However inclined the Dresden musical press may have been to be captious and antagonistic towards Wagner, there were certain decided evidences of gifts whose existence they could not deny, and which they were reluctantly compelled to acknowledge, in spite of their openly pronounced hostility. The rehearsing and conducting of “Rienzi” and the “Dutchman” had established Wagner’s reputation as a conductor of unusual ability. “But,” said his censorious critics, “that proves nothing, for he worked with heart and soul to secure success, just because the operas were his own. Wait until he is called upon to produce a classic; then we shall see.” They had not to wait long. Within a month, Gluck’s “Armide” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” were performed under his bÂton. His reading of both was original. He had, first, his individual conception of the opera as an organic art work, and then very pronounced views as to the manner in which each should be studied and performed. He spared not the orchestra. This not unnaturally created among the less intelligent some amount of irritation. Custom had sanctioned a certain slovenly rendering, and they revolted at the revolutionary spirit of the new conductor. But the openly expressed appreciation of the unquestioned abilities of the conductor by the leading members of the orchestra, was not without effect upon the malcontents. The friction did not last long; a marked improvement was felt by all, and Wagner’s irrepressible animal spirits and jocularity won over even the drudges. I have it from August Roeckel, his colleague at the desk, that the intelligent members of the orchestra idolized Wagner, and never wearied under his bÂton.

Wagner was possessed of a keen sense of euphonic balance. The predominance of one section of the orchestra over another, except where specially required to produce certain effects, he would not tolerate, be the defaulting instrument ever so difficult to control. On one occasion the trombones were excessively noisy at a “Rienzi” rehearsal in the overture, where they should accompany the violins piano. Their braying aroused Wagner’s anger; however, with ready wit, instead of a reproof, a joke, and turning good-humouredly to the culprits, he laughingly said, “Gentlemen, if I mistake not, we are in Dresden, and not marching round Jericho, where your ancestors, strong of lung, blew down the city walls.” The humour of the admonition was not lost, and after a moment’s general hilarity Wagner obtained the desired effect.

Wagner was a born disciplinarian. He held the orchestra completely in the palm of his hand. The members were so many pawns which he moved at will, responding to his slightest expressed wish. The rigid enforcement of his will upon the players became talked of outside the doors of the theatre. The critics could not understand why he should wish to change the order of things, have a greater number and longer rehearsals than any one else, and have the works performed in his heterodox way; and so, they first ridiculed him, and then uncompromisingly attacked him, attacks which, it is regrettable to add, lasted all the years he remained in Dresden. But for all this, he was not to be deterred from his purpose. He knew what he wanted, and meant to have it, and in this Wagner has again and again acknowledged to me his indebtedness to August Roeckel, who so ably seconded his chief. According to Wagner’s notions the masterpieces of German musicians could never be properly understood by the music-loving public, owing to their imperfect and faulty rendering under conductors who were so many automaton time-beaters. Great works of all descriptions were produced in a styleless manner, no regard, indeed, but very little effort, being made to discover the intention of the composer. All were rendered in the same pointless manner. This was revolting to his sense of artistic probity, therefore when he held the office of conductor he altered this almost dishonest state of things, for it was dishonest not to seek to reproduce a composer’s intention. Thus the works of all masters suffered. Therefore Wagner made it a rule that whatever he conducted should be, when possible, entirely committed to memory. His earnestness became infectious, until players and singers became animated by one feeling. They felt that he, at the desk, was as much a worker as any of them, and the result was a performance hitherto unknown for perfection. It happened, therefore, that when “Don Giovanni” was given, according to his feelings and as he willed it, the critics fell upon him fiercely, going so far even as to declare he did not understand Mozart, so unexpectedly new did they find his conception. The contest waged hotly. A large and important body of directors of art opinion selected the phlegmatic Reissiger as their idol, and lauded him indiscriminately. It is, to say the least, strange that there should have been found any one to prefer a man of the diminutive talents of Reissiger to Richard Wagner. The former was a pure mechanic, respectable in his way, but completely overshadowed by the mighty genius of Wagner. This study of conductors and conducting was a phase of his art to which Wagner devoted much careful thought, embodying at a later period his views in a pamphlet on the subject, which will be found invaluable by orchestral conductors of every degree.

An incident of this year, 1843, his first at Dresden, to which Wagner referred with pleasure, was the performance of the “Dutchman” at Cassel by Spohr. It was done entirely on its merits, without any solicitation from Wagner, the pleasure being intensified by reason of the ripe age of the conductor and his well-known reverence for the orthodox. Spohr was sixty-nine, and Richard Wagner thirty. Wagner felt and expressed himself as deeply touched at the interest a musician of such opposite tendencies should take in his work, particularly, too, on receiving later a letter from Spohr expressing the delight he experienced on making the acquaintance of a young artist who showed in all he did such earnestness and striving after truth. When Wagner related this to me, wondering at the curious contradiction in Spohr’s character, I remarked that the solution seemed to lie in the gentle, almost effeminate nature of Spohr, which found its completion in the robust, manly vigour of Wagner’s own conceptions.

How Spohr could have been attracted by Wagner, and repulsed by the “last period” of Beethoven, is a contradiction difficult to account for; but that it existed is beyond doubt, for the last time he was in London, about 1850-51, I put the question direct to him whether it was true, as asserted, that he had stigmatized the third period of Beethoven as “barbarous music,” to which he promptly and emphatically replied, “Yes, I do think it barbarous music.” After the performance at Cassel, Wagner endeavoured to get the “Dutchman” accepted elsewhere, but signally failed; from Munich, where a quarter of a century later he was to be the ruling spirit, came the discouraging response that “it was not German enough,” though the composer thought this its distinguishing merit.

The acrimoniously bitter attacks that were made upon Wagner, during his first year at Dresden, increased in poignancy, as he showed himself uncontrolled by custom’s laws. He affected a careless, defiant attitude towards all criticism, whereas he was abnormally sensitive to journalistic opinion. He could scoff, play the cynic, treat his opponent with derisive scorn, but it was all simulated; the iron entered into his soul, and he chafed and grew irritable under it. It was as though he suffered a bodily castigation. He brooded over the attacks, and there can be no doubt that they caused him moments of acute pain. It is true that in combat he could parry and thrust with as much vigour as his opponents; that the sting of his reproof was as torturing as any he suffered; perhaps even that his assaults were more annihilating than the occasion demanded; yet with it all, though he emerged from the contest victorious, he suffered deeply, acutely. There can be no doubt that the genesis of this hostile criticism was directed more against the man than his art work, and that wounded personality played an important part in it. Richard Wagner was seen to be a man of artistic taste, with proclivities which were exhibited in his domestic surroundings, novel, perhaps, to the somewhat heavy Dresdenites. First, Wagner’s attire was different from that of the ordinary individual. He persisted in wearing in the house a velvet dressing-gown and a biretta, truly an uncommon head-gear. His apartments were asserted to be upholstered luxuriously. And in these things the art critics (?) saw a target for ridicule and sarcasm. Now that his apartments were furnished in a costly manner is absolutely untrue. Wagner had a keen appreciation of the beautiful, and loved tasty decoration, but it was secured at the minimum of cost. The thrifty Minna contrived and invented, to gratify Wagner’s fancies, at an outlay which does credit to German thrift. And yet there were found Dresden journals that went so far as to discuss his mode of living, attributing all the apparent extravagance to gratification of an over-rated self-esteem, the appeasing of an inordinate vanity.

A year of vexation! a year of consolidation was 1844! From Wagner I have often heard it: “My failures were the stepping-stones to success”; and this year, when the hot blood of ambition coursed violently through his youthful veins, when he aimed as high as the heavens, and met with failures everywhere, when directors of German opera houses returned his scores “unopened” or pronounced them unripe and lacking in melody, truly, it was an epoch of bitter disappointment. Attacked relentlessly by journalistic hacks, imbued with the bitter feeling that he was the rejected of his countrymen; that for him there was not a glimmer of hope of success on the German stage, and yet convinced of his own exceptional gifts, and the living truth of the mission he was destined to accomplish, he, broken down in spirit, angered with the world, and fractious with himself, retired from all intercourse with his fellow-men, shunned society as the plague, appeared at the Dresden theatre only when absolutely necessary, and went into seclusion, accessible to none except August Roeckel. Of this gloomy period, and the devotion of his friend, Wagner has left it on record. “I left the world, retired from public life, and lived in the closest communion with one intimate companion only, one friend, who was so full of sympathy for me, so wholly engrossed in my artistic development, that he ignored his own unquestioned talents, artistic instinct, and inventive powers, and cast to the winds his own chances of worldly success. This companion of my gloom was Roeckel.” In referring to his friend’s self-abnegation, Wagner evidently alludes to Roeckel’s opera, “Farinelli,” which the composer had withdrawn from the Dresden repertoire through excess of modesty, over-awed, as he was, by his conception of Richard Wagner’s genius.

This tribute to the constancy and humble workship of August Roeckel is not a whit too much. Roeckel idolized Wagner. The two men were the complement of each other; whilst the vivacious imagination of Wagner inspired admiration in Roeckel, the latter’s placid, closely-reasoned logic soothed the excitable poet-musician. All Roeckel’s letters to me of this period—and he was an excellent correspondent—might be summed up in the word “Wagner.” The minutest incidents of work and details of their conversations are related. This poor Roeckel suffered thirteen years imprisonment, from May, 1849, when his friend Wagner escaped. At the termination of his confinement, the two friends met with a warmth of affection difficult to describe. Seeing, then, the intimacy of the men during this year of retirement, it is the letters of August Roeckel which will supply the faithfullest record of Wagner’s life and work.

He tells me that Wagner spoke of himself as “one crying in the desert.” But few sympathized with him, his breaking away from the “Rienzi” period being frowned upon, but that through all disappointment Wagner’s inexhaustible animal spirits never left him. The following letter is dated March, 1844:—

Later I find the following:—

In the middle of the year it seems the “Faust” overture was performed; the reception was disheartening. It was another disappointment, and showed Wagner how little the public was in sympathy with his art ideal. Although performed twice, it produced no effect.

Perhaps the event of the year was the removal of the remains of Weber from London to Dresden. An earnest committee had been working some time towards this end; concerts and operatic performances had been given in Germany and subscription lists opened to provide the necessary funds. Wagner was truly enthusiastic in the matter, but August Roeckel merits equal tribute. It was arranged that the deceased musician’s eldest son, Max von Weber, should come to London to carry out the necessary arrangements. He came in June, 1844, and was the guest of Edward Roeckel. We met daily. Max von Weber was a bright, intelligent man. Enthusiastic for the cause, I accompanied him everywhere, soliciting subscriptions from compatriots in this country and interviewing the authorities to facilitate the removal.

August Roeckel writes:—

This curious and interesting feature of dropping the somewhat harsh Leipzic accent and delivering himself in the purest German remained with Wagner to the last. On all what might be termed state occasions, when addressing an assembly his speech was clear, measured, and dignified; not a trace of his Leipzic accent was observable. It should be explained that the Leipzic accent is a sort of sing-song, almost whining utterance, with as strongly marked a pronunciation compared to pure German as that of a broad Somerset dialect to pure English.