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HIS FATHER, FREDERICK WAGNER.

Painstaking, energy, and ability seem to have been the attributes of Wagner’s ancestors. His paternal grandfather held an appointment under the customs at Leipzic as “thorschreiber,” i.e. an officer who levied toll upon all supplies that entered the town. Family tradition describes him as a man of attainments in advance of his station, a characteristic which also distinguished his son Frederick (Richard’s father). Frederick Wagner, born in 1770, also held an appointment under the Saxon government. A sort of superintendent of the Leipzic police, he spent his leisure time in studying French. Although unaided, he must have attained some degree of proficiency; as subsequently he was called upon to make use of it, and it proved of great service to him. He was a man of literary tastes, and was famed in Leipzic for his great reading and knowledge. Goethe and Schiller were then the beacon-lights of young German poetry. Their pregnant philosophical reasoning, clothed in so attractive, new, and beautiful a garb, fascinated Frederick Wagner, and he made them his serious study—a love which was inherited by his son Richard, who oft in his literary works refers to Goethe and Schiller as the two greatest German poets.

Like all natives of Leipzic he was passionately fond of the stage. The enthusiasm of all classes of society in Leipzic for matters theatrical is historic. Frederick Wagner attached himself to a company of amateur actors, and threw himself with such zest into the study of the histrionic art as to achieve considerable distinction and court patronage. The performances of this company were not unfrequently open to the public; indeed, at one time, when the town theatre was temporarily closed, the amateurs replaced the regular professionals, the Elector of Saxony evincing enough interest in the troupe to pay the hire of the building specially engaged for their performances.

When the peace of Europe was disturbed by the wild, ambitious plottings of Napoleon, a body of French troops were quartered at Leipzic under Marshal Davoust. It was now that Frederick Wagner’s self-taught French was turned to account, as he was appointed to carry on communications between the German and the French soldiers. The Saxon Elector submitting to the French conqueror, the government of the town passed into French hands. Davoust, with the shrewd perspicacity of an officer of Napoleon’s army, saw the solid qualities of Frederick, and directed him to reorganize the town police, at the same time nominating him superintendent-in-chief. He did not retain this appointment many months, as he died of typhoid fever, caught from the French soldiers, on the 22d of November, 1813.

Of his “dear little mother” Wagner often spoke to me, and always in terms of the fondest affection. He described her as a woman of small stature, active frame, self-possessed, with a large amount of common sense, thrifty and of a very affectionate nature.

The Wagner family consisted of nine children, four boys and five girls. Richard, the youngest of all, was born on the 22d May, 1813, at Leipzic. At the time of his father’s death he was therefore but six months old. The eldest of the children, Albert, was born in 1799. He went on the stage as a singer at an early age, having a somewhat high tenor voice. In 1833 we find him stage manager and singer at Wurtzburg, engaging his brother Richard as chorus director. He afterwards became stage manager at Dresden and Berlin, dying in 1874.

LUDWIG GEYER.

Three of Wagner’s sisters, Rosalie, born 1803, Louisa, born 1805, and Clara, born 1807, were also induced to choose the stage as a profession, each being endowed with unmistakable histrionic talent. Although not great they were actresses of decided merit. Laube, an eminent German art critic and writer, has given it as his opinion that Rosalie was to be preferred to Wilhelmina Schroeder, afterwards the celebrated Schroeder-Devrient, but this praise Wagner considered excessive, attributing it to the critic’s friendly relations with the family.

The unexpected death of Frederick Wagner threw the family into great tribulation. A small pension was allowed the widow by government, but with eight young children (one, Karl, born some time before, had died), the eldest but fourteen years of age, the struggle was severe and likely to have terminated disastrously, notwithstanding the watchful thrift of Frau Wagner, had not Ludwig Geyer, a friend of the dead Frederick, generously helped the widow. Geyer was a favourite actor at Leipzic. A man of versatile gifts, he was poet, portrait-painter, and successful playwright. For two years he continuously identified himself with the Wagner household, after which, in 1815, he assumed the whole responsibility by marrying his friend’s widow. Shortly after his marriage Geyer was offered an engagement at the Royal Theatre, Dresden, which would confer on him the highly coveted title of “Hofschauspieler,” or court actor. He accepted the appointment, and the whole family removed with him to the Saxon capital. At this time Richard was two years old. Frederick Wagner, as a thorough Leipzic citizen, had already interested his family in theatrical matters; now by Geyer becoming the head of the household, the stage and its doings became the every-day topic, and therefore the next consequence was its adoption by the eldest children, Albert, Rosalie, Louisa, and Clara. What wonder then that Richard was influenced by the theatrical atmosphere in which he was trained.

From the first Geyer displayed the tenderest affection towards the small and delicately fragile baby. Throughout his life Wagner was a spoilt child, and the spoiling dates from his infancy. Both step-father and mother took every means of petting him. His mother particularly idolized him, and seems, so Wagner told me, to have often built castles in the air as to his future. They were drawn towards the boy, first, because of his sickly, frail constitution; and secondly, owing to his bright powers of observation, which made his childish remarks peculiarly winning. As the boy grew up he remained delicate. He was affected with an irritating form of erysipelas, which constantly troubled him up to the time of his death.

BOYHOOD AT DRESDEN.

Ludwig Geyer’s income from all sources—acting, portrait-painting, and play-writing—did not amount to a sum sufficient to admit of luxuries. Poor Madame Geyer, with her large, growing family, had still to keep a watchful eye over household expenditure. Portrait-painting was not a lucrative occupation, and play-writing less so, yet she contrived that the girls should receive pianoforte lessons. It was customary for needy students of the public schools to eke out their existence by giving lessons in music, languages, or sciences; indeed, it was not uncommon to find some students wholly dependent on such gains for the payment of their own school fees. The fees usually paid in such instances were sadly small, and not unfrequently did the remuneration take the form of a “free table.” At that time there was scarcely a family in Germany that had not its piano. A piano was then obtainable at a cost incredibly small compared with the sums paid to-day. True, the cases were but coloured deal or some common stained wood, whilst the mechanism was of the least expensive kind. In shape they were square, with the plainest unturned legs. Upright instruments had not then been introduced.

The Wagner family went to Dresden in 1815, and from that time, up to the date of his entering the town school at the end of 1822, Richard received either at school or at home no regular tuition. The boy was sickly and his mother was content to let him live and develop without forcing him to any systematic school work. It would seem that he received irregular lessons in drawing from his step-father, as Wagner told me that Geyer had hoped to discover some talent in him for the pencil, and on finding he had not the slightest gift, he was very much disappointed. As a boy, he continued to be a pet with Geyer, accompanying his step-father in his rambles during the day or attending with him the rehearsals at the theatre. Such home education as he did receive was of the most fragmentary kind, a little help here and there from his sisters or attention from Geyer or his mother. Music lessons he had none. All he remembered in after-life was having listened to his sisters’ playing, and only by degrees taking interest in their work. His own reminiscences of his boyhood were plain in one point—he certainly was not a musical prodigy. He fingered and thumbed the keyboard like a boy, but such scraps as he played were always by ear.

Anxieties for a second time now began to thicken round the Wagner family. The court actor Geyer was laid on a sick-bed. He was not of a robust constitution, and conscious of failing health and apprehensive of death, sought anxiously to find some indication in young Richard of any decided talent which might help him to suggest as to the boy’s future career. He had tried, as I have said, to find whether his step-son possessed any skill with the pencil, and sorrowfully perceived he had none. In other directions, of course, it was difficult for Geyer to determine as to any particular gift, if we remember the tender years of the boy. As to music, it would have been nothing short of divination to have predicted that there lay his future, since up to that time Richard had not even been taught his notes. But the court actor was an artist, and with unerring instinct detected in a simple melody played by Richard from memory that in music “he might become something.”

THE WAGNER HOUSEHOLD.

Richard had been fascinated by a snatch of melody which was constantly played by his sisters. He caught it by ear, and was one day strumming it softly on the piano when alone. His mother overheard him. Surprised and pleased at the boy’s unsuspected accomplishment, Geyer was told, and the melody was repeated in a louder tone for the benefit of the invalid in the next room. It was the bridal chorus from “Der Freischütz.” Although a very simple melody and of easy execution, it must have been played with unusual feeling for a child to prompt Geyer almost to the prophetic utterance, “Has he perhaps talent for music?” Wagner heard this, and told me how deeply he was impressed by it. On the next day Geyer died, 13th September, 1821. Richard was then eight years and four months old, and preserved the most vivid remembrance of his mother coming from the death chamber weeping, but calm, and walking straight to him, saying, “He wished to make something of you, Richard.” These words, Wagner said, remained with him ever after, and he boyishly resolved “to be something.” But he had not then the faintest notion in what direction that something was going to be. Certainly music was not forecast as the arena of his future triumphs, since in his letter to F. Villot, dated September, 1860, he tells us that it was not until after his efforts in the poetical art, and subsequent to the death of Beethoven, 1827, i.e. six years after Geyer’s death, that he seriously began to study music.

For a second time was the family thrown into comparative adversity. But the embarrassment was less serious than in 1813, since the three eldest children were now at an age to contribute materially to the general support. A trifling annuity was again awarded to the widow, and with careful thrift she resumed her sway of the household. The family at this time consisted of the widow; Albert, twenty-two years; Rosalie, eighteen; Julius, seventeen, apprenticed to a goldsmith; Louisa, sixteen; Clara, fourteen; Ottilie, ten; Richard, eight and four months; and Cecilia Geyer, six, the only child of Frau Wagner’s second marriage. The two eldest girls and Albert had already embraced the theatrical profession. Family circumstances were therefore not so pinched as at the death of Frederick Wagner.

No plan having yet been devised as to the future of Richard, he was sent on a visit to an uncle Geyer at Eisleben, between which place and his mother’s home at Dresden, he spent the next fifteen months, when it was decided to enter him at the Kreuzschule (the Cross School), Dresden.