My Life, Richard Wagner [little readers .txt] 📗

that the owner had no objection to letting me this large room at a low rent, but at the same time they pointed out the utter impracticability of carrying out my plan; nobody, they said, would be either able or willing to act as my servant there, for, amongst other things, there was no well, and the only water obtainable was from a cistern lying at a frightful depth down in the keep, and even this was not good. Under such circumstances it did not require more than one such obstacle to deter me from the pursuit of such an extravagant scheme. I had a similar experience with a property in Rheingau belonging to Count Schonborn. My attention had been drawn to it, because it was unoccupied by the proprietor. Here I certainly found a number of empty rooms, out of which I should have been able to arrange something suitable for my purpose. After obtaining further details from the land agent, who wrote on my behalf to Count Schonborn, I had to content myself with a refusal.

A strange incident that occurred about this time seriously threatened to interrupt me to some extent in the work I had begun. Friederike Meyer kept her promise and called on me one afternoon on her return from her usual excursion to Mayence. She was accompanied by a lady friend. Shortly after her arrival she was suddenly overwhelmed with fear, and to the terror of all present declared she was afraid she had caught scarlet fever. Her condition soon became alarming, and she had to find accommodation immediately in the 'Europaischer Hof' hotel and send for a doctor. The certainty with which she had immediately recognised the symptoms of a disease, which in most cases can only be caught from children, could not fail to impress me strangely. But my amazement was increased when on the following morning, at a very early hour, Herr von Guaita, the manager of the Frankfort theatre, who had heard of her illness, paid a visit to the patient and expressed for her an anxiety, the intensity of which it was impossible to ascribe entirely to his interest as a theatrical manager. He took Friederike at once under his protection, and treated her with the greatest care, thus relieving me from the pangs of anxiety aroused by this strange case. I spent some time with Herr von Guaita, talking with him about the possibility of producing one of my operas in Frankfort. On the second day I was present when the sick lady was conveyed to the railway station by Guaita, who evinced towards her what appeared to me the most tender paternal solicitude. Soon after this, Herr Burde (the husband of Madame Ney, a famous singer), who was at that time an actor at the Frankfort theatre, paid me a call. This gentleman, with whom amongst other things I discussed Friederike Meyer's talents, informed me that she was supposed to be the mistress of Herr von Guaita, a man who was held in great respect in the town on account of his noble rank, and that he had presented her with a house in which she was now living. As Herr von Guaita had not made an agreeable impression upon me, but on the contrary had struck me as a strange creature, this news filled me with a certain uneasiness. My other acquaintances who lived near my place of refuge in Biebrich were kind and friendly when, on the evening of my birthday on the 22nd of May, I entertained this little company in my flat. Mathilde Maier with her sister and her lady friend were very clever in utilising my small stock of crockery, and in a certain sense she did the honours as mistress of the house.

But my peace of mind was soon disturbed by an interchange of letters with Minna, which grew more and more unsatisfactory. I had settled her in Dresden, but wanted to spare her the humiliation of a permanent separation from me. In pursuance of this idea I had at last found myself compelled to adopt the plan she had initiated, by communicating with the Saxon Minister of Justice; and I finally petitioned for a complete amnesty from the government, and received permission to settle in Dresden. Minna now thought herself authorised to take a large flat, in which it would be easy to arrange the furniture allotted to her, assuming that after a little while I would share the abode with her, at least periodically. I had to try to meet cheerfully her demands for the wherewithal to carry out her wishes, and especially to procure the two thousand seven hundred marks she required for the purpose. The more calmly I acted in this matter, the more deeply she seemed to be offended by the quiet frigidity of my letters. Reproaches for supposed injuries in the past and recriminations of every kind now poured in from her faster than ever. At last I turned to my old friend Pusinelli. Out of affection for me he had always been a loyal helper of my intractable spouse. Through his mediation I now prescribed the strong medicine which my sister Clara a short while ago had recommended as the best remedy for the patient, and asked him to impress upon Minna the necessity for a legal separation. It seemed to be no easy task for my poor friend to carry out this proposal in earnest, but he had been asked to do it, and obeyed. He informed me that she was very much alarmed, but that she definitely refused to discuss an amicable separation, and, as my sister had foreseen, Minna's conduct now changed in a very striking manner; she ceased to annoy me and seemed to realise her position and abide by it. To relieve her heart trouble, Pusinelli had prescribed for her a cure at Reichenhall. I obtained the money for this, and apparently she spent the summer in tolerable spirits in the very place in which a year ago I had met Cosima undergoing a cure.

Once more I turned to my work, to which I always had recourse as the best means of raising my spirits so soon as interruptions were removed. One night I was disturbed by a strange event. The evening had been pleasant, and I had sketched out the pretty theme for Pogner's Anrede, 'Das schone Fest Johannistag,' etc., when, while I was dozing off and still had this tune floating in my mind, I was suddenly awakened to full consciousness by an unrestrained outburst of a woman's laughter above my room. This laughter, growing madder and madder, at last turned into a horrible whimpering and frightful howling. I sprang out of bed in a terrified condition, to discover that the sound proceeded from my servant Lieschen, who had been attacked with hysterical convulsions as she lay in bed in the room overhead. My host's maid went to help her, and a doctor was summoned. While I was horrified at the thought that the girl would soon die, I could not help wondering at the curious tranquillity of the others who were present. I was told that such fits were of common occurrence in young girls, especially after dances. Without heeding this, I was riveted to the spot for a long time by the spectacle, with the horrible symptoms it presented. Several times I saw what resembled a childish fit of merriment pass, like the ebb and flow of the tide, through all the different stages, up to the most impudent laughter, and then to what seemed like the screams of the damned in torture. When the disturbance had somewhat subsided, I went to bed again, and once more Pogner's 'Johannistag' rose to my memory, and gradually banished the fearful impressions that I had undergone.

One day, when I was watching young Stadl at the gambling-table in Wiesbaden, I thought he was rather like the poor servant-girl. I had taken coffee with him and Weisheimer in the Kur garden, and we had enjoyed one another's company, when Stadl disappeared for a time. Weisheimer led me to the gambling-table to find him. Seldom have I witnessed a more horrible change of expression than that now stamped on the man who was a prey to the gambling mania. As a demon had possessed poor Lieschen, so now a demon possessed this man. As folk say, the devils 'pursued their evil lusts in him.' No appeal, no humiliating admonitions could prevail upon the man tortured by his losses in the game to summon up his moral powers. As I remembered my own experiences of the gambling passion, to which I had succumbed for a time when I was a youth, I spoke to young Weisheimer on the subject, and offered to show him how I was not afraid to make a stake on pure chance, but that I had no belief in my luck. When a new round of roulette began, I said to him in a voice of quiet certainty, 'Number 11 will win'; and it did. I added fuel to the fire of his astonishment at this stroke of good luck by predicting Number 27 for the next round. Certainly I remember being overcome by a spell as I spoke, and my number was in fact again victorious. My young friend was now in a state of such astonishment, that he vehemently urged me to stake something on the numbers which I foretold. Again I cannot but call to mind the curious, quiet feeling of being spellbound which possessed me as I said, 'As soon as I introduce my own personal interests into the game, my gift of prophecy will disappear at once.' I then drew him away from the gambling-table, and we took our way back to Biebrich in a fine sunset.


I now came into very painful relations with poor Friederike Meyer. She wrote and told me of her recovery and requested me to visit her, because she felt it her duty to apologise to me for the trouble in which she had involved me. As the short drive to Frankfort often helped to entertain me and distract my thoughts, I gladly fulfilled her wishes, and found her in a state of convalescence but still weak, and obviously preoccupied with the effort to fortify my mind against all disagreeable surmises about herself. She said that Herr von Guaita was like an anxious, almost hypersensitive father to her. She told me that she was very young when she left her family, and that with her sister Luise in particular she had severed all connection. She had thus come quite friendless to Frankfort, where the chance protection of Herr von Guaita, a man of mature age, had been very welcome to her. Unfortunately she had to suffer much that was painful under this arrangement, for she was most bitterly persecuted, chiefly on the score of her reputation, by her patron's family, who feared he might want to marry her. As she told me this, I could not refrain from drawing her attention to some of the consequences of the antagonism I had noticed, and I went so far as to speak of the house which people said had been given her as a present. This seemed to produce an extraordinary effect upon Friederike, who was still an invalid. She expressed the greatest annoyance at these rumours, although, as she admitted, she had long been obliged to suspect that slander of this kind would be disseminated about her; more than once she had considered the advisability of giving up the Frankfort stage, and now she was more determined than ever to do so. I saw nothing in her demeanour to shake my confidence in the truth of her story; moreover, as Herr von Guaita became more and more unintelligible to me both as a man and in the light of his