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FOR some time Rosalie and Louisa, Richard’s two sisters, had been engaged at the Leipzic theatre, where they were very popular. Madame Geyer, desirous of being near her daughters and within easy reach of assistance, returned to Leipzic with the younger children and Richard with them. For ten years, from about 1818 to 1828, my father held the post of Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater, under the management of Küstner, a celebrated director. The period of Küstner’s management is famous in the annals of the German stage for the high intellectual tone that pervaded the performances under his direction. The names of some of the artists who appeared there are now historic. So high was the standard of excellence reached in these truly model performances, that the whole character of German stage representations was influenced and elevated by it. This was the theatre at which Rosalie and Louisa were engaged. These were the high artistic performances which the youthful poet Richard witnessed, and which deeply affected the impressionable embryo dramatist.

ROSALIE AND LOUISA WAGNER.

Of this period, actors, plays, and incidents, I had the most vivid remembrance from the close connection of my father with the theatre and the friendly intercourse of my family with the actors. Wagner would take great delight in discussing the performances and actors. He was fond, too, of hearing what I, in my boyhood, thought of the acting of his sisters, and from our frequent and intimate conversations, bearing on his youthful impressions of the stage, he uttered many striking and original remarks which will appear later on. A popular piece then was Weber’s “Sylvana,” in which Louisa performed the part of the forest child. This part apparently won the youthful admiration of both of us. Wagner’s remembrance of certain incidents connected with it was marvellous to me.

On his return to Leipzic, his first impulse drove him to visit the house in the Brühl in which he was born. Is it not possible that even at that early stage of his life his extraordinary ambition of “becoming something great” might have foreshadowed to him that the humble habitation of his childhood would later on bear the proud inscription, “Richard Wagner was born here”? What struck him at once as very strange was the foreign aspect of that part of the town where the Jews congregated. It was continually recruited by an increasing immigration of the nomadic Polish Jews, who seemed to have consecrated the Brühl their “Jerusalem,” as Wagner christened it and ever referred to it when speaking to me. The Polish Jews of that quarter traded principally in furs, from the cheapest fur-lined “Schlafrock” to the finest and most costly furs used by royalty. Their strange appearance with their all-covering gabardine, high boots, and large fur caps, worn over long curls, their enormous beards, struck Wagner as it did every one, and does still, as something very unpleasant and disagreeable. Their peculiarly strange pronunciation of the German language, their extravagantly wild gesticulations when speaking, seemed to his aesthetic mind like the repulsive movements of a galvanized corpse.

HIS FIRST ATTACHMENT.

I was sorry to find that Wagner, although generally averse to acts of violence and oppression, was but little shocked at the unreasoned hatred and contempt of the Leipzic populace (especially the lower classes) for the Jews. Their innate thrift, frugality, and skill in trading, were regarded as avarice and dishonesty. Tales of unmitigated cruelty and horror perpetrated by the Jews floated in the brains of the lower Christian (?) populace. The murder of Christian infants for the sake of their blood, to be used in sacrifice of Jewish rites, was a commonplace rejoinder in justification of the suspicion and hatred against this unfortunate race. Crying babes were speedily silenced by the threat, “The Polish Jew is coming.” What wonder, then, to see what was almost a daily occurrence—a number of Christian boys rush upon an unprotected, inoffensive Jew boy and mercilessly beat him to revenge the imaginary wrongs which the Jews were said to have done to Christian infants. Nor, I am sorry to add, did the fully grown Christian burgher interfere in such brutal scenes; the poor wretched victim, beaten by overwhelming numbers and rolled howling in the mud, was but a Jew boy! Strange to say, Wagner had imbibed some intuitive dislike to the Egyptian type of Hebrew, and never entirely overcame that feeling. No amount of reasoning could obliterate it at any period of his life, although he counted among his most devoted friends and admirers a great many of the oppressed race. Still considerably more odd is it that Wagner’s first attachment was for one of the black-eyed daughters of Judah. When passing in review our earliest impressions of school life, we naturally came to that never-to-be-forgotten period of the earliest blossoms of first love, which then revealed to me this remarkably strange episode. Events of everyday occurrence, which in the lives of ordinary mortals scarcely deserve mentioning, are invested with a significance in the lives of men whose destiny points to immortality. When Wagner came to this curious incident of his school life, amazed, I ejaculated, “a Jewess?” in a tone of “impossible!”

It was after a discussion of Jew-hating, and my pointing to the many friends and adherents he had among the Jews, he with his joyous outbreak of humor said, “After all, it was the dog’s fault,” referring to “Faust,” where Mephisto, as a large dog, lies “unter dem Ofen.” Then followed the story.

He had called at his sister Louisa’s house (by the way, he had an affection for this sister which, in our intimate converse, he likened to that which Goethe in his case speaks of as having for its basis the frontier where love of kin ends and love of sex commences), went to her room, where he found an enormous dog which attracted his attention. Any one acquainted with Wagner knew of his devoted attachment to dogs, of which I shall have more to say hereafter. Not many could understand an affection which included every dog in creation. Wagner would engage in long conversations with dogs, and in supplying their answers would infuse into them much of that caustic wit which philosophers of all ages and countries have so often and powerfully put into the mouth of animals. Richard Wagner delighted to make dumb pets speak scornfully of the boasted superiority of man, thinking that after all the animal’s quiet obedience to the prescribed laws of instinct was a surer guide than man’s vaunted free will and reasoning power. He was fond, too, of quoting Weber on such occasions, who, when his dog became disobedient, used to remark, “If you go on like that, you will at last become as silly and bad as a human being.”

The dog so wholly engrossed Richard’s attention that he failed to notice a visitor, Fräulein Leah David, who had come to fetch her dog, left at her friend’s house whilst paying visits in the neighbourhood. The young Jewess was of the same age as Richard, tall, and possessed that superior type of Oriental beauty more frequently found among the Portuguese Jews. She was on intimate terms with Louisa Wagner, who shortly after married one of the celebrated book publishers of Germany. Leah David made an immediate conquest of Richard. “I had never before been so close to so richly attired and beautiful a girl, nor addressed with such an animated eastern profusion of polite verbiage. It took me by surprise, and for the first time in my life I felt that indescribable bursting forth of first love.”

FRÄULEIN LEAH DAVID.

Wagner was invited to the house of her father, who, like most wealthy Jews, surrounded himself with artists of every kind. Indeed, it was there that Richard made many acquaintances which subsequently proved useful to him. There was an extravagant luxury in the ostentatious house of Herr David, which made the ambitious young student poignantly feel the frugal economy practised in his own home. Wagner’s imaginative brain always made him yearn for all the enjoyments that life could supply. Unlimited means was the roseate cloud that incessantly hovered before his longing fancy. In this respect he differs largely from most other creative great minds, who, by force of inventive genius, have conjured up worlds of power and riches, and yet have lived contentedly on the most modest fare and in the lowliest of habitations.

Richard’s new-found friend was an only daughter, and having lost her mother, she was free to do as she willed; the enthusiastic young musician was allowed to visit the house and proved a very genial companion, fond of her dog, and adoring art. Wagner did not declare his passion, feeling that in the sympathetic, friendly treatment he received it was divined and accepted. But he was regarded more in the light of a boy than as a lover, small and slight in stature, dreamy and absorbed as he was then. If the young lady chanced to be out when he called, he either went to the piano or occupied himself with the dog, Iago, if at home. The visits becoming frequent, the attachment ripened into an intimacy. At such a house, with a daughter fond of music, soirées musicales were constantly occurring. At one of them a young Dutchman, nephew of Herr David, was present. He was a pianist, and had just that gift which Wagner lacked, dexterity of fingering. Flatteringly applauded, the jealous Wagner intemperately and injudiciously launched out about absence of soul and similar expressions. Taunted into playing, his clumsy, defective manipulation provoked a sneer from the Dutchman and a titter from the assembly. Wagner lost his temper. Stung in his tenderest feelings before the Hebrew maiden, with the headlong impetuosity of an unthinking youth he replied in such violent, rude language that a dead silence fell upon the guests. Then Wagner rushed out of the room, sought his cap, took leave of Iago, and vowed revenge. He waited two days, upon which, having received no communication, he returned to the scene of the quarrel. To his indignation he was refused admittance. The next morning he received a note in the handwriting of the young Jewess. He opened it feverishly. It was as a death-blow. Fräulein Leah was shortly going to be married to the hated young Dutchman, Herr Meyers, and henceforth she and Richard were to be as strangers.

“It was my first love-sorrow, and I thought I should never forget it, but after all,” said Wagner, with his wonted audacity, “I think I cared more for the dog than for the Jewess. Whilst under the love-spell I had paid little heed to much that soon after, in pondering over the episode, revolted me. The strange characteristics of the Jews were unpleasant to me. Then it was that I first perceived that impassable barrier which must always rise up between Jews and Christians in their dealings with the world. One cannot help an instinctive feeling of repulsion against this strange element, which has been gradually creeping into our midst, growing like mistletoe upon the oak tree, a parasite taking root wherever it can fasten but the smallest fibre, and clinging with a tenacity entirely its own, drawing in all nutriment within reach, and yet remaining, notwithstanding, a parasite. Such is the Jew in the midst of Christian civilization.”