Volume II Part 2 (2/2)

There were other loves that busied his heart He was res He suffered keenly when his parrot Papo died; he wrote his friend Uhlig: ”Ah, if I could say to you what has died fortoPeps died in his arer: ”I cried incessantly, and since then have felt bitter pain and sorrow for the dear friend of the past thirteen years, who has walked and worked with ner's last plans was to write a book to be called ”A History of My Dogs” Anecdotes galore there are of his huer faeous colours; his music shows this He liked fine stuffs peculiarly, and even in his pauperdom wore silk next to his skin When fortune found hiowns, and even with many-coloured trousers His stomach was not so fond of luxury, and he was not addicted to wine or beer, and for long periods drank neither at all He injured his health by eating too fast, though this was not, as in Handel's case, froluttony, but fro strangely huht years old, he traded off a voluner's career shows a curious groay from his early ideas He was at first an artistic disciple of Meyerbeer, and not only drew operatic inspirations fro by Meyerbeer's money and by his letters of introduction; later he came to abhor Meyerbeer's operas, and to despise the ner earned himself numberless powerful enemies by his fierce hatred for the Jewish race, and by his ferocious attack in an article called ”Judaism in Music” Yet his first flirtation ith a Jewess, and it was not his fault that he did not , and was a friend of his sister She had the highly racial name of Leah David, and was a personification of Jewish beauty, with her eyes and hair of jet and her Oriental features It has been rener's heroes and heroines fall in love at first sight

He began it His first view of Leah plunged hi,” was an easy task for Wagner, and he was glad of the privilege of caressing Leah's poodle, and ofher piano He never could fondle a piano withoutit howl Now Leah had a cousin, a Dutchner criticised his execution, and was invited to do better The ner, and the result of the duel was a foregone defeat

The last chapter of this roner lost his tes before the Hebrewyouth, he replied in such violent, rude language, that a dead silence fell upon the guests Then Wagner rushed out of the rooeance He waited two days, upon which, having received no communication, he returned to the scene of the quarrel To his indignation, he was refused ad he received a note in the handwriting of the young Jewess He opened it feverishly It was a death-blow Fraulein Leah was shortly going to beDutchman, Herr Meyers, and henceforth she and Richard were to be strangers 'It was et it, but after all,' said Wagner, with his wonted audacity, 'I think I cared ner entered the university at Leipzig and for a time went the pace of student dissipations; he has described theust, however, for these forms of amusement and was thereafter a

One of his early creeds was free love; and though he gave up this theory, his works as a whole are by no u for the superiority of passion over all other inspirations, that it is astounding to hear Wagnerians occasionally complain of modern Italian operas as immoral--as if any librettos could be iner's first libretto, ”The Wedding” (Die Hochzeit), horrified his sister so, that he destroyed it at her request His third, ”Das Liebesverbot,” was based on Shakespeare's ”Measure for Measure,” with the slight distinction that where Shakespeare's play is a preachner hilorification of unchecked sensuality” Years afterward, adave it up as too licentious This apostle of unrestrained amours found himself most prosaically le for daily bread, when he was only twenty-three

In 1833, at the age of twenty, Wagner had taken up ot a position as chorus-master In 1834, he beca The co enthusiasts, orked day and night, rehearsed Wagner's opera, ”Das Liebesverbot” The first night there was a crowded house, but the troupe went all to pieces The next night was to be Wagner's benefit Fifteen minutes before the curtain rose, he found the audience consisted of his landlady, her husband, and one Polish Jew A free fight broke out behind the scenes; the prima donna's husband smote the second tenor, her lover, and every one joined in; even that small audience was dismissed In this company _die erste Liebhaberin_ was Wilhelmine Planer, one of twelve children of a poor spindle-ner went to Leipzig and offered the opera to a er said that he could not perner drifted to Konigsberg, where he became director of the theatre, and where Wilheldeburg, and they were , on November 24, 1836

The theatre soon followed the exa the honeyner had composed only one work, an overture, based on ”Rule Britannia” At that time ”The Old Oaken Bucket” had not been written He then drifted to Riga, where he becaer Now his relentless ambition seized hilory His wife found herself consecrated to poverty and the fanatic ideals of a husband, to whom starvation was only a detail in the scheme of his life,--a scheme and a life for which she had neither inclination nor understanding

Wilhelmine, or Minna, as she was called, is described as pretty by so appearance,” by others The painter Pecht called her very pretty, but blainative soul

Richard Pohl calls her a prosaic doht have been an iner could have been iner hih never, perhaps, deeply in love with her He called her an ”excellent housewife,” who lovingly and faithfully sharedcouple lived at Riga in an expensive suburb, whence it was said they could reach the theatre only by h Glasenapp denies this story Minna brought to her husband not a penny of dowry, and he brought to her a number of debts, and a hopeless lack of econoet an advance of salary, and offered to do anything, ”except bootblacking and water-carrying, which latter my chest could not endure at present” Then he decided that fame and fortune awaited him, as they usually do, just over the horizon The only trouble with the horizon, as with to-morrow and the will-o'-the-wisp, is that it is always just ahead

When the Wagners applied for a passport, to leave Riga, they did so in the face of certain suits for debt They were told that they could have the passport as soon as they showed receipts for their bills That was too ridiculous a condition to consider, so Minna disguised as a peasant woman, and a friendly lumberman took her across the border as his wife

The friends of Wagner took up a purse for hiot hiuise He reached the seaport of Pillau, found his wife and his dog there, and set sail in a small boat

Thus he embarked for the future, ”with a wife, an opera and a half, a se and terribly voracious Newfoundland dog” The coeously seasick They arrived finally after violent stor When he came back, the three decided that Paris offered a better chance, so thither they went

Meyerbeer befriended theement, on the receipt of which the cautious couple diluted their few res, which he offered to sell for prices ranging frorant him the latter suner was so poor that about the only thing he could afford to keep was a diary Here he wrote down alternate accounts of his abject poverty and of his abnormal hopes In Villon's tiht They were not all dead by 1840, it would seener's door-step He wrote in his diary that he had invited a sick and starving German workman to breakfast, and his wife informed him that there was to be no breakfast, as the last pennies were gone

In one of his ht hi Minna to pawn soo pawned it all She faced their distress like a heroine Wagner used to hen he told of her self-denial, and the cheerfulness hich she, the pretty actress of former days, cooked what meals there were to cook, and scrubbed what clothes there were to scrub For diversion, when they had no enius and his wife and the dog could always take a walk on the boulevard

Wagner could not play any instrument, not even a piano, and so he tried for a position in the chorus of a cheap theatre; but his voice was not found good enough for even that His long sea voyage had given hi Dutchman” He was driven to sell his libretto for a hundred dollars to another coress in this place; that is an epic in itself Finally, however, he et his ”Rienzi” written and accepted in Dresden He scraped up o back to his Fatherland, and to take his wife to the baths at Teplitz, her health having broken under the strain of poverty It is at this period that he closed an autobiographic sketch, with these words: ”In Paris I had no prospects for years to co of 1842 I left there For the first time, with tears in my eyes, I saw the Rhine; poor artist that I was, I swore eternal allegiance to my German Fatherland”

But his Geriance at hied into fah the curtain of obscurity, as if he were a negro at a country fair, and with remarkable enthusiasm the whole critical fraternity proceeded to hurl every conceivable missile at him It ell for him that his skull was hard

”Rienzi” made an immediate success But he was in his thirtieth year before even this unwelcoreatness of the man that even thus late in life, and after all his trials, he could put away from him success of such a sort, and turn back into the wilderness of exile and ignominy for years, until he could find the nificent fanaticism and the unsurpassed friendshi+p of one

To the woman, Minna Planer, who had cooked his meals, washed his clothes, and darned his socks, this refusal of prosperity was a final blow of disenchanth before, but now she lost track of his were those of Psyche, when she found that her lover was a God ings and a e of their minds, he now disappeared for her into the blue eht to embrace his soul, she clasped thin air