to room till 
 I reached Jessie's boudoir, where I placed my letter in her 
 work-basket and returned the way I had come. I received no 
 reply, and set out upon my return journey as soon as the term 
 of rest granted me had expired. The fine May weather had a 
 cheering effect upon me, and the clear water, as well as the 
 agreeable name of the Dordogne, along whose banks the post- 
 chaise travelled for some distance, gave me great pleasure. 
 
 I was also entertained by the conversation of two fellow- 
 travellers, a priest and an officer, about the necessity of putting
 
 GENEVA r,;;) 
 
 an end to the French' Republic. The priest showed liin^df 
 much more humane and broad-minded than his military in- 
 terlocutor, who could only repeat the one refrain, * II faut en 
 finir.' I now had a look at Lyons, and in a walk round the 
 town tried to recall the scenes in Lamartine's Histoire des 
 Girondins, where he so vividly describes the siege and surrender 
 of the town during the period of the Convention Nationale. 
 At last I arrived at Geneva, and returned to the Byron hotel, 
 where Karl Bitter was awaiting me. During my absence he had 
 heard from his family, who wrote very kindly concerning me. 
 His mother had at once reassured him as to my condition, and 
 pointed out that with people suffering from nervous disorders 
 the idea of approaching death was a frequent symptom, and 
 that there was consequently no occasion to feel anxious about 
 me. She also announced her intention of coming to visit ua 
 in Villeneuve with her daughter Emilie in a few days' time. 
 This news made me take heart again; this devoted family, so 
 solicitous for my welfare, seemed sent by Providence to lead 
 me, as I so longed to be led, to a new life. Both ladies arrived 
 in time to celebrate my thirty-seventh birthday on the twenty- 
 second of May. The mother, Frau Julie, particularly made a 
 deep impression upon me. I had only met her once before in 
 Dresden, when Karl had invited me to be present at the per- 
 formance of a quartette of his own composition, given at his 
 mother's house. On this occasion the respect and devotion 
 shown me by eadi member of the family had delighted me. 
 The mother had hardly spoken to me, but when I was leaving 
 she was moved to tears as she thanked me for my visit I was 
 unable to understand her emotion at the time, but now when 
 I reminded her of it she was surprised, and explained that she 
 had felt so touched at my unexpected kindness to her son. 
 
 She and her daughter remained with us about a week. We 
 sought diversion in excursions to the beautiful Valais, but did 
 not succeed in dispelling Frau Hitter's sadness of heart, caused 
 by the knowledge of recent events of which she had now been 
 informed, as well as by her anxiety at the course my life was 
 taking. As I afterwards learned, it had cost the kMBfOM, 
 delicate woman a great effort to undertake this jmirn.-v, nn-I 
 when I urged her to leave her house to come and srttl.- in
 
 540 MY LIFE 
 
 Switzerland with her family, so that we might all be united, 
 she at last pointed out to me that in proposing what seemed 
 to her such an eccentric undertaking, I was counting upon a 
 strength and energy she no longer possessed. For the present 
 she commended her son, whom she wished to leave with me, 
 to my care, and gave me the necessary means to keep us both 
 for the time being. Regarding the state of her fortune, she 
 told me that her income was limited, and now that it was 
 impossible to accept any help from the Laussots, she did not 
 know how she would be able to come to my assistance sufficiently 
 to assure my independence. Deeply moved, we took leave of 
 this venerable woman at the end of a week, and she returned to 
 Dresden with her daughter, and I never saw her again. 
 
 Still bent upon discovering a means of disappearing from the 
 world, I thought of choosing a wild mountain spot where I could 
 retire with Karl. For this purpose we sought the lonely Yisper 
 Thai in the canton Valais, and not without difficulty made our 
 way along the impracticable roads to Zermatt. There, at the 
 foot of the colossal and beautiful Matterhorn, we could indeed 
 consider ourselves cut off from the outer world. I tried to 
 make things as comfortable as I could in this primitive wilder- 
 ness, but discovered only too soon that Karl could not recon- 
 cile himself to his surroundings. Even on the second day he 
 owned that he thought it horrid, and suggested that it would 
 be more pleasant in the neighbourhood of one of the lakes. 
 We studied the map of Switzerland, and chose Thun for our 
 next destination. Unfortunately I again found myself re- 
 duced to a state of extreme nervous fatigue, in which the slight- 
 est effort produced a profuse and weakening perspiration. Only 
 by the greatest strength of will was I able to make my way 
 out of the valley; but at last we reached Thun, and with re- 
 newed courage engaged a couple of modest but cheerful rooms 
 looking out on to the road, and proposed to wait and see how 
 we should like it. In spite of the reserve which still betrayed 
 his shyness of character, I found conversation with my young 
 friend always pleasant and enlivening. I now realised the 
 pitch of fluent and overflowing vivacity to which the young 
 man could attain, particularly at night before retiring to 
 rest, when he would squat down beside my bed, and in the
 
 FAMILY CABAL AT BORDEAUX 541 
 
 agreeable, pure dialect of the German Baltic provinces, give 
 free expression to whatever had excited his interest I was 
 exceedingly cheered during these days by the perusal of the 
 Odyssey, which I had not read for so long and which had 
 fallen into my hands by chance. Homer's long-suffering hero, 
 always homesick yet condemned to perpetual wandering, and 
 always valiantly overcoming all difficulties, was strangely sym- 
 pathetic to me. Suddenly the peaceful state I had scarcely yet 
 entered upon was disturbed by a letter which Karl received from 
 Mme. Laussot. He did not know whether he ought to show it 
 to me, as he thought Jessie had gone mad. I tore it out of his 
 hand, and found she had written to say that she felt obliged 
 to let my friend know that she had been sufficiently enlightened 
 about me to make her drop my acquaintance entirely. I after- 
 wards discovered, chiefly through the help of Frau Hitter, that 
 in consequence of my letter and my arrival in Bordeaux, M. 
 Laussot, together with Mrs. Taylor, had immediately taken 
 Jessie to the country, intending to remain there until the news 
 was received of my departure, to accelerate which he had applied 
 to the police authorities. While they were away, and without 
 telling her of my letter and my journey, they had obtained 
 a promise from the young woman to remain quiet for a year, 
 give up her visit to Dresden, and, above all, to drop all corre- 
 spondence with me; since, under these conditions, she was 
 promised her entire freedom at the end of that time, she had 
 thought it better to give her word. Not content with this, 
 however, the two conspirators had immediately set about 
 calumniating me on all sides, and finally to Mme. Laussot 
 herself, saying that I was the initiator of this plan of elope- 
 ment. Mrs. Taylor had written to my wife complaining of 
 my intention to commit adultery, at the same time expressing 
 her pity for her and offering her support; the unfortunate 
 Minna, who now thought she had found a hitherto unsuspected 
 reason for my resolve to remain separated from her, wrote 
 back complaining of me to Mrs. Taylor. The meaning of an 
 innocent remark I had once made had been strangely mis- 
 interpreted, and matters were now aggravated by making it 
 appear as though I had intentionally lied. In the course of 
 playful conversation Jessie had once told me that she belonged
 
 542 MY LIFE 
 
 to no recognised form of religion, her father having been a 
 member of a certain sect which did not baptise either according 
 to the Protestant or the Roman Catholic ritual; whereupon 
 I had comforted her by assuring her that I had come in contact 
 with much more questionable sects, as shortly after my marriage 
 in Konigsberg I had learned that it had been solemnised by 
 a hypocrite. God alone knows in what form this had been 
 repeated to the worthy British matron, but, at all events, she 
 told my wife that I had said I was ' not legally married to 
 her/ In any case, my wife's answer to this had no doubt 
 furnished further material with which to poison Jessie's mind 
 against me, and this letter to my young friend was the result. 
 I must admit that, seen by this light, the circumstance at 
 which I felt most indignant was the way my wife had been 
 treated, and while I was perfectly indifferent as to what the 
 rest of the party thought of me, I immediately accepted Karl's 
 offer to go to Zurich and see her, so as to give her the explanation, 
 necessary to her peace of mind. While awaiting his return, 
 I received a letter from Liszt, telling me of the deep impression 
 made upon him by my Lohengrin score, which had caused him 
 to make up his mind as to the future in store for me. He at 
 the same time announced that, as I had given him the permission 
 to do so, he intended doing all in his power to bring about the 
 production of my opera at the forthcoming Herder festival in 
 Weimar. About this time I also heard from Frau Hitter, who, 
 in consequence of events of which she was well aware> thought 
 herself called upon to beg me not to take the matter too much 
 to heart. At this moment Karl also returned from Zurich, and 
 spoke with great warmth of my wife's attitude. Not having 
 found me in Paris, she had pulled herself together with re- 
 markable energy, and in pursuance of an earlier wish of mine, 
 had rented a house on the lake of Zurich, installed herself 
 comfortably, and remained there in the hope of at last hearing 
 from me again. Besides this, he had much to tell me of Sulzer'a 
 good sense and friendliness, the latter having stood by, my wife 
 and shown her great sympathy. In the midst of his narrative 
 Karl suddenly exclaimed, ' Ah ! these could be called sensible 
 people; but with such a mad Englishwoman nothing could be 
 'done/ To all this I said not a word, but finally with a smile
 
 ZURICH ONCE MORE 543 
 
 asked him whether he would like to go over to Zurich? I IV 
 sprang up exclaiming, ' Yes, and as soon as possible.' ' You 
 shall have your way,' said I ; Met us pack. I can see no sense 
 in anything either here or there.' Without breathing another 
 syllable about all that had happened, we left the next day for 
 Zurich.

 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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