PURSUED by a police warrant, Wagner first sought refuge and a home in Paris. The French capital possessed alluring attractions for him, but his reception, in 1849, was no brighter or more promising than it had been ten years earlier. He therefore left Paris, after a few weeks, and went to Zurich. Here he found a true home and hearty friends, and felt, as far as was possible, so contented that in the autumn following he became a naturalized subject. And yet Wagner used to say his forced exile pressed sore upon him, and there is no doubt he did chafe under it, and strove hard to free himself from its galling chains. He could not settle to work. He endeavoured to open communications with August Roeckel, through influential friends in Dresden, but was unsuccessful. When in Paris, and whilst still under the influence of the multitudinous, unsettling thoughts that had pressed him into the ranks of liberty, making him one of its most energetic champions, he endeavoured to negotiate with the editor of a newspaper of standing, for a series of letters, on the interesting and timely topic of “The Revolution, and its Relation to Art.” But the proposal came to nothing. He was told the time was inopportune. “Strange and silly people,” was his comment, and he left the Parisians for the more homely, though heavier folk, of Zurich.

And still he could not tear himself away from Paris. The city and people fascinated him then and at all times, and he returned, in the early part of 1850, to make another effort in the cause of art. Though his invectives were frequent and bitter, yet I have seen enough, and know enough, of the inner Wagner, to state positively that he highly esteemed the French intellect and judgment in matters of art. This is one of those curious paradoxes in Richard Wagner’s character. He could never refer to the French without some sarcastic allusion to their frivolity. At all times Wagner was “terribly in earnest,” and he almost took it as a personal insult to see the French full of sensuous enjoyment, and regarding art as a pleasant, agreeable relaxation, at the end of the day’s labour. And yet he strove to succeed there for all that; even in 1860, when he was again in Paris, his feelings were precisely the same. Writing on this point, some sixteen years later, he says: “I thought that it was there (i.e. Paris) only that I could find the atmosphere so necessary to the success of my art,[6] that element of which I so much stood in need.”

His success in 1849-50, however, was no more than it had been hitherto. His vanity was piqued at his reception. He visited old acquaintances, and was received with a patronizing friendship, as one who had come to Paris, an aspirant for fame. They would not see in him the “TannhÄuser” composer, the prophet who had come to baptize them with the pure, holy water of the true in art. His pride was wounded.

He was envious, too, of that smooth, highly polished gracefulness which the French possess in the small matters of every-day life, and which he was conscious he lacked. Though refined in intellect, courteous in bearing, carrying himself with majestic dignity when occasion demanded, yet Richard Wagner’s natural characteristic was a plainness and directness of speech, which often took the form of abruptness. “Amiability usually runs into insincerity,” says Mr. Froude, when describing Carlyle’s character in the “Reminiscences,” and Wagner was at all times sincere. Sensitive, too, as artists commonly are, he saw the Parisians resolving life and art into a pastime, and doing it with an elegant, natural gracefulness that was absent in his own serious utterances of the heart. Impatient of incapacity, blunt in speech, and vehement in declamation, even with bursts of occasional rudeness, he was angered and jealous, that a people—his intellectual inferior—should take life so easily.

Sick in heart, he soon became sick in body; seriously ill indeed. On his recovery, feeling naught congenial to him in Paris, he left again for Zurich, via Bordeaux and Geneva. At Bordeaux an episode occurred similar to one which happened later at Zurich, about which the press of the day made a good deal of unnecessary commotion and ungenerous comment. I mention the incident to show the man as he was. The Opposition have not spared his failings, and over the Zurich incident were hypercritically censorious. The Bordeaux story I am alluding to, is, that the wife of a friend, Mrs. H——, having followed Wagner to the south, called on him at his hotel, and throwing herself at his feet, passionately told of her affection. Wagner’s action in the matter was to telegraph to the husband to come and take his wife home. On telling me the story, Wagner jocosely remarked that poor Beethoven, so full of love, never had his affection returned, and lived and died, so it is said, a hermit.

Another adventure of this description took place at Berlin, which to my mind is a verification of the homeopathic doctrine, similia similibus curantur, for I often taunted him with possessing, though in homeopathic doses, just those very failings he denounced in others, viz. amorousness, Hebraic shrewdness, and the Gallic love of enjoyment. When he was in a jocular mood he would laugh heartily at my endeavour to prove the truth of my opinions by the citation of instances, and occasionally he would admit the impeachment, whereas, at other times, he would become irritated, and put an end to any such conversation by charging me with having lost all my German feeling under the pernicious influence of a London fog.

Back in Zurich, he could not force himself to compose. He could not, and never did, take kindly to his compulsory exile, even appealing himself to the authorities more than ten years later for permission to re-enter his fatherland. And yet I have no hesitation in asserting that the world should regard it as a boon for art that he was thus driven into exile. Away from the theatre and the busy activity connected with his office of conductor, he had time to reflect over the many schemes for the elevation of art that constantly held communion with his inner self. Freed from the contact of that vortex of petty agitation which constitutes the active life of the stage, and of which every individual, no matter how inferior his grade, thinks himself the chief attraction, he gained that repose which enabled him to see art matters in their just proportion. His state, he described to me, as that spoken of by both Aristotle and Plato: “One of the highest happinesses attained through the pleasures of the intellect by the contemplative life.” Indeed, it can be maintained, that all the great works of his after-life were either completed or sketched during those years of exile.

To begin with his literary work. In this branch of thought he was remarkably active. For five whole years, the first five of his Zurich life, I remember he said he did not compose a bar; all was literary outpouring, and so much was he given to reflection on the strange position in which he found himself in the art world, and the manner in which his operas had been received, that he even seriously considered the question whether music was his province, whether he should not reject tonal composition entirely in favour of the spoken drama. In a letter of that period he says, “I spend my time in walking, reading, and literary work.” And when one considers what Wagner did during those years of banishment, it will be seen how hard a worker he was. His exile lasted for something like twelve years, and during that time he wrote those masterly expositions: “Art and Revolution,” “The Art Work of the Future,” “Art and Climate,” “Judaism in Music,” and “Opera and Drama,” whilst, as regards the music-drama, he wrote the whole of the words and music of the “Nibelung’s Ring,” “Tristan and Isolde,” the “Mastersingers” (1861-62), and a fragment of music subsequently embodied and amplified in “Parsifal.”

Wagner met with many reverses in the early portion of his career, but he also, on occasions, enjoyed exceptionally good fortune. Though caged, as he said, like an angry, irritable lion in Zurich, longing to burst his prison door, yet he met everywhere with troops of friends. The personnel of the opera house united to do him honour, and individually he was treated with hearty good will. One of his ardent admirers and intimate friends was Madame Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy retired merchant who had come, with her husband, to take up her abode in Zurich. Wesendonck was a musical amateur, but not so gifted as his wife, who was enthusiastic for Wagner. Wesendonck had purchased some land overlooking the beautiful lake, and was building himself a house there. For that purpose he had brought architects and upholsterers from Paris. While the building was in course of erection, a very pretty chalÊt adjoining the property became untenanted, which it was stated was about to be used as an asylum. Such information was not pleasant to Wesendonck, and at the suggestion and wish of his wife he purchased it and rented it to Wagner for a nominal sum. This really charming villa was an immense delight to Wagner. Hitherto, living in the town, he had grown fractious under the infliction of noises and cries inseparable from the bustle of civic life, and the “Retreat,” as he called the chalÊt, afforded him a pleasure, and procured that quiet comfort invaluable to him at that period of thought.

At the house of his friends there were frequent gatherings of musicians from Zurich and neighbouring towns, at which, it seems, he often delivered himself of lengthy harangues on his view of art, to find that one only of those who applauded him comprehended the heart of the thing he spoke of. He said it was with him, just as it had been with the unfortunate Hegel, the philosopher, who with facetious cynicism remarked, that “nobody understands me, except one disciple, and he misunderstands me.” Perhaps the fault was partly his own. His fervid perorations were ambitious, and he spoke above the heads of his hearers. They saw in him only the composer of “TannhÄuser” and “Lohengrin,” whereas he felt within himself the embryo of the colossal tetralogy; and how could they comprehend, then, a man who addressed his inward clamourings rather than his auditors. When I say the embryo of the tetralogy, I include the musical sketch of certain of the leading ideas, for the whole of the Nibelung poem was completed, and a few copies printed in 1853 for his intimate friends, of one copy of which I am the fortunate possessor.

On recalling the occasion, when in 1855 Wagner gave me a bound copy of his “Nibelung lied,” one incident stands out prominently. On studying the poem I had been struck with the keen dramatic insight displayed by Wagner throughout his treatment of the old Norse sagas: the laying out of the ground plan, the sequence of the story, the exclusion of extraneous and subsidiary matter, the many powerful and striking tableaux presented, the crisp dialogue and scholarly retention of the alliterative verse, the merit of these features being increased by the high literary standard attained throughout the work. Now when I congratulated Wagner on the literary skill he had shown, he grew peevish; and indeed he resented at all times praise of his poetic ability, seeming to think that in some measure it was a denial of his musical power.

Some portion of the Nibelung poem Wagner read to his small circle of intimates in London. At that time Richard Wagner was forty-two years of age, and his histrionic powers, at all times great, were perhaps then at their best. With his head well thrown back, he declaimed his poem with a majestic earnestness that cast a spell over all. But of his histrionic and mimetic powers I shall have something to say later on.

At Zurich he interested himself largely in the opera house. He sought to control the local taste, but the directors were governed with one thought and that, that only such works as bore the hall-mark of Paris success could succeed in Zurich. Accepting the state of things, he conducted performances of “Robert le Diable,” “Les Huguenots,” “Guillaume Tell,” HalÉvy’s “La Juive,” Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment,” and other works of similar type. He even conducted the rehearsals, attending and exerting himself at these for the benefit, however, of Hans von BÜlow, who had become his pupil. I know he was deeply attached to BÜlow; he spoke of him with enthusiasm, praised his wonderful reading at sight, and was much impressed by his general culture. There is no doubt that BÜlow merited the high opinion Wagner held of him, as subsequent events have proved.

On Richard Wagner’s fortieth birthday, 22 May, 1853, a grand Wagner festival was held at Zurich, musicians from neighbouring towns being invited. All the principal theatres responded with the exception of Munich, which through its conductor, Lachner, refused to permit orchestral members of the theatre to attend, giving as the flimsy pretext that journeymen, i.e. orchestral performers, could not be granted passports. Lachner as a composer has found his level, and there it is wise to leave him. I will only note the curious fate which later made Wagner supreme at Munich and, further, how odd it was that when Wagner was conducting the Philharmonic concerts in London, Mr. Anderson informed him that it was the wish of the directors he should produce a prize symphony of Lachner. The proposition startled Wagner and perhaps, somewhat contemptuously, he exclaimed, “What! have I come all this way to conduct a prize symphony by Lachner? No! no!” and he would not either, not because the composition was superscribed “Lachner,” but because of the really wretched Kapellmeister music it was.

The Wagner festival at Zurich was very gratifying to him. For a whole week he was fÊted, and at the close received an ovation that took all his self-control. He addressed the audience in faltering accents, and on bidding his friends farewell he broke down entirely—that they should return to the fatherland and he an exile. Such a wail of anguish went out from his heart as only those who have known the sensitive character of the man can understand.

From the time Wagner went into exile his health generally gave way. Constant brooding over his enforced isolation from his countrymen induced melancholia, and in its train a malignant attack of his old enemy, dyspepsia. His wife, fortunately, was of a homely nature with a buoyancy of spirits, the value of which cannot be over-estimated, nor, must I add, was Wagner insensible to her worth. But with these terrible fits of dyspepsia which prostrated him for days, there also came, as one ill upon another, attacks of erysipelas. When he had the strength, he fought against them, but more often he succumbed. He sought relief at hydropathic establishments, for which form of prevention and cure he retained a fancy for many years. The bracing air of the mountains, too, he sought as a means of removing the ills under which he suffered. He was fond, too, of taking “Peps” with him in these rambles. “Peps,” it will be remembered, was the dog who, he used to assert, helped him to compose “TannhÄuser.” He was passionately fond of his dog, referred to him in his letters with affection, and ascribed to him feelings and a perceptiveness only possible from a man loving the animal kingdom as he did. All who remember the last sad incidents connected with the interment at Wahnfried will think of the faithful canine creature (a successor of “Peps”), who came to lie on the grave, and could not be induced to quit the spot where his master was buried. As it was there, so it was at Zurich. He loved “Peps” with a human love. Taking his constitutional on the Zurich mountains, “Peps” his companion, reflecting upon his treatment by his fatherland, he would declaim against imaginary enemies, gesticulate, and vent his irascible excitement in loud speeches, when “Peps,” “the human Peps,” as he called him, with the sympathy of the intelligent dumb creation, would rush forward, bark and snap loudly as if aiding Wagner in destroying his enemies, and then return, plainly asking for friendly recognition for the demolition. Such an expression of sympathy delighted Wagner, and he was very pleased to rehearse it all to his friends, calling in “Peps” to go through the performance, and I must say the dog seemed to understand and appreciate it all. Numerous anecdotes of this kind he could tell, and he generally capped them with such a remark as, “‘Peps’ has more sense than your wooden contrapuntists,” pointing his speech by naming the authors of some concocted Kappelmeister music who were specially objectionable to him.