RICHARD WAGNER. 



Ill 



since — the stage for turning upside down the 

 art-theories of the civilized world. Pushed by 

 what he calls " despair," without money and 

 without friends, but with that settled faith in 

 himself which has made hhn independent of 

 both until it has won both, the obscure chef 

 oforchestre resolved to go to Paris and storm the 

 Grand Opera, then at the feet of Rossini and 

 that strange, unscrupulous bric-d-brac composer, 

 Meyerbeer ! The small vessel in which he sailed 

 was blown about the Baltic for three weeks, put 

 into many desolate coast-nooks, and nearly 

 wrecked. After many hardships, shared with 

 tlie rough and often starving crew, the lonely 

 musician arrived in London (1840), with his head 

 full of Paris and the Grand Opera, and with 

 " Rienzi " in his carpet-bag. 



While here he playfully seized the musical 

 motif of the English people. It lay, he said, in 

 the five consecutive ascending notes (after the 

 first three) of "Rule Britannia:" there was ex- 

 pressed the whole breadth and downright bluff 

 "go" of the British nation. He threw "Rule 

 Britannia" into an overture, and sent it by post 

 to Sir George Smart, then omnipotent musical 

 professor in London ; but the postage being in- 

 sufficient, the manuscript was not taken in, and 

 at this moment is probably lying in some dim 

 archive of the post-office, " left till called for." 



Crossing to Dieppe, he met the crafty and 

 clever Meyerbeer, who instantly saw the man he 

 had to deal with, and probably conceived in a 

 moment that policy of apparent support and 

 slow intrigue which made him throughout life 

 Wagner's meanest and bitterest foe. 



It has been most unwarrantably asserted that 

 Wagner hated the Jews because of Meyerbeer 

 and Mendelssohn, and hated Meyerbeer and Men- 

 delssohn because they were successful ; but Wag- 

 ner's dearest friends have been Jews : he only 

 objected to the low level of their art-theories ; 

 and if he hated Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, it 

 was not simply because they had the ear of Eu- 

 rope, but because they and their friends kept 

 every one else out of the field, while Meyerbeer 

 debased musical art to the level of the vulgarest 

 sensation, and Mendelssohn never rose, in Wag- 

 ner's opinion, above the plane of a shallow senti- 

 mentalist, while creating a drawing-room standard 

 of excellence to which every one soon learned to 

 bow down. 



In this opinion I shall never concur. Men- 

 delssohn has been to me as much a revelator of 

 the beautiful as Wagner has been of the sublime. 

 Nothing is more painful to me than the bitter 



opposition between the friends of Mendelssohn 

 and Wagner. These two great spirits were prob- 

 ably as antipathetic as Moore and Wordsworth, 

 but although Wagner is the inexorable and colos- 

 sal development in art since Beethoven, Mendels- 

 sohn reigns forever in a sweet wayside temple 

 of his own, full of bright dreams and visions, 

 incense and ringing songs. And partly is he so 

 sweet because, unburdened with any sense of a 

 message to utter, a mission to develop, he sings 

 like a child in the valleys of asphodel, weaving 

 bright chaplets of spring-flowers for the whole 

 world, looking upon the mystery of grief and 

 pain with wide eyes of sympathy, and at last 

 succumbing to it himself, but not understanding 

 it, with a song of tender surprise upon his lips. 



Wagner passed two terrible years, 1840-'42, 

 in Paris. Meyerbeer had given him introduc- 

 tions, and introduced him later to M. Joly, a 

 stage-director at Paris, whom he knew to be on 

 the point of bankruptcy, and who suspended the 

 rehearsal of " The Novice of Palermo " at the last 

 moment. But this was but the end of a series 

 of checks. He wrote an overture to "Faust." 

 His good friend and faithful ally, Sehlesinger, 

 editor of the Gazette Musicale, got it rehearsed at 

 the Conservatoire. It sounded quite too strange 

 and queer to those ears polite, and was instantly 

 snuffed out. 



He submitted a libretto "Love Forbidden," 

 to a theatrical manager, but it had not a chance, 

 and dropped. Sehlesinger now employed him to 

 write, and he wrote articles and novels, and so 

 kept body and soul together. No one would 

 listen to his music, but he was not a bad hack, 

 and was hired for a few francs to arrange Hale- 

 vy's "Queen of Cyprus" for the piano, and the 

 latest tunes of Donizetti and Bellini for piano 

 and cornet-d-piston. 



At night he stole into the Grand Opera, and 

 there, as he tells us, felt quite certain that his 

 own works would one day supersede the popular 

 efforts of Rossini and Meyerbeer. He does not 

 seem to have been dejected like a lesser soul ; 

 in what the French called his immense orgueil, 

 he was sorry for their want of appreciation, but 

 never dreamed of altering his ideas to suit them. 

 " Je me flatta's," says the unpaid musical hack, 

 " d'imposer les miennes." Meanwhile the splen- 

 did band of the Conservatoire, under Habeneck, 

 consoled him, and on the boulevards he often 

 met and chatted with Auber, for whom he had a 

 sincere respect and admiration. Auber was at 

 least a conscientious musician of genius, who 

 knew his business, and did not debase what was 



