Richard Wagner's Romance

( Originally Published 1922 )

THE story of the man of genius who finds inspiration in another man's wife is not a new one, and it may even be called trite, but it is one to which the world always lends a willing ear.

This is the story revealed in the English version of the letters of Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck. In Germany, sweet land of sentiment, the book has reached the twentieth edition and is generally acclaimed as a true classic. In Germany, also, the alleged Platonic motive of the letters, elsewhere looked at askance, is easily admitted, since, as is well known to the nightingales and the lindens, a German lover will pursue an ardent courtship through a dozen years without daring once to put an arm around his divinity's waist. Art and love are a great patience in Germany.

They were surely so in the case of Richard Wagner; and it is characteristic of the Teuton that he has left the world in doubt as to whether his patience was ever rewarded.

The doubt is indeed the chief provocation of these letters (outside of Germany), and furnishes the artistic motive by which they will endure.

Or, to put the matter plainly, the other man's wife supplies the interest of this book. As of many others in the chronicle of greatness.

Think you, had these letters been addressed to Frau Wagner, that all the chaste nightingales of Germany would now be tuning in their praise? Or that our own sentimentalists, with the unsexed Corybantes of music, would be swelling such a chorus of acclaim? Would the world be eager to identify Frau Wagner with the conception of "Isolde", and should we be hearing all this patter about ideal union of souls, spiritual passion, etc., etc.? Not so!—the world will not tolerate the indecency of a man of genius loving his wife and personifying her in the creations of his art.

There is not a single truly famous book in the world's literature, of letters written by a man of genius to his wife.

The letters are always written to some other woman and, preferably, some other man's wife. Why this should be so, only the good Lord knows who made us as we are.

Poor Penelope keeps house, often red-eyed and sad, during the excursions of genius; she treasures up with a broken-hearted care and stores away in a lavender-scented drawer with the early-love-letters (of which the genius is now ashamed) curt messages on postal cardshurry-up requests for clean linen or an extra "nighty"; express tags speaking eloquently of some cheap gift by which the great man discharged the obligation of writing (preserved by the simple soul because he had scrawled her name upon them) ; and perhaps a small packet of letters that deal wholly with HIS ideas of domestic government, usually couched in a peevish tone and with a hard selfishness of intention that strangely contrasts with the man's meditated, public revelation of self—not a flower, of the heart in them all, as poor Penelope, starving for a word of love, sees through her dropping tears.

Now these things have some value to a neglected wife, but they can not usefully be worked up in the biography of a man of genius.

What wonder that Penelope takes into her tender bosom the subtle demon of jealousy, be-comes a shrew and a scold, and presently—goaded by the man's cold and steady refusal to satisfy her by giving her the love which she knows with a woman's sure instinct is being secretly lavished upon another—what wonder, I say, that Penelope under such maddening provocation, finding herself a cheated and unloved wife, becomes that favorite handiwork of the Devil on this earth—a good woman turned into a Fury !

And the beauty of it is, that at this moment she sets out to justify, in the wrong-headed fashion of a woman who knows that she can take her marriage certificate to Heaven with her,—the infidelity of her husband!

He, being a man of genius, easily gets the sympathy of the world—especially of all good and virtuous women, every one of whom feels that she would have been able to satisfy the gifted person and keep him properly straight. And the great man adds to the laurel of fame the crown of domestic martyrdom.

Of course, the injured wife might have played her game better, but it was not in the cards for her to win,—having married a genius.

So it has come to be an axiom that the artistic temperament disqualifies a man for the sober state of matrimony; and many are the cases cited to prove it, from the wife of Socrates to Jane Welsh Carlyle or Frau Wagner. The woes of the unhappily mated genius clamor down the ages like the harsh echoes of a family row before the policeman reaches the corner. Also they make a large figure in what is called polite literature, especially as the sorely tried genius finds in the sorrows of his hearth a strong incentive to the production of copy. Hence the thing is not without its compensations, and the lovers of gossip, who are always the chief patrons of literature, do not seek their food in vain.

I suspect that the matter of vanity has much to do with cooking the domestic troubles—his word is "tragedy" !—of the genius. It is very hard to domesticate the species, and wonderful is the arrogance which the notion of genius will breed in the homeliest man, causing him to look with easy contempt on the beautiful woman who perhaps married him out of pity. The artist is the peacock among husbands—his lofty soul, his majestic port, his rainbow plumage, and even, as he thinks, the beauty of his voice—that top note especially!—move him to a measureless disdain of the annoyingly constant, unvaried and tiresome hero-worship of his plain little mate—it is quite curious how, after a time, he comes even to ignore her beauty. To be sure, she has her home uses, and very convenient on occasion these are, even to the most glorious of peacocks; but he is for the Cosmos and must not limit his resplendency to a narrow poultry-yard—go to, woman ! And there you are.

Then, of course, the artist must always be in quest of new sensations,—in other words, must feed his genius, to which satiety is death; and it seems to be agreed that such sensations and experiences are only to be had from other women, or at least, some other woman—and how are you going to get away from that?

I have heard of a certain man, of coarse fibre, who would have given his soul to be thought an artist; who plotted, asleep and awake, during long years, to get rid of his lawful wife and take on a woman he believed to be his affinity. The man's passionate desire to work this wrong gave him a kind of power and eloquence which, strange to say, failed him when at last he had succeeded in carrying out his purpose. And then, so gossip ran, he wished to win the old love back again (coupled in his memory with both unrest and power), but that, of course, was hopeless; so that verily the last state of this man was worse than the first.

All of which is not without bearing upon the story of Richard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck.

I am not concerned to upset the Platonic theory, so dear to German sentimentalists, of the love-affair between the great Wagner and the wife of Herr Wesendonck. People will judge according to the evidence and their private feelings. It must be allowed that there are expressions in the letters that would go far toward establishing a crim. con. in the case of any but a German like Wagner, and a master sentimentalist at that. Such a passage as this for example :

"Once more, that thou couldst hurl thyself on every conceivable sorrow of the world to say to me, `I love thee', redeemed me and won for me that `solemn pause' whence my life has gained another meaning.

"But that state divine indeed was only to be won at cost of all the griefs and pains of love—we have drunk them to their very dregs ! And now, after suffering every sorrow, being spared no grief, now must the quick of that higher life show clearly what we have won through all the agony of those birth-throes."

I repeat, only a German sentimentalist could hold such language without compelling an obvious conclusion. The fact that in the face of this and similarly passionate avowals, public opinion in Germany absolves the lovers of any positive guilt in their relations, is a high tribute to that national virtue which was anciently celebrated by Tacitus and more recently by Hein-rich Heine.

It is the greater pity that the present English translation should have been made by a gushing, lymphatic person, one W. Ashton Ellis, who instead of suffering the letters to speak for themselves, writes a silly preface wherein he seeks to clear Frau Wesendonck's character, in advance, and thereby naturally awakens the reader's doubts. I protest but for this marplot fellow I should have set it all down to the account of German sentimentalism and have laid the book aside without hearing anything worse than the nightingale in the linden, pouring forth his soul in the enchanted moonlight of German poesy. But now it is spoiled for me by such twaddle as this :

"This placid, sweet Madonna, the perfect emblem of a pearl, not opal, her eyes still dreaming of Nirvana,—no ! emphatically no ! she could not once have been swayed by carnal passion. In these letters all is pure and spiritual, a Dante and a Beatrice; so must it have been in their intercourse."

Which illustrates how the defence is so often fatal in matters of literary biography. And yet I have not heard of a literary man wise enough to ask that neither his memory nor his acts should ever be defended.

Many a small person contrives to attract a moment's notice by defending the silent great. Fame has no more subtle irony.

Richard Wagner met Mathilde Wesendonck in 1852 when he was forty years old and she twenty-four. He had already written "Rienzi", "The Flying Dutchman", "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin". Nobody has ever dreamed of attributing the inspiration of any of these works to his wife Minna.

It is seldom indeed that a woman is credited with inspiring a man of genius—after she has married him. As a literary theory the thing is not popular.

Wagner's wife had been an opera singer.

It is admitted even by the great man's jealous biographers, that she was of more than ordinary beauty, that she shared bravely his early hardships and that she was a pure and loyal wife.

But it seems certain that she did not inspire the great man. In his later life he was wont to say that his wedlock had been nothing but a trial of his patience and pity; perhaps he was indebted for this to his vanity rather than his recollection.

Mathilde, on the contrary, was Wagner's inspiration, for has he not told us so ?--though, to be sure, we may credit her with inspiring only one opera, "Tristan and Isolde". Unfortunately, she was the wife of another man, but again, fortunately, her husband was of a truly Germanic simplicity and childlike trust.

Herr Wesendonck was also a man of means and could give his wife the indulgence of many luxuries and whims, which must have added to her attractiveness in the eyes of the struggling man of genius. Money has never been known to cheapen the charms of a really desirable woman.

Portraits of Mathilde show a Madonna-like face of pure and delicate outline, with eyes of haunting tenderness and a mouth of sensitive appeal—such lips, so sweet yet sad, so inviting yet so free from sensual suggestion, are seen only among the higher types of German beauty. Not, I grant you, a face indicating carnal passion, but what then?—many a woman who looked like a Madonna has loved not wisely but too well, and some have been known to bear children in the human fashion.

I have never seen a portrait of Herr Wesendonck.

Truly he deserves one for consenting to the romance which has immortalized his name. Wagner seems to have felt this when he once wrote Herr Wesendonck that the latter should have a place with him in the history of art. In this letter Wagner says nothing of the fine set of horns which (outside of Germany) an evil-minded generation has freely awarded his generous friend.

Mark here again the gushing Ellis:

"It is as a knightly figure that he (Herr Wesendonck) will ever abide in the memory of all who met him, and surely truer knightliness than he displayed in a singularly difficult conjuncture, can nowhere have been found out-side King Arthur's court. Undoubtedly it was he who was the greatest sufferer for several years,—by no means Minna,—years of perpetual heart-burnings bravely borne."

Herr Wesendonck was indeed a pattern husband for a young woman of romantic yearnings.

He shared her admiration for Wagner's genius and for a long time refused to see that his wife was actuated by any other motive.

He gave Wagner financial aid and finally offered him, with Minna, a home in a pretty cottage on his estate at Zurich.

He tolerated the connection even after it had become the occasion of bitter quarrels on his domestic hearth.

On the whole, I am persuaded that a figure of like Chivalry is not to be found outside of Germany, nor perhaps anywhere since the noble Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

Mathilde's few letters tell us nothing—her soul is never unveiled—she compels us to take Wagner's word for the whole of the romance. Her attitude in this correspondence—if such it may be called—puts the great man in a dubious light. We may not think the less of the artist, but the man loses nobility; Herr Wesendonck gets his revenge.

But at last Minna intercepted one of Wagner's letters to Mathilde (which is not given in this collection), and delivered it herself, with words suiting the occasion. Naturally, this broke up the arrangements at Zurich; Wagner sent his wife back to her parents and betook himself to Venice. Herr Wesendonck's con-duct in the circumstances was without a flaw; this admirable man seems truly worthy both of Germany and Spain.

There is a harmless mania for identifying particular persons with poetic creations, and with such hints as Wagner constantly threw out during the period of their attachment, it was impossible that Mathilde should escape.

"With thee I can do all things," he said, "without thee, nothing!"

This was not strictly true, however, and must be taken as poetic license, since he wrote several operas before meeting her and did some of his greatest work long after the parting.

But let me not discourage the sentimentalists. It is true that he said, "For having written the `Tristan' I thank you from my deepest soul to all eternity."

It is also certain that he used to write his music with a gold pen that Mathilde had given him, and that in exile he received from her a package of his favorite zwieback with tears of joy. For these and other reasons I would not deny her title to be regarded as the original inspiration of "Tristan and Isolde".

Still, we have all heard of another enamored young person who, when her lover had got himself somewhat desperately out of the way ---

"Went on cutting bread and butter."

Absence, it appears, had some effect in cooling the romantic fervors of Mathilde. Some half-dozen years after the rupture at Zurich, that "child of our sorrows, Tristan and Isolde", as Wagner lovingly wrote her and to which her name for good or evil is now linked forever, was produced for the first time in Munich.

Mathilde had the earliest invitation, with the composer's own compliments; but she did not attend, and the heart of Minna was not harrowed by seeing her name "among those present".

It is no reproach to the nightingales of Germany that they sang longer in the heart of her lover. . . .

And the lindens bloom on immortally.