My Life, Richard Wagner [best books to read now .txt] 📗

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 material in table and travelling guests we succeeded in gathering 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 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 exploit 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 inspector 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. Nevertheless, 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 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. He proved to be out, but a small dirty boy, his son, was told to take me to the theatre to find '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 he 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 actress 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 continued to be extended to her spouse. He always drew a nice pension from the Prussian court, and permanently enjoyed 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, concerning 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 performance, 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 dissimulation, and made it necessary for me to appear as if I 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 Wurzburg 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 agreeable 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 serenely 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 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