ON the “Ninth Symphony,” that colossal work, Richard Wagner expended commensurate pains. I remember how surprised the vocalists were at the rehearsal, when he stopped them, inquiring did they understand the meaning of what they were singing, and then he briefly explained in emphatic language what he thought about it. The bass solo was especially odd: the vocalist was taking it as though it were an ordinary ballad, when Wagner burst in fiery song, natural and falsetto, illustrating how it should go, singing the whole of the solo of Mr. Weiss (the bass vocalist) in such a decided, clean cut manner that it was impossible for the singer to help imitating him, and with marked effect too. As for the band, that rehearsal was a revelation to them. That symphony was a stupendous work, yet the conductor knew it by heart and was conducting without score. They felt they were in the hands of a man whose artistic soul was fired with enthusiasm; his earnestness infected them; they caught it quickly and responded with a zealousness that only sympathetic artists can put forth, ably supported by Sainton, whom the Prince Consort complimented to Wagner as a splendid “Chef d’attaque.” The concert performance created, too, such a stir that even the most violent of all the anti-Wagner critics spoke of it as an “intellectual and elevated conception.” This concert placed Wagner permanently in the heart of his band; they loved to be under the command of such an earnest art worker and yielded willingly to his inspirations.

That evening after the concert, at our now established gathering, Wagner was positively jubilant. He had been able to produce the “Ninth Symphony” in London as he wished, and he hoped the “traditions” would remain. He emphasized “traditions” in a slyly sarcastic manner, and well had he reason to do so. Traditions of Mendelssohn and Spohr were omnipotent, and omnipotent with the orchestra, and Wagner hoped the conservative English mind would retain “his” traditions of the “Choral Symphony,” among which would be found how he had sung the long recitative for the strings,—double-basses,—that ushers in the choral portion of the work. When Wagner first sang this part to the orchestra, they all engaged in a good-humoured titter, which speedily gave way to respect; for Wagner certainly was marvellously successful in explaining how he wanted a phrase played by first singing it,—a gift it undoubtedly was.

He said he would not do any work next day, and arranged that we should visit the city. We went first to the Guildhall. It was astonishing how he absorbed everything to himself, to his purposes, how his fancy freely exercised itself. Gog and Magog! they were his Fafner and Fasolt; then his humour leaped in advance of the period, and he laughingly asked me whether there was a “GÖtterdÄmmerung” in store for the City Fathers, and whether Guildhall, their Walhalla, supported by the giants Gog and Magog, would also crumble away through the curse of gold. We next went to the Mint. There, too, the central figure was Wagner; the main theme of discussion, Wagner. When the attendant put into his hands, as was the custom, a roll of cancelled bank notes, amounting to thousands of pounds sterling, he turned to me and said, “The hundredth part of this would build my theatre, and posterity would bless me.” His speech certainly savoured of the consciousness of genius. I do not think this is a euphemistic way of saying he had a good opinion of himself. I say it, because I feel it to be the truth. It was through this very consciousness that he triumphed over the many difficulties that beset him. Without it he could not have achieved what he did. The buoyancy of hope begotten of conscious strength is a powerful factor in the securing of success. The theatre he had in his mind then, I thought to be that which he had urged the Saxon authorities to establish, the scheme for which I was then well acquainted with, but his latter discourse showed how, during his exile, that original thought had amplified itself. Of our visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral I can recall but one observation of Wagner, to the effect that it was as cold and uninspiring as the Protestant creed—a strange remark from one whose own religious tendencies were Lutheran, and who could express his religious convictions so powerfully and poetically in his last work, “Parsifal.”

Richard Wagner’s intense attachment to the canine species led him to make friends with our dog, a large, young, black Norwegian beast, given me by Hainberger, the companion of Wagner in the forward movement of 1848-9, and sharer of his exile. The dog showed in return a decided affection for his newly made acquaintance. After a few days, when Wagner found that the dog was kept in a small back yard, he expostulated against such “cruelty,” and proposed to take the dog’s necessary out-door exercise under his own special care—a task he never shirked during the whole of his London stay. Whenever he went for his daily promenade, a habit never relinquished at any period of his life, the dog was his companion, no matter who else might be of the party. Nor was the control of the dog an easy task. It was a curious sight to witness Wagner’s patience in following the wild gyrations of the spirited animal, who, in his exultation of that semi-freedom, tugged at his chain, dragging the Nibelung composer hither and thither.

Part of Wagner’s daily constitutional was to the Regent’s Park, entering by the Hanover Gate. There, at the small bridge over the ornamental water, would he stand regularly and feed the ducks, having previously provided himself for the purpose with a number of French rolls—rolls ordered each day for the occasion. There was a swan, too, that came in for much of Wagner’s affection. It was a regal bird, and fit, as the master said, to draw the chariot of Lohengrin. The childlike happiness, full to overflowing, with which this innocent occupation filled Wagner, was an impressive sight never to be forgotten. It was Wagner you saw before you, the natural man, affectionate, gentle, and mirthful. His genuine affection for the brute creation, united to a keen power of observation, gave birth to numberless anecdotes, and the account of the Regent’s Park peregrinations often formed a most pleasant subject of after-dinner conversation. I should explain that though Wagner had rooms in Portland Place, St. John’s Chapel, Regent’s Park, he only took his breakfast there, and did such work in the matter of scoring in the morning, coming directly after to my house for his dog and rolls, returning for dinner and to spend the rest of the day under my roof, where also a room was provided for him.

In our friendly talks upon the animal kingdom, we soon came to a decided dissension. I casually remarked on the ludicrous effects animals produce at times, and under all circumstances on the stage; here I found myself in direct opposition to Wagner’s notions on the subject. Had he not the dragon Fafner, the young bear in “Siegfried,” the GrÄne, the steed of the Valkyrie, even the fluttering bird in the tetralogy? Was not the swan in “Lohengrin” another proof of his predilection for realistic representation of animals on the stage? It was in vain that I cited the lamentable failure of the serpent in Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” which, even at the best theatres in Germany, never produced other than a burst of hilarity at its wriggling in the pangs of death, when pierced by the three donnas; or again the two lions in the same opera which are rolled on to the stage like children’s wooden horses; or Weber’s mistake of introducing a serpent in his “Euryanthe,” which always mars that scene! But I found myself obliged to cease quoting examples, and seek a basis for establishing principles for my argument against the introduction of animals on the stage. Here more success awaited me on the strength of Wagner’s own exalted notion of the histrionic art; viz. that an actor, to be worthy of the name, must possess the creative power of a poet, and become, as it were, inspired into the state impersonated, which might not inaptly be likened to that of mesmerism. The actor must believe himself another being, must be unconscious of aught else. One such artist, he asserted, was Garrick, in the delivery of monologues, when the great tragedian was said to have isolated himself to such a degree, that though with his eyes wide open, he became, as it were, visionless. It was on this ground that I attempted my argument against Wagner’s illogical and intemperate introduction of the brute creation into his dramas. If, I argued, you will not accept an actor properly so-called, a reasoning man, unless his poetic creative fancy can enable him to transport his identity into a character entirely different from his own, how still less can you expect any animal to impersonate a set rÔle in any performance? Whatever actions may be required from it, a dog will always represent a dog; a horse, a horse. Wagner saw the argument, but reluctant as at all times to confess himself beaten, he advanced “training” as a defence. This, however, served only to destroy his case the more; for he had previously reasoned, and with much force, that all training for the stage as a profession was useless, and but so much mis-directed effort and waste of time, unless the student had given evidence of a genius, which nature, alas! is chary in bestowing. So much for the introduction of real animals upon the stage; there the case is bad enough, and the results occasionally disastrous and ludicrous; but when one has to make shift with imitation, the matter is still worse. Here, too, however, Wagner was reluctant to forego the semblance as much as he was the reality. Yet, let the case be tested by oneself. Recall the bear Siegfried brings with him into the smithy, think of the ridiculous effect produced by the actor’s antics in his vain efforts to worthily perform his part and seem a real bear. There is no margin left for the imagination, and the sad attempt at a mistaken realism defeats its own purpose. It is an extraordinary feature in a poetic brain like that of Wagner, that he would cling persistently to such a realism. This subject remained always one on which we dissented, and I never failed to prognosticate a failure for his pets in the Nibelung tetralogy, which to my mind was fully proved even under his own supervision, and on the hallowed ground of Bayreuth at the performances there, which were, in all other respects, so marvellously perfect. Who is there that was terribly impressed by the sight of the dragon, or who could divest himself of the thought that a recital of the combat would have proved infinitely more impressive than the slaying of the snorting monster, however well Siegfried bears himself towards the pasteboard pitiful imitation of a fabulous beast? Who, again, would not sooner have heard a description of the wild, spirited steed, GrÄne, than witness the nervous anxiety of BrÜnhilde in mounting and dismounting a funeral charger, which is the cynosure of all eyes while on the stage, to the loss of the music-dramatic setting? The attention of the dramatis personÆ and audience is distracted from the action of the drama, and centred on the probable next movement of an animal unable to grasp the situation. This question of realism is a debatable point; but if it be not kept within strictly defined limits, I fear there will be danger of the ludicrous triumphing over the serious.

An inquiry into the probable causes of an exaggerated tendency to realism, in a man like Wagner, cannot but be interesting to those who, without bias, accept him as a master-mind. After many years of an ardent study of his character, compelled by his commanding genius, I am forced to a conclusion, the key to many of his actions, which is equally the explanation in the present instance, is the lack of self-denial. He yearned for unlimited means to achieve his purpose, and would have the most gorgeous and costly trappings, to set off his pictures of the imagination. It was the same in every-day matters of life. Nor, must I add, did he ever care from whence the means came. That this was the case in real life, all who know him will testify. How much more, then, would such a tendency be fed in realizing the vivid impressions with which his active poetical fancy so freely provided him. Unlimited means! that was the dream of his life, and up to a late period, when these means at last realized themselves by the astounding success of his works and the enormous sums they produced, his inability to curb his wants down to his actual means kept him in a state of constant trouble and yearning for freedom from those shackles.

He accepted his humble descent, fully convinced from earliest time of having the patent of nobility in his brain—in his genius! He ever bore himself with the consciousness of superiority, but as for titles and decorative distinctions, he disdained them all. Were they not bestowed on numskulls? therefore, he has loudly proclaimed genius should not dishonour its lofty intelligence in accepting empty baubles. But riches and the profuse luxurious splendour that can be purchased thereby would not have seemed too much for him, had they equalled the fabulous possessions of a Monte Cristo. The traditional humble state of the great composers, if not actual poverty, as compared with the fortunes amassed in other arts, was a continual source of complaint with him.

The programme of the third concert was as follows:—

That evening, the 16th April, there was a stir among the Mendelssohnian supporters. They mustered in force; for it had been rumoured that at the rehearsal Wagner had not stopped the orchestra once. But however Wagner may have regarded the works of the composer of “Elijah,” he was straightforward enough to do with all his might what he put his hand to, as the sequel proved, since the “Daily News” reported that it “never heard the ‘Italian’ Symphony go so well.” That there were some whose prejudice was not appeased, is to be accepted as a matter of course, and Wagner was taunted in the “Times,” “with a coarse and rigorously frigid” performance.

As for the overture to “Euryanthe,” it is not too much to say the audience was startled out of itself; there was a dead silence for a moment on the work being brought to a close, and the enthusiasm, vigorous and hearty, burst forth. It was a new reading. Such was the surprise with which we witnessed the rapturous applause, that at the convivial gathering after the concert Wagner set himself at the piano, and from memory poured forth numerous excerpts from “Euryanthe.” Then we learned that that opera was intensely admired by Wagner. He thought it “logical” and “philosophical,” and throughout showed that Weber was a reflective musician, and, as he himself forcibly argued, that only works of reflection could ever be immortal. The plot, its treatment, and the language employed were, he felt, the causes of the opera’s non-popularity, and that these wretched drawbacks dreadfully changed the intrinsically beautiful music.

Reflections upon the habits and customs of a past generation sometimes introduce us to situations that produce in the mind wonder and perhaps a feeling of disgust. Who can picture the composer of that colossal work of intellect, the “Nibelung Ring,” sitting at the piano, in an elegant, loose robe-de-chambre, singing, with full heart, snatches and scenes from his “adored” idol, Weber’s “Euryanthe,” and at intervals of every three or four minutes indulging in large quantities of scented snuff. The snuff-taking scene of the evening is the deeper graven on my memory, because Wagner abruptly stopped singing, on finding his snuff-box empty, and got into a childish, pettish fit of anger. He turned to us in deepest concern, with “Kein schnupf tabac mehr also Kein gesang mehr” (no more snuff, no more song); and though we had reached the small hours of early morn, would have some one start in search of this “necessary adjunct.” When singing, the more impassioned he became, the more frequent the snuff-taking. Now, this practice of Wagner’s, one cultivated from early manhood, in my opinion pointedly illustrates a phase in the man’s character. He did not care for snuff, and even allowed the indelicacy of the habit, but it was that insatiable nature of his that yearned for the enjoyment of all the “supposed” luxuries of life. It was precisely the same with smoking. He indulged in this, to me, barbarous acquirement more moderately, but experienced not the slightest pleasure from it. I have seen him puffing from the mild and inoffensive cheroot, to the luxurious hookah—the latter, too, as he confessed, only because it was an Oriental growth, and the luxury of Eastern people harmonized with his own fondness for unlimited profusion. “Other people find pleasure in smoking; then why should not I?” This is, briefly, the only explanation Wagner ever offered in defence of the practice—a practice which he was fully aware increased the malignity of his terrible dyspepsia.

There was in Wagner a nervous excitability which not infrequently led to outbreaks of passion, which it would be difficult to understand or explain, were it not that there existed a positive physical cause. First, he suffered, as I have stated earlier, from occasional attacks of erysipelas; then his nervous system was delicate, sensitive,—nay, I should say, irritable. Spasmodic displays of temper were often the result, I firmly feel, of purely physical suffering. His skin was so sensitive that he wore silk next to the body, and that at a time when he was not the favoured of fortune. In London he bought the silk, and had shirts made for him; so, too, it was with his other garments. We went together to a fashionable tailor in Regent Street, where he ordered that his pockets and the back of his vest should be of silk, as also the lining of his frock-coat sleeves; for Wagner could not endure the touch of cotton, as it produced a shuddering sensation throughout the body that distressed him. I remember well the tailor’s surprise and explanation that silk for the back of the vest and lining of the sleeves was not at all necessary, and that the richest people never had silk linings; besides, it was not seen. This last observation brought Wagner up to one of his indignant bursts, “Never seen! yes; that’s the tendency of this century; sham, sham in everything; that which is not seen may be paltry and mean, provided only that the exterior be richly gilded.”

On the matter of dress he had, as on most things, decided opinions! The waistcoat he condemned as superfluous, and thought a garment akin to the mediÆval doublet in every way more suitable and comely, and was strongly inclined at one time to revert to that style of costume himself. He did go so far as to wear an uncommon headgear, one sanctioned by antiquity, the biretta, which few people of to-day would have courage to don. Thus it was that from physical causes Wagner preferred silks and velvets, and so a constitutional defect produced widespread and ungenerous charges of affected originality and sumptuous luxuriousness.

Wagner was greatly amused at the references to him in the London Charivari “Punch,” wherein his “music of the future” was described as “Promissory Notes,” and on a second occasion when it was asserted that “Lord John Russell is in treaty with Dr. Wagner to compose some music of the future for his Reform Bill.”

The fourth concert on the 30th April nearly led to a rupture between Wagner and the directors. The programme was as follows:—

Wagner had a decided objection to long programmes. The London public, he said, “overfeed themselves with music; they cannot healthily digest the lengthy menu provided for them.” This programme was distasteful, and what a scene did it produce! During the aria from “Les Huguenots,” the tenor, Herr Reichardt, after a few bars’ rest, did not retake his part at the proper moment, upon which Wagner turned to him,—of course without stopping the band,—whereupon the singer made gestures to the audience indicating that the error lay with Wagner. At the end of the vocal piece a slight consternation ensued. Wagner was well aware of the unfriendliness of a section of the critics, and in all probability capital would be made out of this. At the end of the first part of the concert I went to him in the artists’ room. His high-pitched excitement and uncontrolled utterances, it was easy to foresee, boded no good. And so when we reached home after the concert there ensued a positive storm of passion. Wagner at his best was impulsive and vehement; suffering from a miserable insinuation as to his incapacity, he grew furious. On one point he was emphatic,—he would return to Switzerland the next day. All entreaties and protestations were unavailing. Sainton, LÜders, and myself actually hung upon him, so ungovernable was his anger. He knew how I had suffered in the press for championing his cause. “Chef-de-claque,” “madman,” and “tutto quanti” were the elegant epithets bestowed upon me in print; and if Wagner left now, the enemy would have some show of truth in charging him with admitted incompetence: however, after two or three hours’ talking he engaged to stay and see whether he could not win success with the “TannhÄuser” overture, which was to be performed at the next concert.

A distorted report of this event appearing in certain German musical papers, he wrote an explanatory letter to Dresden, in which he stated, “I need not tell you that it was only the entreaties of Ferdinand Praeger and those friends who accompanied me home, that dissuaded me from my somewhat impulsive determination.”

At the fifth concert, 14th May, the “TannhÄuser” overture was performed. It came at the end of the first part of another of those long programmes which Wagner disliked so much. In a letter to me to Brighton, where I had gone for a few days, he writes: “These endless programmes, with these interminable masses of instrumental and vocal pieces, torture me.” The programme of the fifth concert was:—

How those violin passages on the fourth string in the “TannhÄuser” overture worried the instrumentalists! But as Lipinski had done at Dresden, so Sainton did now in London, and fingered the passages for each individual performer. The concert room was well filled. At the close of the overture tumultuous applause followed, the audience rising and waving handkerchiefs; indeed, Mr. Anderson informed me that he had never known such a display of excitement at a Philharmonic concert where everything was so staid and decorous. As this overture has become perhaps one of the most popular of Wagner excerpts, it will be interesting to read what the two acknowledged leading musical critics in London, i.e. of the “Musical World” (who was also the critic of the “Times”) and the “AthenÆum,” said with reference to it. The former wrote: “The instrumentation is always heavy and thick”; and the “AthenÆum” said: “Yawning chromatic progressions ... a scramble; ... a hackneyed eight-bar phrase, the commonplace of which is not disguised by an accidental sharp; ... the instrumentation is ill-balanced, ineffective, thin, and noisy.”

On the morning of the 22d May, Wagner came to Milton Street very early. It was his birthday; he was forty-two, and the good, devoted Minna had so carefully timed the arrival of her congratulatory letter, that Wagner had received it that morning. He was informed that her gift was a dressing-gown of violet velvet, lined with satin of similar colour, headgear—the biretta, so well known—to match,—articles of apparel which furnished his enemies with so much opportunity for charges of ostentation, egregious vanity, etc. Minna knew her husband well; the gift was entirely after his heart. He read us the letter. The only portion of it which I can remember referred to the animal world,—the dog, Peps, who had been presented with a new collar; and of his parrot, who had repeated unceasingly, “Richard Wagner, du bist ein grosser mann” (Richard Wagner, you are a great man). Wagner’s imitation of the parrot was very amusing. That day the banquet was spread for Richard Wagner. How he did talk! It was the never-ending fountain leaping from the rock, sparkling and bright, clear and refreshing. He told us episodes of his early career at Magdeburg and Riga. How he impressed me then with his energy! Truly, he was a man whose onward progress no obstacles could arrest. The indomitable will, and the excision of “impossible” from his vocabulary, were prominent during the recital of the stirring events of his early manhood. Certainly it was but a birthday feast, and the talk was genial and merry; yet there went out from me, unbidden and unchecked, “Truly, that is a great man.” Yes, though it was but after-dinner conversation, the reflections were those of a man born to occupy a high position in the world of thought and to compel the submission of others to his intellectual vigour.

At the sixth concert, 28th May, another of those lengthy programmes was gone through, and comprised—

Think of the anger of Wagner! two symphonies and two overtures in the same evening, besides the vocal music and concerto! This was the fourth concert at which a double dose of symphony and overture was administered to an audience incapable of digesting such a surfeit; it was these “full” programmes, reminding him of the cry of the London omnibus conductors, “full inside,” which led him humorously to speak of himself as “conductor of the Philharmonic Omnibus.” In the subjoined letter addressed to my wife, anent their daily promenade for the “banquetting,” as he called it, of the ducks in the Regent’s Park, he subscribes himself as above.

The letter was sent by hand, as his rooms were but ten minutes from my house. Perhaps I may here reproduce another short note from Wagner to my wife, with no other intention than showing the degree of close friendship that existed between him and us:—

Reverting to the concert, the universal criticism was that Wagner had achieved great things with Cipriani Potter’s symphony. The music Wagner thought the exact reflection of the man, antiquated but respectable. Potter was a charming man in daily intercourse, of short stature, thin, ample features, huge shaggy eyebrows, stand-up collars behind whose points the old man could hide half his face, and a coat copied from a Viennese pattern of last century. Wagner was genuinely drawn to the man; and as the inimical “Musical World” said, “took great pains with the symphony” (p. 347). Wagner used to declaim greatly against Mendelssohnian tradition, in the orchestra,—that no movement should be taken too slow, for fear of wearying the audience. However, being a man of strong independent character, he would have his way, and movements were taken as slow as the spirit appeared to require. The critics abused him heartily; indeed, to such an extent that when the Mozart symphony in E flat was to be done, the directors implored Wagner to allow the orchestra to take the slow movement in the quick tempo taught by Mendelssohn. Similarly, when Potter’s symphony was to be done, Mr. Potter particularly requested Wagner to take the andante somewhat fast, otherwise he feared a failure. But Wagner, who, with his accustomed earnestness had almost the whole by heart, told the composer that the andante was an extremely pretty, naÏve movement, and that no matter the speed, if the expression were omitted or slurred, the whole would fall flat; but, added Wagner, it should go thus: Then he sang part to Mr. Potter, who was so touched that he grasped Wagner’s hand, saying, “I never dreamed a conductor could take a new work so much to heart as you have; and as you sing it, just so I meant it.” After the concert Mr. Potter was very delighted.

But the work of the evening was the “Leonora” overture. Here again Wagner had his reading, one which the orchestra fell in with immediately, for they perceived the truth, the earnestness of what Wagner taught.

At the seventh concert, 11th June, the “TannhÄuser” overture was repeated, by royal command. The programme, again “full,” included three overtures and two symphonies.

The press did Wagner the justice to state that he showed himself earnest in the matter of Macfarren’s “Chevy Chase.” His own overture, “TannhÄuser,” was again a brilliant success. The queen sent for him into the royal salon, and, congratulating him, said that the Prince Consort was “a most ardent admirer of his.” Richard Wagner was pleased at the unaffected and “winning” manner of Her Majesty, who spoke German to him, but as his own account of the interview, written to a friend at Dresden two days after the concert, is now before me, I will reproduce it.

...It was therefore the more pleasing to me that the queen (which very seldom happens, and not every year) had signified her intention of being present at the seventh concert, and ordered a repetition of the overture. It was in itself a very pleasant thing that the queen overlooked my exceedingly compromised political position (which with great malignity was openly alluded to in the “Times”), and without fear attended a public performance which I directed. Her further conduct towards me, moreover, infinitely compensated for all the disagreeable circumstances and coarse enmities which hitherto I had encountered. She and Prince Albert, who sat in front before the orchestra, applauded after “TannhÄuser” overture, which closed the first part, with such hearty warmth that the public broke forth into lively and sustained applause. During the interval the queen sent for me into the drawing-room, receiving me in the presence of her suite with these words: “I am most happy to make your acquaintance. Your composition has charmed me.” She thereupon made inquiries, during a long conversation, in which Prince Albert took part, as to my other compositions; and asked if it were not possible to translate my operas into Italian. I had, of course, to give the negative to this, and state that my stay here could only be temporary, as the only position open was that of director of a concert-institute which was not properly my sphere. At the end of the concert the queen and the prince again applauded me....