PART I

1813-1842

I was born at Leipzig on the 22nd of May 1813, in a room on the second

floor of the ‘Red and White Lion,’ and two days later was baptized at

St. Thomas’s Church, and christened Wilhelm Richard.

My father, Friedrich Wagner, was at the time of my birth a clerk in the

police service at Leipzig, and hoped to get the post of Chief Constable

in that town, but he died in the October of that same year. His death

was partly due to the great exertions imposed upon him by the stress of

police work during the war troubles and the battle of Leipzig, and

partly to the fact that he fell a victim to the nervous fever which was

raging at that time. As regards his father’s position in life, I learnt

later that he had held a small civil appointment as toll collector at

the Ranstädt Gate, but had distinguished himself from those in the same

station by giving his two sons a superior education, my father,

Friedrich, studying law, and the younger son, Adolph, theology.

My uncle subsequently exercised no small influence on my development;

we shall meet him again at a critical turning-point in the story of my

youth.

My father, whom I had lost so early, was, as I discovered afterwards, a

great lover of poetry and literature in general, and possessed in

particular an almost passionate affection for the drama, which was at

that time much in vogue among the educated classes. My mother told me,

among other things, that he took her to Lauchstadt for the first

performance of the _Braut von Messina_, and that on the promenade he

pointed out Schiller and Goethe to her, and reproved her warmly for

never having heard of these great men. He is said to have been not

altogether free from a gallant interest in actresses. My mother used to

complain jokingly that she often had to keep lunch waiting for him

while he was paying court to a certain famous actress of the day.[1]

When she scolded him, he vowed that he had been delayed by papers that

had to be attended to, and as a proof of his assertion pointed to his

fingers, which were supposed to be stained with ink, but on closer

inspection were found to be quite clean. His great fondness for the

theatre was further shown by his choice of the actor, Ludwig Geyer, as

one of his intimate friends. Although his choice of this friend was no

doubt mainly due to his love for the theatre, he at the same time

introduced into his family the noblest of benefactors; for this modest

artist, prompted by a warm interest in the lot of his friend’s large

family, so unexpectedly left destitute, devoted the remainder of his

life to making strenuous efforts to maintain and educate the orphans.

Even when the police official was spending his evenings at the theatre,

the worthy actor generally filled his place in the family circle, and

it seems had frequently to appease my mother, who, rightly or wrongly,

complained of the frivolity of her husband.

[1] Madame Hartwig.

How deeply the homeless artist, hard pressed by life and tossed to and

fro, longed to feel himself at home in a sympathetic family circle, was

proved by the fact that a year after his friend’s death he married his

widow, and from that time forward became a most loving father to the

seven children that had been left behind.

In this onerous undertaking he was favoured by an unexpected

improvement in his position, for he obtained a remunerative,

respectable, and permanent engagement, as a character actor, at the

newly established Court Theatre in Dresden. His talent for painting,

which had already helped him to earn a livelihood when forced by

extreme poverty to break off his university studies, again stood him in

good stead in his position at Dresden. True, he complained even more

than his critics that he had been kept from a regular and systematic

study of this art, yet his extraordinary aptitude, for portrait

painting in particular, secured him such important commissions that he

unfortunately exhausted his strength prematurely by his twofold

exertions as painter and actor. Once, when he was invited to Munich to

fulfil a temporary engagement at the Court Theatre, he received,

through the distinguished recommendation of the Saxon Court, such

pressing commissions from the Bavarian Court for portraits of the royal

family that he thought it wise to cancel his contract altogether. He

also had a turn for poetry. Besides fragments—often in very dainty

verse—he wrote several comedies, one of which, _Der Bethlehemitische

Kindermord_, in rhymed Alexandrines, was often performed; it was

published and received the warmest praise from Goethe.

This excellent man, under whose care our family moved to Dresden when I

was two years old, and by whom my mother had another daughter, Cecilia,

now also took my education in hand with the greatest care and

affection. He wished to adopt me altogether, and accordingly, when I

was sent to my first school, he gave me his own name, so that till the

age of fourteen I was known to my Dresden schoolfellows as Richard

Geyer; and it was not until some years after my stepfather’s death, and

on my family’s return to Leipzig, the home of my own kith and kin, that

I resumed the name of Wagner.

The earliest recollections of my childhood are associated with my

stepfather, and passed from him to the theatre. I well remember that he

would have liked to see me develop a talent for painting; and his

studio, with the easel and the pictures upon it, did not fail to

impress me. I remember in particular that I tried, with a childish love

of imitation, to copy a portrait of King Frederick Augustus of Saxony;

but when this simple daubing had to give place to a serious study of

drawing, I could not stand it, possibly because I was discouraged by

the pedantic technique of my teacher, a cousin of mine, who was rather

a bore. At one time during my early boyhood I became so weak after some

childish ailment that my mother told me later she used almost to wish

me dead, for it seemed as though I should never get well. However, my

subsequent good health apparently astonished my parents. I afterwards

learnt the noble part played by my excellent stepfather on this

occasion also; he never gave way to despair, in spite of the cares and

troubles of so large a family, but remained patient throughout, and

never lost the hope of pulling me through safely.

My imagination at this time was deeply impressed by my acquaintance

with the theatre, with which I was brought into contact, not only as a

childish spectator from the mysterious stagebox, with its access to the

stage, and by visits to the wardrobe with its fantastic costumes, wigs

and other disguises, but also by taking a part in the performances

myself. After I had been filled with fear by seeing my father play the

villain’s part in such tragedies as _Die Waise und der Mörder, Die

beiden Galeerensklaven_, I occasionally took part in comedy. I remember

that I appeared in _Der Weinberg an der Elbe_, a piece specially

written to welcome the King of Saxony on his return from captivity,

with music by the conductor, C. M. von Weber. In this I figured in a

_tableau vivant_ as an angel, sewn up in tights with wings on my back,

in a graceful pose which I had laboriously practised. I also remember

on this occasion being given a big iced cake, which I was assured the

King had intended for me personally. Lastly, I can recall taking a

child’s part in which I had a few words to speak in Kotzebue’s

_Menschenhass und Reue_[2], which furnished me with an excuse at school

for not having learnt my lessons. I said I had too much to do, as I had

to learn by heart an important part in _Den Menschen ausser der

Reihe_.[3]

[2] ‘Misanthropy and Remorse.’

[3] ‘The Man out of the Rank or Row.’ In the German this is a simple

phonetic corruption of Kotzebue’s title, which might easily occur to a

child who had only heard, and not read, that title.—EDITOR.

On the other hand, to show how seriously my father regarded my

education, when I was six years old he took me to a clergyman in the

country at Possendorf, near Dresden, where I was to be given a sound

and healthy training with other boys of my own class. In the evening,

the vicar, whose name was Wetzel, used to tell us the story of Robinson

Crusoe, and discuss it with us in a highly instructive manner. I was,

moreover, much impressed by a biography of Mozart which was read aloud;

and the newspaper accounts and monthly reports of the events of the

Greek War of Independence stirred my imagination deeply. My love for

Greece, which afterwards made me turn with enthusiasm to the mythology

and history of ancient Hellas, was thus the natural outcome of the

intense and painful interest I took in the events of this period. In

after years the story of the struggle of the Greeks against the

Persians always revived my impressions of this modern revolt of Greece

against the Turks.

One day, when I had been in this country home scarcely a year, a

messenger came from town to ask the vicar to take me to my parents’

house in Dresden, as my father was dying.

We did the three hours’ journey on foot; and as I was very exhausted

when I arrived, I scarcely understood why my mother was crying. The

next day I was taken to my father’s bedside; the extreme weakness with

which he spoke to me, combined with all the precautions taken in the

last desperate treatment of his complaint—acute hydrothorax—made the

whole scene appear like a dream to me, and I think I was too frightened

and surprised to cry.

In the next room my mother asked me to show her what I could play on

the piano, wisely hoping to divert my father’s thoughts by the sound. I

played Ueb’ immer Treu und Redlichkeit, and my father said to her, ‘Is

it possible he has musical talent?’

In the early hours of the next morning my mother came into the great

night nursery, and, standing by the bedside of each of us in turn, told

us, with sobs, that our father was dead, and gave us each a message

with his blessing. To me she said, ‘He hoped to make something of you.’

In the afternoon my schoolmaster, Wetzel, came to take me back to the

country. We walked the whole way to Possendorf, arriving at nightfall.

On the way I asked him many questions about the stars, of which he gave

me my first intelligent idea.

A week later my stepfather’s brother arrived from Eisleben for the

funeral. He promised, as far as he was able, to support the family,

which was now once more destitute, and undertook to provide for my

future education.

I took leave of my companions and of the kind-hearted clergyman, and it

was for his funeral that I paid my next visit to Possendorf a few years

later. I did not go to the place again till long afterwards, when I

visited it on an excursion such as I often made, far into the country,

at the time when I was conducting the orchestra in Dresden. I was much

grieved not to find the old parsonage still there, but in its place a

more pretentious modern structure, which so turned me against the

locality, that thenceforward my excursions were always made in another

direction.

This time my uncle brought me back to Dresden in the carriage. I found

my mother and sister in the deepest mourning, and remember being

received for the first time with a tenderness not usual in our family;

and I noticed that the same tenderness marked our leave-taking, when, a

few days later, my uncle took me with him to Eisleben.

This uncle, who was a younger brother of my stepfather, had settled

there as a goldsmith, and Julius, one of my elder brothers, had already

been apprenticed to him. Our old grandmother also lived with this

bachelor son, and as it was evident that she could not live long, she

was not informed of the death of her eldest son, which I, too, was

bidden to keep to myself. The servant carefully removed the crape from

my coat, telling me she would keep it until my grandmother died, which

was likely to be soon.

I was now often called upon to tell her about my father, and it was no

great difficulty for me to keep the secret of his death, as I had

scarcely realised it myself. She lived in a dark back room looking out

upon a narrow courtyard, and took a great delight in watching the

robins that fluttered freely about her, and for which she always kept

fresh green boughs by the stove. When some of these robins were killed

by the cat, I managed to catch others for her in the neighbourhood,

which pleased her very much, and, in return, she kept me tidy and

clean. Her death, as had been expected, took place before long, and the

crape that had been put away was now openly worn in Eisleben.

The back room, with its robins and green branches, now knew me no more,

but I soon made myself at home with a soap-boiler’s family, to whom the

house belonged, and became popular with them on account of the stories

I told them.

I was sent to a private school kept by a man called Weiss, who left an

impression of gravity and dignity upon my mind.

Towards the end of the fifties I was greatly moved at reading in a

musical paper the account of a concert at Eisleben, consisting of parts

of Tannhäuser, at which my former master, who had not forgotten his

young pupil, had been present.

The little old town with Luther’s house, and the numberless memorials

it contained of his stay there, has often, in later days, come back to

me in dreams. I have always wished to revisit it and verify the

clearness of my recollections, but, strange to say, it has never been

my fate to do so. We lived in the market-place, where I was often

entertained by strange sights, such, for instance, as performances by a

troupe of acrobats, in which a man walked a rope stretched from tower

to tower across the square, an achievement which long inspired me with

a passion for such feats of daring. Indeed, I got so far as to walk a

rope fairly easily myself with the help of a balancing-pole. I had made

the rope out of cords twisted together and stretched across the

courtyard, and even now I still feel a desire to gratify my acrobatic

instincts. The thing that attracted me most, however, was the brass

band of a Hussar regiment quartered at Eisleben. It often played a

certain piece which had just come out, and which was making a great

sensation, I mean the ‘Huntsmen’s Chorus’ out of the Freischutz, that

had been recently performed at the Opera in Berlin. My uncle and

brother asked me eagerly about its composer, Weber, whom I must have

seen at my parents’ house in Dresden, when he was conductor of the

orchestra there.

About the same time the Jungfernkranz was zealously played and sung by

some friends who lived near us. These two pieces cured me of my

weakness for the ‘Ypsilanti’ Waltz, which till that time I had regarded

as the most wonderful of compositions.

I have recollections of frequent tussles with the town boys, who were

constantly mocking at me for my ‘square’ cap; and I remember, too, that

I was very fond of rambles of adventure among the rocky banks of the

Unstrut.

My uncle’s marriage late in life, and the starting of his new home,

brought about a marked alteration in his relations to my family.

After a lapse of a year I was taken by him to Leipzig, and handed over

for some days to the Wagners, my own father’s relatives, consisting of

my uncle Adolph and his sister Friederike Wagner. This extraordinarily

interesting man, whose influence afterwards became ever more

stimulating to me, now for the first time brought himself and his

singular environment into my life.

He and my aunt were very close friends of Jeannette Thome, a queer old

maid who shared with them a large house in the market-place, in which,

if I am not mistaken, the Electoral family of Saxony had, ever since

the days of Augustus the Strong, hired and furnished the two principal

storeys for their own use whenever they were in Leipzig.

So far as I know, Jeannette Thome really owned the second storey, of

which she inhabited only a modest apartment looking out on the

courtyard. As, however, the King merely occupied the hired rooms for a

few days in the year, Jeannette and her circle generally made use of

his splendid apartments, and one of these staterooms was made into a

bedroom for me.

The decorations and fittings of these rooms also dated from the days of

Augustus the Strong. They were luxurious with heavy silk and rich

rococo furniture, all of which were much soiled with age. As a matter

of fact, I was delighted by these large strange rooms, looking out upon

the bustling Leipzig market-place, where I loved above all to watch the

students in the crowd making their way along in their old-fashioned

‘Club’ attire, and filling up the whole width of the street.

There was only one portion of the decorations of the rooms that I

thoroughly disliked, and this consisted of the various portraits, but

particularly those of high-born dames in hooped petticoats, with

youthful faces and powdered hair. These appeared to me exactly like

ghosts, who, when I was alone in the room, seemed to come back to life,

and filled me with the most abject fear. To sleep alone in this distant

chamber, in that old-fashioned bed of state, beneath those unearthly

pictures, was a constant terror to me. It is true I tried to hide my

fear from my aunt when she lighted me to bed in the evening with her

candle, but never a night passed in which I was not a prey to the most

horrible ghostly visions, my dread of which would leave me in a bath of

perspiration.

The personality of the three chief occupants of this storey was

admirably adapted to materialise the ghostly impressions of the house

into a reality that resembled some strange fairy-tale.

Jeannette Thome was very small and stout; she wore a fair Titus wig,

and seemed to hug to herself the consciousness of vanished beauty. My

aunt, her faithful friend and guardian, who was also an old maid, was

remarkable for the height and extreme leanness of her person. The

oddity of her otherwise very pleasant face was increased by an

exceedingly pointed chin.

My uncle Adolph had chosen as his permanent study a dark room in the

courtyard. There it was that I saw him for the first time, surrounded

by a great wilderness of books, and attired in an unpretentious indoor

costume, the most striking feature of which was a tall, pointed felt

cap, such as I had seen worn by the clown who belonged to the troupe of

rope-dancers at Eisleben. A great love of independence had driven him

to this strange retreat. He had been originally destined for the

Church, but he soon gave that up, in order to devote himself entirely

to philological studies. But as he had the greatest dislike of acting

as a professor and teacher in a regular post, he soon tried to make a

meagre livelihood by literary work. He had certain social gifts, and

especially a fine tenor voice, and appears in his youth to have been

welcome as a man of letters among a fairly wide circle of friends at

Leipzig.

On a trip to Jena, during which he and a companion seem to have found

their way into various musical and oratorical associations, he paid a

visit to Schiller. With this object in view, he had come armed with a

request from the management of the Leipzig Theatre, who wanted to

secure the rights of Wallenstein, which was just finished. He told me

later of the magic impression made upon him by Schiller, with his tall

slight figure and irresistibly attractive blue eyes. His only complaint

was that, owing to a well-meant trick played on him by his friend, he

had been placed in a most trying position; for the latter had managed

to send Schiller a small volume of Adolph Wagner’s poems in advance.

The young poet was much embarrassed to hear Schiller address him in

flattering terms on the subject of his poetry, but was convinced that

the great man was merely encouraging him out of kindness. Afterwards he

devoted himself entirely to philological studios—one of his best-known

publications in that department being his Parnasso Italiano, which he

dedicated to Goethe in an Italian poem. True, I have heard experts say

that the latter was written in unusually pompous Italian; but Goethe

sent him a letter full of praise, as well as a silver cup from his own

household plate. The impression that I, as a boy of eight, conceived of

Adolph Wagner, amid the surroundings of his own home, was that he was a

peculiarly puzzling character.

I soon had to leave the influence of this environment and was brought

back to my people at Dresden. Meanwhile my family, under the guidance

of my bereaved mother, had been obliged to settle down as well as they

could under the circumstances. My eldest brother Albert, who originally

intended to study medicine, had, upon the advice of Weber, who had much

admired his beautiful tenor voice, started his theatrical career in

Breslau. My second sister Louisa soon followed his example, and became

an actress. My eldest sister Rosalie had obtained an excellent

engagement at the Dresden Court Theatre, and the younger members of the

family all looked up to her; for she was now the main support of our

poor sorrowing mother. My family still occupied the same comfortable

home which my father had made for them. Some of the spare rooms were

occasionally let to strangers, and Spohr was among those who at one

time lodged with us. Thanks to her great energy, and to help received

from various sources (among which the continued generosity of the

Court, out of respect to the memory of my late stepfather, must not be

forgotten), my mother managed so well in making both ends meet, that

even my education did not suffer.

After it had been decided that my sister Clara, owing to her

exceedingly beautiful voice, should also go on the stage, my mother

took the greatest care to prevent me from developing any taste whatever

for the theatre. She never ceased to reproach herself for having

consented to the theatrical career of my eldest brother, and as my

second brother showed no greater talents than those which were useful

to him as a goldsmith, it was now her chief desire to see some progress

made towards the fulfilment of the hopes and wishes of my step-father,

‘who hoped to make something of me.’ On the completion of my eighth

year I was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, where it was

hoped I would study! There I was placed at the bottom of the lowest

class, and started my education under the most unassuming auspices.

My mother noted with much interest the slightest signs I might show of

a growing love and ability for my work. She herself, though not highly

educated, always created a lasting impression on all who really learnt

to know her, and displayed a peculiar combination of practical domestic

efficiency and keen intellectual animation. She never gave one of her

children any definite information concerning her antecedents. She came

from Weissenfels, and admitted that her parents had been bakers[4]

there. Even in regard to her maiden name she always spoke with some

embarrassment, and intimated that it was ‘Perthes,’ though, as we

afterwards ascertained, it was in reality ‘Bertz.’ Strange to say, she

had been placed in a high-class boarding-school in Leipzig, where she

had enjoyed the advantage of the care and interest of one of ‘her

father’s influential friends,’ to whom she afterwards referred as being

a Weimar prince who had been very kind to her family in Weissenfels.

Her education in that establishment seems to have been interrupted on

account of the sudden death of this ‘friend.’ She became acquainted

with my father at a very early age, and married him in the first bloom

of her youth, he also being very young, though he already held an

appointment. Her chief characteristics seem to have been a keen sense

of humour and an amiable temper, so we need not suppose that it was

merely a sense of duty towards the family of a departed comrade that

afterwards induced the admirable Ludwig Geyer to enter into matrimony

with her when she was no longer youthful, but rather that he was

impelled to that step by a sincere and warm regard for the widow of his

friend. A portrait of her, painted by Geyer during the lifetime of my

father, gives one a very favourable impression of what she must have

been. Even from the time when my recollection of her is quite distinct,

she always had to wear a cap owing to some slight affection of the

head, so that I have no recollection of her as a young and pretty

mother. Her trying position at the head of a numerous family (of which

I was the seventh surviving member), the difficulty of obtaining the

wherewithal to rear them, and of keeping up appearances on very limited

resources, did not conduce to evolve that tender sweetness and

solicitude which are usually associated with motherhood. I hardly ever

recollect her having fondled me. Indeed, demonstrations of affection

were not common in our family, although a certain impetuous, almost

passionate and boisterous manner always characterised our dealings.

This being so, it naturally seemed to me quite a great event when one

night I, fretful with sleepiness, looked up at her with tearful eyes as

she was taking me to bed, and saw her gaze back at me proudly and

fondly, and speak of me to a visitor then present with a certain amount

of tenderness.

[4] According to more recent information—mill owners.

What struck me more particularly about her was the strange enthusiasm

and almost pathetic manner with which she spoke of the great and of the

beautiful in Art. Under this heading, however, she would never have let

me suppose that she included dramatic art, but only Poetry, Music, and

Painting. Consequently, she often even threatened me with her curse

should I ever express a desire to go on the stage. Moreover, she was

very religiously inclined. With intense fervour she would often give us

long sermons about God and the divine quality in man, during which, now

and again, suddenly lowering her voice in a rather funny way, she would

interrupt herself in order to rebuke one of us. After the death of our

stepfather she used to assemble us all round her bed every morning,

when one of us would read out a hymn or a part of the Church service

from the prayer-book before she took her coffee. Sometimes the choice

of the part to be read was hardly appropriate, as, for instance, when

my sister Clara on one occasion thoughtlessly read the ‘Prayer to be

said in time of War,’ and delivered it with so much expression that my

mother interrupted her, saying: ‘Oh, stop! Good gracious me! Things are

not quite so bad as that. There’s no war on at present!’

In spite of our limited means we had lively and—as they appeared to my

boyish imagination—even brilliant evening parties sometimes. After the

death of my stepfather, who, thanks to his success as a portrait

painter, in the later years of his life had raised his income to what

for those days was a really decent total, many agreeable acquaintances

of very good social position whom he had made during this flourishing

period still remained on friendly terms with us, and would occasionally

join us at our evening gatherings. Amongst those who came were the

members of the Court Theatre, who at that time gave very charming and

highly entertaining parties of their own, which, on my return to

Dresden later on, I found had been altogether given up.

Very delightful, too, were the picnics arranged between us and our

friends at some of the beautiful spots around Dresden, for these

excursions were always brightened by a certain artistic spirit and

general good cheer. I remember one such outing we arranged to

Loschwitz, where we made a kind of gypsy camp, in which Carl Maria von

Weber played his part in the character of cook. At home we also had

some music. My sister Rosalie played the piano, and Clara was beginning

to sing. Of the various theatrical performances we organised in those

early days, often after elaborate preparation, with the view of amusing

ourselves on the birthdays of our elders, I can hardly remember one,

save a parody on the romantic play of Sappho, by Grillparzer, in which

I took part as one of the singers in the crowd that preceded Phaon’s

triumphal car. I endeavoured to revive these memories by means of a

fine puppet show, which I found among the effects of my late

stepfather, and for which he himself had painted some beautiful

scenery. It was my intention to surprise my people by means of a

brilliant performance on this little stage. After I had very clumsily

made several puppets, and had provided them with a scanty wardrobe made

from cuttings of material purloined from my sisters, I started to

compose a chivalric drama, in which I proposed to rehearse my puppets.

When I had drafted the first scene, my sisters happened to discover the

MS. and literally laughed it to scorn, and, to my great annoyance, for

a long time afterwards they chaffed me by repeating one particular

sentence which I had put into the mouth of the heroine, and which

was—Ich hore schon den Ritter trapsen (‘I hear his knightly footsteps

falling’). I now returned with renewed ardour to the theatre, with

which, even at this time, my family was in close touch. Den Freischutz

in particular appealed very strongly to my imagination, mainly on

account of its ghostly theme. The emotions of terror and the dread of

ghosts formed quite an important factor in the development of my mind.

From my earliest childhood certain mysterious and uncanny things

exercised an enormous influence over me. If I were left alone in a room

for long, I remember that, when gazing at lifeless objects such as

pieces of furniture, and concentrating my attention upon them, I would

suddenly shriek out with fright, because they seemed to me alive. Even

during the latest years of my boyhood, not a night passed without my

waking out of some ghostly dream and uttering the most frightful

shrieks, which subsided only at the sound of some human voice. The most

severe rebuke or even chastisement seemed to me at those times no more

than a blessed release. None of my brothers or sisters would sleep

anywhere near me. They put me to sleep as far as possible away from the

others, without thinking that my cries for help would only be louder

and longer; but in the end they got used even to this nightly

disturbance.

In connection with this childish terror, what attracted me so strongly

to the theatre—by which I mean also the stage, the rooms behind the

scenes, and the dressing-rooms—was not so much the desire for

entertainment and amusement such as that which impels the present-day

theatre-goers, but the fascinating pleasure of finding myself in an

entirely different atmosphere, in a world that was purely fantastic and

often gruesomely attractive. Thus to me a scene, even a wing,

representing a bush, or some costume or characteristic part of it,

seemed to come from another world, to be in some way as attractive as

an apparition, and I felt that contact with it might serve as a lever

to lift me from the dull reality of daily routine to that delightful

region of spirits. Everything connected with a theatrical performance

had for me the charm of mystery, it both bewitched and fascinated me,

and while I was trying, with the help of a few playmates, to imitate

the performance of Der Freischutz, and to devote myself energetically

to reproducing the needful costumes and masks in my grotesque style of

painting, the more elegant contents of my sisters’ wardrobes, in the

beautifying of which I had often seen the family occupied, exercised a

subtle charm over my imagination; nay, my heart would beat madly at the

very touch of one of their dresses.

In spite of the fact that, as I already mentioned, our family was not

given to outward manifestations of affection, yet the fact that I was

brought up entirely among feminine surroundings must necessarily have

influenced the development of the sensitive side of my nature. Perhaps

it was precisely because my immediate circle was generally rough and

impetuous, that the opposite characteristics of womanhood, especially

such as were connected with the imaginary world of the theatre, created

a feeling of such tender longing in me.

Luckily these fantastic humours, merging from the gruesome into the

mawkish, were counteracted and balanced by more serious influences

undergone at school at the hands of my teachers and schoolfellows. Even

there, it was chiefly the weird that aroused my keenest interest. I can

hardly judge whether I had what would be called a good head for study.

I think that, in general, what I really liked I was soon able to grasp

without much effort, whereas I hardly exerted myself at all in the

study of subjects that were uncongenial. This characteristic was most

marked in regard to arithmetic and, later on, mathematics. In neither

of these subjects did I ever succeed in bringing my mind seriously to

bear upon the tasks that were set me. In the matter of the Classics,

too, I paid only just as much attention as was absolutely necessary to

enable me to get a grasp of them; for I was stimulated by the desire to

reproduce them to myself dramatically. In this way Greek particularly

attracted me, because the stories from Greek mythology so seized upon

my fancy that I tried to imagine their heroes as speaking to me in

their native tongue, so as to satisfy my longing for complete

familiarity with them. In these circumstances it will be readily

understood that the grammar of the language seemed to me merely a

tiresome obstacle, and by no means in itself an interesting branch of

knowledge.

The fact that my study of languages was never very thorough, perhaps

best explains the fact that I was afterwards so ready to cease

troubling about them altogether. Not until much later did this study

really begin to interest me again, and that was only when I learnt to

understand its physiological and philosophical side, as it was revealed

to our modern Germanists by the pioneer work of Jakob Grimm. Then, when

it was too late to apply myself thoroughly to a study which at last I

had learned to appreciate, I regretted that this newer conception of

the study of languages had not yet found acceptance in our colleges

when I was younger.

Nevertheless, by my successes in philological work I managed to attract

the attention of a young teacher at the Kreuz Grammar School, a Master

of Arts named Sillig, who proved very helpful to me. He often permitted

me to visit him and show him my work, consisting of metric translations

and a few original poems, and he always seemed very pleased with my

efforts in recitation. What he thought of me may best be judged perhaps

from the fact that he made me, as a boy of about twelve, recite not

only ‘Hector’s Farewell’ from the Iliad, but even Hamlet’s celebrated

monologue. On one occasion, when I was in the fourth form of the

school, one of my schoolfellows, a boy named Starke, suddenly fell

dead, and the tragic event aroused so much sympathy, that not only did

the whole school attend the funeral, but the headmaster also ordered

that a poem should be written in commemoration of the ceremony, and

that this poem should be published. Of the various poems submitted,

among which there was one by myself, prepared very hurriedly, none

seemed to the master worthy of the honour which he had promised, and he

therefore announced his intention of substituting one of his own

speeches in the place of our rejected attempts. Much distressed by this

decision, I quickly sought out Professor Sillig, with the view of

urging him to intervene on behalf of my poem. We thereupon went through

it together. Its well-constructed and well-rhymed verses, written in

stanzas of eight lines, determined him to revise the whole of it

carefully. Much of its imagery was bombastic, and far beyond the

conception of a boy of my age. I recollect that in one part I had drawn

extensively from the monologue in Addison’s Cato, spoken by Cato just

before his suicide. I had met with this passage in an English grammar,

and it had made a deep impression upon me. The words: ‘The stars shall

fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age, and nature sink in

years,’ which, at all events, were a direct plagiarism, made Sillig

laugh—a thing at which I was a little offended. However, I felt very

grateful to him, for, thanks to the care and rapidity with which he

cleared my poem of these extravagances, it was eventually accepted by

the headmaster, printed, and widely circulated.

The effect of this success was extraordinary, both on my schoolfellows

and on my own family. My mother devoutly folded her hands in

thankfulness, and in my own mind my vocation seemed quite a settled

thing. It was clear, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that I was

destined to be a poet. Professor Sillig wished me to compose a grand

epic, and suggested as a subject ‘The Battle of Parnassus,’ as

described by Pausanias. His reasons for this choice were based upon the

legend related by Pausanias, viz., that in the second century B.C. the

Muses from Parnassus aided the combined Greek armies against the

destructive invasion of the Gauls by provoking a panic among the

latter. I actually began my heroic poem in hexameter verse, but could

not get through the first canto.

Not being far enough advanced in the language to understand the Greek

tragedies thoroughly in the original, my own attempts to construct a

tragedy in the Greek form were greatly influenced by the fact that

quite by accident I came across August Apel’s clever imitation of this

style in his striking poems ‘Polyidos’ and ‘Aitolier.’ For my theme I

selected the death of Ulysses, from a fable of Hyginus, according to

which the aged hero is killed by his son, the offspring of his union

with Calypso. But I did not get very far with this work either, before

I gave it up.

My mind became so bent upon this sort of thing, that duller studies

naturally ceased to interest me. The mythology, legends, and, at last,

the history of Greece alone attracted me.

I was fond of life, merry with my companions, and always ready for a

joke or an adventure. Moreover, I was constantly forming friendships,

almost passionate in their ardour, with one or the other of my

comrades, and in choosing my associates I was mainly influenced by the

extent to which my new acquaintance appealed to my eccentric

imagination. At one time it would be poetising and versifying that

decided my choice of a friend; at another, theatrical enterprises,

while now and then it would be a longing for rambling and mischief.

Furthermore, when I reached my thirteenth year, a great change came

over our family affairs. My sister Rosalie, who had become the chief

support of our household, obtained an advantageous engagement at the

theatre in Prague, whither mother and children removed in 1820, thus

giving up the Dresden home altogether. I was left behind in Dresden, so

that I might continue to attend the Kreuz Grammar School until I was

ready to go up to the university. I was therefore sent to board and

lodge with a family named Bohme, whose sons I had known at school, and

in whose house I already felt quite at home. With my residence in this

somewhat rough, poor, and not particularly well-conducted family, my

years of dissipation began. I no longer enjoyed the quiet retirement

necessary for work, nor the gentle, spiritual influence of my sisters’

companionship. On the contrary, I was plunged into a busy, restless

life, full of rough horseplay and of quarrels. Nevertheless, it was

there that I began to experience the influence of the gentler sex in a

manner hitherto unknown to me, as the grown-up daughters of the family

and their friends often filled the scanty and narrow rooms of the

house. Indeed, my first recollections of boyish love date from this

period. I remember a very beautiful young girl, whose name, if I am not

mistaken, was Amalie Hoffmann, coming to call at the house one Sunday.

She was charmingly dressed, and her appearance as she came into the

room literally struck me dumb with amazement. On other occasions I

recollect pretending to be too helplessly sleepy to move, so that I

might be carried up to bed by the girls, that being, as they thought,

the only remedy for my condition. And I repeated this, because I found,

to my surprise, that their attention under these circumstances brought

me into closer and more gratifying proximity with them.

The most important event during this year of separation from my family

was, however, a short visit I paid to them in Prague. In the middle of

the winter my mother came to Dresden, and took me hack with her to

Prague for a week. Her way of travelling was quite unique. To the end

of her days she preferred the more dangerous mode of travelling in a

hackney carriage to the quicker journey by mail-coach, so that we spent

three whole days in the bitter cold on the road from Dresden to Prague.

The journey over the Bohemian mountains often seemed to be beset with

the greatest dangers, but happily we survived our thrilling adventures

and at last arrived in Prague, where I was suddenly plunged into

entirely new surroundings.

For a long time the thought of leaving Saxony on another visit to

Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite a romantic attraction for

me. The foreign nationality, the broken German of the people, the

peculiar headgear of the women, the native wines, the harp-girls and

musicians, and finally, the ever present signs of Catholicism, its

numerous chapels and shrines, all produced on me a strangely

exhilarating impression. This was probably due to my craze for

everything theatrical and spectacular, as distinguished from simple

bourgeois customs. Above all, the antique splendour and beauty of the

incomparable city of Prague became indelibly stamped on my fancy. Even

in my own family surroundings I found attractions to which I had

hitherto been a stranger. For instance, my sister Ottilie, only two

years older than myself, had won the devoted friendship of a noble

family, that of Count Pachta, two of whose daughters, Jenny and

Auguste, who had long been famed as the leading beauties of Prague, had

become fondly attached to her. To me, such people and such a connection

were something quite novel and enchanting. Besides these, certain beaux

esprits of Prague, among them W. Marsano, a strikingly handsome and

charming man, were frequent visitors at our house. They often earnestly

discussed the tales of Hoffmann, which at that date were comparatively

new, and had created some sensation. It was now that I made my first

though rather superficial acquaintance with this romantic visionary,

and so received a stimulus which influenced me for many years even to

the point of infatuation, and gave me very peculiar ideas of the world.

In the following spring, 1827, I repeated this journey from Dresden to

Prague, but this time on foot, and accompanied by my friend Rudolf

Bohme. Our tour was full of adventure. We got to within an hour of

Teplitz the first night, and next day we had to get a lift in a wagon,

as we had walked our feet sore; yet this only took us as far as

Lowositz, as our funds had quite run out. Under a scorching sun, hungry

and half-fainting, we wandered along bypaths through absolutely unknown

country, until at sundown we happened to reach the main road just as an

elegant travelling coach came in sight. I humbled my pride so far as to

pretend I was a travelling journeyman, and begged the distinguished

travellers for alms, while my friend timidly hid himself in the ditch

by the roadside. Luckily we decided to seek shelter for the night in an

inn, where we took counsel whether we should spend the alms just

received on a supper or a bed. We decided for the supper, proposing to

spend the night under the open sky. While we were refreshing ourselves,

a strange-looking wayfarer entered. He wore a black velvet skull-cap,

to which a metal lyre was attached like a cockade, and on his back he

bore a harp. Very cheerfully he set down his instrument, made himself

comfortable, and called for a good meal. He intended to stay the night,

and to continue his way next day to Prague, where he lived, and whither

he was returning from Hanover.

My good spirits and courage were stimulated by the jovial manners of

this merry fellow, who constantly repeated his favourite motto, ‘non

plus ultra.’ We soon struck up an acquaintance, and in return for my

confidence, the strolling player’s attitude to me was one of almost

touching sympathy. It was agreed that we should continue our journey

together next day on foot. He lent me two twenty-kreutzer pieces (about

ninepence), and allowed me to write my Prague address in his

pocket-book. I was highly delighted at this personal success. My

harpist grew extravagantly merry; a good deal of Czernosek wine was

drunk; he sang and played on his harp like a madman, continually

reiterating his ‘non plus ultra’ till at last, overcome with wine, he

fell down on the straw, which had been spread out on the floor for our

common bed. When the sun once more peeped in, we could not rouse him,

and we had to make up our minds to set off in the freshness of the

early morning without him, feeling convinced that the sturdy fellow

would overtake us during the day. But it was in vain that we looked out

for him on the road and during our subsequent stay in Prague. Indeed,

it was not until several weeks later that the extraordinary fellow

turned up at my mother’s, not so much to collect payment of his loan,

as to inquire about the welfare of the young friend to whom that loan

had been made.

The remainder of our journey was very fatiguing, and the joy I felt

when I at last beheld Prague from the summit of a hill, at about an

hour’s distance, simply beggars description. Approaching the suburbs,

we were for the second time met by a splendid carriage, from which my

sister Ottilie’s two lovely friends called out to me in astonishment.

They had recognised me immediately, in spite of my terribly sunburnt

face, blue linen blouse, and bright red cotton cap. Overwhelmed with

shame, and with my heart beating like mad, I could hardly utter a word,

and hurried away to my mother’s to attend at once to the restoration of

my sunburnt complexion. To this task I devoted two whole days, during

which I swathed my face in parsley poultices; and not till then did I

seek the pleasures of society. When, on the return journey, I looked

back once more on Prague from the same hilltop, I burst into tears,

flung myself on the earth, and for a long time could not be induced by

my astonished companion to pursue the journey. I was downcast for the

rest of the way, and we arrived home in Dresden without any further

adventures.

During the same year I again gratified my fancy for long excursions on

foot by joining a numerous company of grammar school boys, consisting

of pupils of several classes and of various ages, who had decided to

spend their summer holidays in a tour to Leipzig. This journey also

stands out among the memories of my youth, by reason of the strong

impressions it left behind. The characteristic feature of our party was

that we all aped the student, by behaving and dressing extravagantly in

the most approved student fashion. After going as far as Meissen on the

market-boat, our path lay off the main road, through villages with

which I was as yet unfamiliar. We spent the night in the vast barn of a

village inn, and our adventures were of the wildest description. There

we saw a large marionette show, with almost life-sized figures. Our

entire party settled themselves in the auditorium, where their presence

was a source of some anxiety to the managers, who had only reckoned on

an audience of peasants. Genovefa was the play given. The ceaseless

silly jests, and constant interpolations and jeering interruptions, in

which our corps of embryo-students indulged, finally aroused the anger

even of the peasants, who had come prepared to weep. I believe I was

the only one of our party who was pained by these impertinences, and in

spite of involuntary laughter at some of my comrades’ jokes, I not only

defended the play itself, but also its original, simple-minded

audience. A popular catch-phrase which occurred in the piece has ever

since remained stamped on my memory. ‘Golo’ instructs the inevitable

Kaspar that, when the Count Palatine returns home, he must ‘tickle him

behind, so that he should feel it in front’ (hinten zu kitzeln, dass er

es vorne fuhle). Kaspar conveys Golo’s order verbatim to the Count, and

the latter reproaches the unmasked rogue in the following terms,

uttered with the greatest pathos: ‘O Golo, Golo! thou hast told Kaspar

to tickle me behind, so that I shall feel it in front!’

From Grimma our party rode into Leipzig in open carriages, but not

until we had first carefully removed all the outward emblems of the

undergraduate, lest the local students we were likely to meet might

make us rue our presumption.

Since my first visit, when I was eight years old, I had only once

returned to Leipzig, and then for a very brief stay, and under

circumstances very similar to those of the earlier visit. I now renewed

my fantastic impressions of the Thome house, but this time, owing to my

more advanced education, I looked forward to more intelligent

intercourse with my uncle Adolph. An opening for this was soon provided

by my joyous astonishment on learning that a bookcase in the large

anteroom, containing a goodly collection of books, was my property,

having been left me by my father. I went through the books with my

uncle, selected at once a number of Latin authors in the handsome

Zweibruck edition, along with sundry attractive looking works of poetry

and belles-lettres, and arranged for them to be sent to Dresden. During

this visit I was very much interested in the life of the students. In

addition to my impressions of the theatre and of Prague, now came those

of the so-called swaggering undergraduate. A great change had taken

place in this class. When, as a lad of eight, I had my first glimpse of

students, their long hair, their old German costume with the black

velvet skull-cap and the shirt collar turned back from the bare neck,

had quite taken my fancy. But since that time the old student

‘associations’ which affected this fashion had disappeared in the face

of police prosecutions. On the other hand, the national student clubs,

no less peculiar to Germans, had become conspicuous. These clubs

adopted, more or less, the fashion of the day, but with some little

exaggeration. Albeit, their dress was clearly distinguishable from that

of other classes, owing to its picturesqueness, and especially its

display of the various club-colours. The ‘Comment,’ that compendium of

pedantic rules of conduct for the preservation of a defiant and

exclusive esprit de corps, as opposed to the bourgeois classes, had its

fantastic side, just as the most philistine peculiarities of the

Germans have, if you probe them deeply enough. To me it represented the

idea of emancipation from the yoke of school and family. The longing to

become a student coincided unfortunately with my growing dislike for

drier studies and with my ever-increasing fondness for cultivating

romantic poetry. The results of this soon showed themselves in my

resolute attempts to make a change.

At the time of my confirmation, at Easter, 1827, I had considerable

doubt about this ceremony, and I already felt a serious falling off of

my reverence for religious observances. The boy who, not many years

before, had gazed with agonised sympathy on the altarpiece in the Kreuz

Kirche (Church of the Holy Cross), and had yearned with ecstatic

fervour to hang upon the Cross in place of the Saviour, had now so far

lost his veneration for the clergyman, whose preparatory confirmation

classes he attended, as to be quite ready to make fun of him, and even

to join with his comrades in withholding part of his class fees, and

spending the money in sweets. How matters stood with me spiritually was

revealed to me, almost to my horror, at the Communion service, when I

walked in procession with my fellow-communicants to the altar to the

sound of organ and choir. The shudder with which I received the Bread

and Wine was so ineffaceably stamped on my memory, that I never again

partook of the Communion, lest I should do so with levity. To avoid

this was all the easier for me, seeing that among Protestants such

participation is not compulsory.

I soon, however, seized, or rather created, an opportunity of forcing a

breach with the Kreuz Grammar School, and thus compelled my family to

let me go to Leipzig. In self-defence against what I considered an

unjust punishment with which I was threatened by the assistant

headmaster, Baumgarten-Crusius, for whom I otherwise had great respect,

I asked to be discharged immediately from the school on the ground of

sudden summons to join my family in Leipzig. I had already left the

Bohme household three months before, and now lived alone in a small

garret, where I was waited on by the widow of a court plate-washer, who

at every meal served up the familiar thin Saxon coffee as almost my

sole nourishment. In this attic I did little else but write verses.

Here, too, I formed the first outlines of that stupendous tragedy which

afterwards filled my family with such consternation. The irregular

habits I acquired through this premature domestic independence induced

my anxious mother to consent very readily to my removal to Leipzig, the

more so as a part of our scattered family had already migrated there.

My longing for Leipzig, originally aroused by the fantastic impressions

I had gained there, and later by my enthusiasm for a student’s life,

had recently been still further stimulated. I had seen scarcely

anything of my sister Louisa, at that time a girl of about twenty-two,

as she had gone to the theatre of Breslau shortly after our

stepfather’s death. Quite recently she had been in Dresden for a few

days on her way to Leipzig, having accepted an engagement at the

theatre there. This meeting with my almost unknown sister, her hearty

manifestations of joy at seeing me again, as well as her sprightly,

merry disposition, quite won my heart. To live with her seemed an

alluring prospect, especially as my mother and Ottilie had joined her

for a while. For the first time a sister had treated me with some

tenderness. When at last I reached Leipzig at Christmas in the same

year (1827), and there found my mother with Ottilie and Cecilia (my

half-sister), I fancied myself in heaven. Great changes, however, had

already taken place. Louisa was betrothed to a respected and well-to-do

bookseller, Friedrich Brockhaus. This gathering together of the

relatives of the penniless bride-elect did not seem to trouble her

remarkably kind-hearted fiance. But my sister may have become uneasy on

the subject, for she soon gave me to understand that she was not taking

it quite in good part. Her desire to secure an entree into the higher

social circles of bourgeois life naturally produced a marked change in

her manner, at one time so full of fun, and of this I gradually became

so keenly sensible that finally we were estranged for a time. Moreover,

I unfortunately gave her good cause to reprove my conduct. After I got

to Leipzig I quite gave up my studies and all regular school work,

probably owing to the arbitrary and pedantic system in vogue at the

school there.

In Leipzig there were two higher-class schools, one called St. Thomas’s

School, and the other, and the more modern, St. Nicholas’s School. The

latter at that time enjoyed a better reputation than the former; so

there I had to go. But the council of teachers before whom I appeared

for my entrance examination at the New Year (1828) thought fit to

maintain the dignity of their school by placing me for a time in the

upper third form, whereas at the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden I had

been in the second form. My disgust at having to lay aside my

Homer—from which I had already made written translations of twelve

songs—and take up the lighter Greek prose writers was indescribable. It

hurt my feelings so deeply, and so influenced my behaviour, that I

never made a friend of any teacher in the school. The unsympathetic

treatment I met with made me all the more obstinate, and various other

circumstances in my position only added to this feeling. While student

life, as I saw it day by day, inspired me ever more and more with its

rebellious spirit, I unexpectedly met with another cause for despising

the dry monotony of school regime. I refer to the influence of my

uncle, Adolph Wagner, which, though he was long unconscious of it, went

a long way towards moulding the growing stripling that I then was.

The fact that my romantic tastes were not based solely on a tendency to

superficial amusement was shown by my ardent attachment to this learned

relative. In his manner and conversation he was certainly very

attractive; the many-sidedness of his knowledge, which embraced not

only philology but also philosophy and general poetic literature,

rendered intercourse with him a most entertaining pastime, as all those

who knew him used to admit. On the other hand, the fact that he was

denied the gift of writing with equal charm, or clearness, was a

singular defect which seriously lessened his influence upon the

literary world, and, in fact, often made him appear ridiculous, as in a

written argument he would perpetrate the most pompous and involved

sentences. This weakness could not have alarmed me, because in the hazy

period of my youth the more incomprehensible any literary extravagance

was, the more I admired it; besides which, I had more experience of his

conversation than of his writings. He also seemed to find pleasure in

associating with the lad who could listen with so much heart and soul.

Yet unfortunately, possibly in the fervour of his discourses, of which

he was not a little proud, he forgot that their substance, as well as

their form, was far above my youthful powers of comprehension. I called

daily to accompany him on his constitutional walk beyond the city

gates, and I shrewdly suspect that we often provoked the smiles of

those passers-by who overheard the profound and often earnest

discussions between us. The subjects generally ranged over everything

serious or sublime throughout the whole realm of knowledge. I took the

most enthusiastic interest in his copious library, and tasted eagerly

of almost all branches of literature, without really grounding myself

in any one of them.

My uncle was delighted to find in me a very willing listener to his

recital of classic tragedies. He had made a translation of Oedipus,

and, according to his intimate friend Tieck, justly flattered himself

on being an excellent reader.

I remember once, when he was sitting at his desk reading out a Greek

tragedy to me, it did not annoy him when I fell fast asleep, and he

afterwards pretended he had not noticed it. I was also induced to spend

my evenings with him, owing to the friendly and genial hospitality his

wife showed me. A very great change had come over my uncle’s life since

my first acquaintance with him at Jeannette Thome’s. The home which he,

together with his sister Friederike, had found in his friend’s house

seemed, as time went on, to have brought in its train duties that were

irksome. As his literary work assured him a modest income, he

eventually deemed it more in accordance with his dignity to make a home

of his own. A friend of his, of the same age as himself, the sister of

the aesthete Wendt of Leipzig, who afterwards became famous, was chosen

by him to keep house for him. Without saying a word to Jeannette,

instead of going for his usual afternoon walk he went to the church

with his chosen bride, and got through the marriage ceremonies as

quickly as possible; and it was only on his return that he informed us

he was leaving, and would have his things removed that very day. He

managed to meet the consternation, perhaps also the reproaches, of his

elderly friend with quiet composure; and to the end of his life he

continued his regular daily visits to ‘Mam’selle Thome,’ who at times

would coyly pretend to sulk. It was only poor Friederike who seemed

obliged at times to atone for her brother’s sudden unfaithfulness.

What attracted me in my uncle most strongly was his blunt contempt of

the modern pedantry in State, Church, and School, to which he gave vent

with some humour. Despite the great moderation of his usual views on

life, he yet produced on me the effect of a thorough free-thinker. I

was highly delighted by his contempt for the pedantry of the schools.

Once, when I had come into serious conflict with all the teachers of

the Nicolai School, and the rector of the school had approached my

uncle, as the only male representative of my family, with a serious

complaint about my behaviour, my uncle asked me during a stroll round

the town, with a calm smile as though he were speaking to one of his

own age, what I had been up to with the people at school. I explained

the whole affair to him, and described the punishment to which I had

been subjected, and which seemed to me unjust. He pacified me, and

exhorted me to be patient, telling me to comfort myself with the

Spanish proverb, un rey no puede morir, which he explained as meaning

that the ruler of a school must of necessity always be in the right.

He could not, of course, help noticing, to his alarm, the effect upon

me of this kind of conversation, which I was far too young to

appreciate. Although it annoyed me one day, when I wanted to begin

reading Goethe’s Faust, to hear him say quietly that I was too young to

understand it, yet, according to my thinking, his other conversations

about our own great poets, and even about Shakespeare and Dante, had

made me so familiar with these sublime figures that I had now for some

time been secretly busy working out the great tragedy I had already

conceived in Dresden. Since my trouble at school I had devoted all my

energies, which ought by rights to have been exclusively directed to my

school duties, to the accomplishment of this task. In this secret work

I had only one confidante, my sister Ottilie, who now lived with me at

my mother’s. I can remember the misgivings and alarm which the first

confidential communication of my great poetic enterprise aroused in my

good sister; yet she affectionately suffered the tortures I sometimes

inflicted on her by reciting to her in secret, but not without emotion,

portions of my work as it progressed. Once, when I was reciting to her

one of the most gruesome scenes, a heavy thunderstorm came on. When the

lightning flashed quite close to us, and the thunder rolled, my sister

felt bound to implore me to stop; but she soon found it was hopeless,

and continued to endure it with touching devotion.

But a more significant storm was brewing on the horizon of my life. My

neglect of school reached such a point that it could not but lead to a

rupture. Whilst my dear mother had no presentiment of this, I awaited

the catastrophe with longing rather than with fear.

In order to meet this crisis with dignity I at length decided to

surprise my family by disclosing to them the secret of my tragedy,

which was now completed. They were to be informed of this great event

by my uncle. I thought I could rely upon his hearty recognition of my

vocation as a great poet on account of the deep harmony between us on

all other questions of life, science, and art. I therefore sent him my

voluminous manuscript, with a long letter which I thought would please

him immensely. In this I communicated to him first my ideas with regard

to the St. Nicholas’s School, and then my firm determination from that

time forward not to allow any mere school pedantry to check my free

development. But the event turned out very different from what I had

expected. It was a great shock to them. My uncle, quite conscious that

he had been indiscreet, paid a visit to my mother and brother-in-law,

in order to report the misfortune that had befallen the family,

reproaching himself for the fact that his influence over me had not

always, perhaps, been for my good. To me he wrote a serious letter of

discouragement; and to this day I cannot understand why he showed so

small a sense of humour in understanding my bad behaviour. To my

surprise he merely said that he reproached himself for having corrupted

me by conversations unsuited to my years, but he made no attempt to

explain to me good-naturedly the error of my ways.

The crime this boy of fifteen had committed was, as I said before, to

have written a great tragedy, entitled Leubald und Adelaïde.

The manuscript of this drama has unfortunately been lost, but I can

still see it clearly in my mind’s eye. The handwriting was most

affected, and the backward-sloping tall letters with which I had aimed

at giving it an air of distinction had already been compared by one of

my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. In this composition I had

constructed a drama in which I had drawn largely upon Shakespeare’s

Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, and Goethe’s Götz van Berlichingen. The

plot was really based on a modification of Hamlet, the difference

consisting in the fact that my hero is so completely carried away by

the appearance of the ghost of his father, who has been murdered under

similar circumstances, and demands vengeance, that he is driven to

fearful deeds of violence; and, with a series of murders on his

conscience, he eventually goes mad. Leubald, whose character is a

mixture of Hamlet and Harry Hotspur, had promised his father’s ghost to

wipe from the face of the earth the whole race of Roderick, as the

ruthless murderer of the best of fathers was named. After having slain

Roderick himself in mortal combat, and subsequently all his sons and

other relations who supported him, there was only one obstacle that

prevented Leubald from fulfilling the dearest wish of his heart, which

was to be united in death with the shade of his father: a child of

Roderick’s was still alive. During the storming of his castle the

murderer’s daughter had been carried away into safety by a faithful

suitor, whom she, however, detested. I had an irresistible impulse to

call this maiden ‘Adelaïde.’ As even at that early age I was a great

enthusiast for everything really German, I can only account for the

obviously un-German name of my heroine by my infatuation for

Beethoven’s Adelaïde, whose tender refrain seemed to me the symbol of

all loving appeals. The course of my drama was now characterised by the

strange delays which took place in the accomplishment of this last

murder of vengeance, the chief obstacle to which lay in the sudden

passionate love which arose between Leubald and Adelaïde. I succeeded

in representing the birth and avowal of this love by means of

extraordinary adventures. Adelaïde was once more stolen away by a

robber-knight from the lover who had been sheltering her. After Leubald

had thereupon sacrificed the lover and all his relations, he hastened

to the robber’s castle, driven thither less by a thirst for blood than

by a longing for death. For this reason he regrets his inability to

storm the robber’s castle forthwith, because it is well defended, and,

moreover, night is fast falling; he is therefore obliged to pitch his

tent. After raving for a while he sinks down for the first time

exhausted, but being urged, like his prototype Hamlet, by the spirit of

his father to complete his vow of vengeance, he himself suddenly falls

into the power of the enemy during a night assault. In the subterranean

dungeons of the castle he meets Roderick’s daughter for the first time.

She is a prisoner like himself, and is craftily devising flight. Under

circumstances in which she produces on him the impression of a heavenly

vision, she makes her appearance before him. They fall in love, and fly

together into the wilderness, where they realise that they are deadly

enemies. The incipient insanity which was already noticeable in Leubald

breaks out more violently after this discovery, and everything that can

be done to intensify it is contributed by the ghost of his father,

which continually comes between the advances of the lovers. But this

ghost is not the only disturber of the conciliating love of Leubald and

Adelaïde. The ghost of Roderick also appears, and according to the

method followed by Shakespeare in Richard III., he is joined by the

ghosts of all the other members of Adelaïde’s family whom Leubald has

slain. From the incessant importunities of these ghosts Leubald seeks

to free himself by means of sorcery, and calls to his aid a rascal

named Flamming. One of Macbeth’s witches is summoned to lay the ghosts;

as she is unable to do this efficiently, the furious Leubald sends her

also to the devil; but with her dying breath she despatches the whole

crowd of spirits who serve her to join the ghosts of those already

pursuing him. Leubald, tormented beyond endurance, and now at last

raving mad, turns against his beloved, who is the apparent cause of all

his misery. He stabs her in his fury; then finding himself suddenly at

peace, he sinks his head into her lap, and accepts her last caresses as

her life-blood streams over his own dying body.

I had not omitted the smallest detail that could give this plot its

proper colouring, and had drawn on all my knowledge of the tales of the

old knights, and my acquaintance with Lear and Macbeth, to furnish my

drama with the most vivid situations. But one of the chief

characteristics of its poetical form I took from the pathetic,

humorous, and powerful language of Shakespeare. The boldness of my

grandiloquent and bombastic expressions roused my uncle Adolph’s alarm

and astonishment. He was unable to understand how I could have selected

and used with inconceivable exaggeration precisely the most extravagant

forms of speech to be found in Lear and Götz von Berlichingen.

Nevertheless, even after everybody had deafened me with their laments

over my lost time and perverted talents, I was still conscious of a

wonderful secret solace in the face of the calamity that had befallen

me. I knew, a fact that no one else could know, namely, that my work

could only be rightly judged when set to the music which I had resolved

to write for it, and which I intended to start composing immediately.

I must now explain my position with respect to music hitherto. For this

purpose I must go back to my earliest attempts in the art. In my family

two of my sisters were musical; the elder one, Rosalie, played the

piano, without, however, displaying any marked talent. Clara was more

gifted; in addition to a great deal of musical feeling, and a fine rich

touch on the piano, she possessed a particularly sympathetic voice, the

development of which was so premature and remarkable that, under the

tuition of Mieksch, her singing master, who was famous at that time,

she was apparently ready for the role of a prima donna as early as her

sixteenth year, and made her debut at Dresden in Italian opera as

‘Cenerentola’ in Rossini’s opera of that name. Incidentally I may

remark that this premature development proved injurious to Clara’s

voice, and was detrimental to her whole career. As I have said, music

was represented in our family by these two sisters. It was chiefly

owing to Clara’s career that the musical conductor C. M. von Weber

often came to our house. His visits were varied by those of the great

male-soprano Sassaroli; and in addition to these two representatives of

German and Italian music, we also had the company of Mieksch, her

singing master. It was on these occasions that I as a child first heard

German and Italian music discussed, and learnt that any one who wished

to ingratiate himself with the Court must show a preference for Italian

music, a fact which led to very practical results in our family

council. Clara’s talent, while her voice was still sound, was the

object of competition between the representatives of Italian and German

opera. I can remember quite distinctly that from the very beginning I

declared myself in favour of German opera; my choice was determined by

the tremendous impression made on me by the two figures of Sassaroli

and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge pot-bellied giant,

horrified me with his high effeminate voice, his astonishing

volubility, and his incessant screeching laughter. In spite of his

boundless good-nature and amiability, particularly to my family, I took

an uncanny dislike to him. On account of this dreadful person, the

sound of Italian, either spoken or sung, seemed to my ears almost

diabolical; and when, in consequence of my poor sister’s misfortune, I

heard them often talking about Italian intrigues and cabals, I

conceived so strong a dislike for everything connected with this nation

that even in much later years I used to feel myself carried away by an

impulse of utter detestation and abhorrence.

The less frequent visits of Weber, on the other hand, seemed to have

produced upon me those first sympathetic impressions which I have never

since lost. In contrast to Sassaroli’s repulsive figure, Weber’s really

refined, delicate, and intellectual appearance excited my ecstatic

admiration. His narrow face and finely-cut features, his vivacious

though often half-closed eyes, captivated and thrilled me; whilst even

the bad limp with which he walked, and which I often noticed from our

windows when the master was making his way home past our house from the

fatiguing rehearsals, stamped the great musician in my imagination as

an exceptional and almost superhuman being. When, as a boy of nine, my

mother introduced me to him, and he asked me what I was going to be,

whether I wanted perhaps to be a musician, my mother told him that,

though I was indeed quite mad on Freischutz, yet she had as yet seen

nothing in me which indicated any musical talent.

This showed correct observation on my mother’s part; nothing had made

so great an impression on me as the music of Freischutz, and I tried in

every possible way to procure a repetition of the impressions I had

received from it, but, strange to say, least of all by the study of

music itself. Instead of this, I contented myself with hearing bits

from Freischutz played by my sisters. Yet my passion for it gradually

grew so strong that I can remember taking a particular fancy for a

young man called Spiess, chiefly because he could play the overture to

Freischutz, which I used to ask him to do whenever I met him. It was

chiefly the introduction to this overture which at last led me to

attempt, without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to

play this piece in my own peculiar way, for, oddly enough, I was the

only child in our family who had not been given music lessons. This was

probably due to my mother’s anxiety to keep me away from any artistic

interests of this kind in case they might arouse in me a longing for

the theatre.

When I was about twelve years old, however, my mother engaged a tutor

for me named Humann, from whom I received regular music lessons, though

only of a very mediocre description. As soon as I had acquired a very

imperfect knowledge of fingering I begged to be allowed to play

overtures in the form of duets, always keeping Weber as the goal of my

ambition. When at length I had got so far as to be able to play the

overture to Freischutz myself, though in a very faulty manner, I felt

the object of my study had been attained, and I had no inclination to

devote any further attention to perfecting my technique.

Yet I had attained this much: I was no longer dependent for music on

the playing of others; from this time forth I used to try and play,

albeit very imperfectly, everything I wanted to know. I also tried

Mozart’s Don Juan, but was unable to get any pleasure out of it, mainly

because the Italian text in the arrangement for the piano placed the

music in a frivolous light in my eyes, and much in it seemed to me

trivial and unmanly. (I can remember that when my sister used to sing

Zerlinen’s ariette, Batti, batti, ben Masetto, the music repelled me,

as it seemed so mawkish and effeminate.)

On the other hand, my bent for music grew stronger and stronger, and I

now tried to possess myself of my favourite pieces by making my own

copies. I can remember the hesitation with which my mother for the

first time gave me the money to buy the scored paper on which I copied

out Weber’s Lutzow’s Jagd, which was the first piece of music I

transcribed.

Music was still a secondary occupation with me when the news of Weber’s

death and the longing to learn his music to Oberon fanned my enthusiasm

into flame again. This received fresh impetus from the afternoon

concerts in the Grosser Garten at Dresden, where I often heard my

favourite music played by Zillmann’s Town Band, as I thought,

exceedingly well. The mysterious joy I felt in hearing an orchestra

play quite close to me still remains one of my most pleasant memories.

The mere tuning up of the instruments put me in a state of mystic

excitement; even the striking of fifths on the violin seemed to me like

a greeting from the spirit world—which, I may mention incidentally, had

a very real meaning for me. When I was still almost a baby, the sound

of these fifths, which has always excited me, was closely associated in

my mind with ghosts and spirits. I remember that even much later in

life I could never pass the small palace of Prince Anthony, at the end

of the Ostra Allee in Dresden, without a shudder; for it was there I

had first heard the sound of a violin, a very common experience to me

afterwards. It was close by me, and seemed to my ears to come from the

stone figures with which this palace is adorned, some of which are

provided with musical instruments. When I took up my post as musical

conductor at Dresden, and had to pay my official visit to Morgenroth,

the President of the Concert Committee, an elderly gentleman who lived

for many years opposite that princely palace, it seemed odd to find

that the player of fifths who had so strongly impressed my musical

fancy as a boy was anything but a supernatural spectre. And when I saw

the well-known picture in which a skeleton plays on his violin to an

old man on his deathbed, the ghostly character of those very notes

impressed itself with particular force upon my childish imagination.

When at last, as a young man, I used to listen to the Zillmann

Orchestra in the Grosser Garten almost every afternoon, one may imagine

the rapturous thrill with which I drew in all the chaotic variety of

sound that I heard as the orchestra tuned up: the long drawn A of the

oboe, which seemed like a call from the dead to rouse the other

instruments, never failed to raise all my nerves to a feverish pitch of

tension, and when the swelling C in the overture to Freischutz told me

that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic

realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could

hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the

fact that I was such a bad performer on the piano.

Another work also exercised a great fascination over me, namely, the

overture to Fidelio in E major, the introduction to which affected me

deeply. I asked my sisters about Beethoven, and learned that the news

of his death had just arrived. Obsessed as I still was by the terrible

grief caused by Weber’s death, this fresh loss, due to the decease of

this great master of melody, who had only just entered my life, filled

me with strange anguish, a feeling nearly akin to my childish dread of

the ghostly fifths on the violin. It was now Beethoven’s music that I

longed to know more thoroughly; I came to Leipzig, and found his music

to Egmont on the piano at my sister Louisa’s. After that I tried to get

hold of his sonatas. At last, at a concert at the Gewandthaus, I heard

one of the master’s symphonies for the first time; it was the Symphony

in A major. The effect on me was indescribable. To this must be added

the impression produced on me by Beethoven’s features, which I saw in

the lithographs that were circulated everywhere at that time, and by

the fact that he was deaf, and lived a quiet secluded life. I soon

conceived an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique

supernatural being, with whom none could compare. This image was

associated in my brain with that of Shakespeare; in ecstatic dreams I

met both of them, saw and spoke to them, and on awakening found myself

bathed in tears.

It was at this time that I came across Mozart’s Requiem, which formed

the starting-point of my enthusiastic absorption in the works of that

master. His second finale to Don Juan inspired me to include him in my

spirit world.

I was now filled with a desire to compose, as I had before been to

write verse. I had, however, in this case to master the technique of an

entirely separate and complicated subject. This presented greater

difficulties than I had met with in writing verse, which came to me

fairly easily. It was these difficulties that drove me to adopt a

career which bore some resemblance to that of a professional musician,

whose future distinction would be to win the titles of Conductor and

Writer of Opera.

I now wanted to set Leubald und Adelaïde to music, similar to that

which Beethoven wrote to Goethe’s Egmont; the various ghosts from the

spirit world, who were each to display different characteristics, were

to borrow their own distinctive colouring from appropriate musical

accompaniment. In order to acquire the necessary technique of

composition quickly I studied Logier’s Methode des Generalbasses, a

work which was specially recommended to me at a musical lending library

as a suitable text-book from which this art might be easily mastered. I

have distinct recollections that the financial difficulties with which

I was continually harassed throughout my life began at this time. I

borrowed Logier’s book on the weekly payment system, in the fond hope

of having to pay for it only during a few weeks out of the savings of

my weekly pocket-money. But the weeks ran on into months, and I was

still unable to compose as well as I wished. Mr. Frederick Wieck, whose

daughter afterwards married Robert Schumann, was at that time the

proprietor of that lending library. He kept sending me troublesome

reminders of the debt I owed him; and when my bill had almost reached

the price of Logier’s book I had to make a clean breast of the matter

to my family, who thus not only learnt of my financial difficulties in

general, but also of my latest transgression into the domain of music,

from which, of course, at the very most, they expected nothing better

than a repetition of Leubald und Adelaïde.

There was great consternation at home; my mother, sister, and

brother-in-law, with anxious faces, discussed how my studies should be

superintended in future, to prevent my having any further opportunity

for transgressing in this way. No one, however, yet knew the real state

of affairs at school, and they hoped I would soon see the error of my

ways in this case as I had in my former craze for poetry.

But other domestic changes were taking place which necessitated my

being for some little time alone in our house at Leipzig during the

summer of 1829, when I was left entirely to my own devices. It was

during this period that my passion for music rose to an extraordinary

degree. I had secretly been taking lessons in harmony from G. Muller,

afterwards organist at Altenburg, an excellent musician belonging to

the Leipzig orchestra. Although the payment of these lessons was also

destined to get me into hot water at home later on, I could not even

make up to my teacher for the delay in the payment of his fees by

giving him the pleasure of watching me improve in my studies. His

teaching and exercises soon filled me with the greatest disgust, as to

my mind it all seemed so dry. For me music was a spirit, a noble and

mystic monster, and any attempt to regulate it seemed to lower it in my

eyes. I gathered much more congenial instruction about it from

Hoffmann’s Phantasiestucken than from my Leipzig orchestra player; and

now came the time when I really lived and breathed in Hoffmann’s

artistic atmosphere of ghosts and spirits. With my head quite full of

Kreissler, Krespel, and other musical spectres from my favourite

author, I imagined that I had at last found in real life a creature who

resembled them: this ideal musician in whom for a time I fancied I had

discovered a second Kreissler was a man called Flachs. He was a tall,

exceedingly thin man, with a very narrow head and an extraordinary way

of walking, moving, and speaking, whom I had seen at all those open-air

concerts which formed my principal source of musical education. He was

always with the members of the orchestra, speaking exceedingly quickly,

first to one and then the other; for they all knew him, and seemed to

like him. The fact that they were making fun of him I only learned, to

my great confusion, much later. I remember having noticed this strange

figure from my earliest days in Dresden, and I gathered from the

conversations which I overheard that he was indeed well known to all

Dresden musicians. This circumstance alone was sufficient to make me

take a great interest in him; but the point about him which attracted

me more than anything was the manner in which he listened to the

various items in the programme: he used to give peculiar, convulsive

nods of his head, and blow out his cheeks as though with sighs. All

this I regarded as a sign of spiritual ecstasy. I noticed, moreover,

that he was quite alone, that he belonged to no party, and paid no

attention to anything in the garden save the music; whereupon my

identification of this curious being with the conductor Kreissler

seemed quite natural. I was determined to make his acquaintance, and I

succeeded in doing so. Who shall describe my delight when, on going to

call on him at his rooms for the first time, I found innumerable

bundles of scores! I had as yet never seen a score. It is true I

discovered, to my regret, that he possessed nothing either by

Beethoven, Mozart, or Weber; in fact, nothing but immense quantities of

works, masses, and cantatas by composers such as Staerkel, Stamitz,

Steibelt, etc., all of whom were entirely unknown to me. Yet Flachs was

able to tell me so much that was good about them that the respect which

I felt for scores in general helped me to overcome my regret at not

finding anything by my beloved masters. It is true I learnt later that

poor Flachs had only come into the possession of these particular

scores through unscrupulous dealers, who had traded on his weakness of

intellect and palmed off this worthless music on him for large sums of

money. At all events, they were scores, and that was quite enough for

me. Flachs and I became most intimate; we were always seen going about

together—I, a lanky boy of sixteen, and this weird, shaky flaxpole. The

doors of my deserted home were often opened for this strange guest, who

made me play my compositions to him while he ate bread and cheese. In

return, he once arranged one of my airs for wind instruments, and, to

my astonishment, it was actually accepted and played by the band in

Kintschy’s Swiss Chalet. That this man had not the smallest capacity to

teach me anything never once occurred to me; I was so firmly convinced

of his originality that there was no need for him to prove it further

than by listening patiently to my enthusiastic outpourings. But as, in

course of time, several of his own friends joined us, I could not help

noticing that the worthy Flachs was regarded by them all as a

half-witted fool. At first this merely pained me, but a strange

incident unexpectedly occurred which converted me to the general

opinion about him. Flachs was a man of some means, and had fallen into

the toils of a young lady of dubious character who he believed was

deeply in love with him. One day, without warning, I found his house

closed to me, and discovered, to my astonishment, that jealousy was the

cause. The unexpected discovery of this liaison, which was my first

experience of such a case, filled me with a strange horror. My friend

suddenly appeared to me even more mad than he really was. I felt so

ashamed of my persistent blindness that for some time to come I never

went to any of the garden concerts for fear I should meet my sham

Kreissler.

By this time I had composed my first Sonata in D minor. I had also

begun a pastoral play, and had worked it out in what I felt sure must

be an entirely unprecedented way.

I chose Goethe’s Laune der Verliebten as a model for the form and plot

of my work. I scarcely even drafted out the libretto, however, but

worked it out at the same time as the music and orchestration, so that,

while I was writing out one page of the score, I had not even thought

out the words for the next page. I remember distinctly that following

this extraordinary method, although I had not acquired the slightest

knowledge about writing for instruments, I actually worked out a fairly

long passage which finally resolved itself into a scene for three

female voices followed by the air for the tenor. My bent for writing

for the orchestra was so strong that I procured a score of Don Juan,

and set to work on what I then considered a very careful orchestration

of a fairly long air for soprano. I also wrote a quartette in D major

after I had myself sufficiently mastered the alto for the viola, my

ignorance of which had caused me great difficulty only a short time

before, when I was studying a quartette by Haydn.

Armed with these works, I set out in the summer on my first journey as

a musician. My sister Clara, who was married to the singer Wolfram, had

an engagement at the theatre at Magdeburg, whither, in characteristic

fashion, I set forth upon my adventure on foot.

My short stay with my relations provided me with many experiences of

musical life. It was there that I met a new freak, whose influence upon

me I have never been able to forget. He was a musical conductor of the

name of Kuhnlein, a most extraordinary person. Already advanced in

years, delicate and, unfortunately, given to drink, this man

nevertheless impressed one by something striking and vigorous in his

expression. His chief characteristics were an enthusiastic worship of

Mozart and a passionate depreciation of Weber. He had read only one

book—Goethe’s Faust—and in this work there was not a page in which he

had not underlined some passage, and made some remark in praise of

Mozart or in disparagement of Weber. It was to this man that my

brother-in-law confided the compositions which I had brought with me in

order to learn his opinion of my abilities. One evening, as we were

sitting comfortably in an inn, old Kuhnlein came in, and approached us

with a friendly, though serious manner.

I thought I read good news in his features, but when my brother-in-law

asked him what he thought of my work, he answered quietly and calmly,

‘There is not a single good note in it!’ My brother-in-law, who was

accustomed to Kuhnlein’s eccentricity, gave a loud laugh which

reassured me somewhat. It was impossible to get any advice or coherent

reasons for his opinion out of Kuhnlein; he merely renewed his abuse of

Weber and made some references to Mozart which, nevertheless, made a

deep impression upon me, as Kuhnlein’s language was always very heated

and emphatic.

On the other hand, this visit brought me a great treasure, which was

responsible for leading me in a very different direction from that

advised by Kuhnlein. This was the score of Beethoven’s great Quartette

in E flat major, which had only been fairly recently published, and of

which my brother-in-law had a copy made for me. Richer in experience,

and in the possession of this treasure, I returned to Leipzig to the

nursery of my queer musical studies. But my family had now returned

with my sister Rosalie, and I could no longer keep secret from them the

fact that my connection with the school had been entirely suspended,

for a notice was found saying that I had not attended the school for

the last six months. As a complaint addressed by the rector to my uncle

about me had not received adequate attention, the school authorities

had apparently made no further attempts to exercise any supervision

over me, which I had indeed rendered quite impossible by absenting

myself altogether.

A fresh council of war was held in the family to discuss what was to be

done with me. As I laid particular stress on my bent for music, my

relations thought that I ought, at any rate, to learn one instrument

thoroughly. My brother-in-law, Brockhaus, proposed to send me to

Hummel, at Weimar, to be trained as a pianist, but as I loudly

protested that by ‘music’ I meant ‘composing,’ and not ‘playing an

instrument,’ they gave way, and decided to let me have regular lessons

in harmony from Muller, the very musician from whom I had had

instruction on the sly some little while before, and who had not yet

been paid. In return for this I promised faithfully to go back to work

conscientiously at St. Nicholas’s School. I soon grew tired of both. I

could brook no control, and this unfortunately applied to my musical

instruction as well. The dry study of harmony disgusted me more and

more, though I continued to conceive fantasias, sonatas, and overtures,

and work them out by myself. On the other hand, I was spurred on by

ambition to show what I could do at school if I liked. When the Upper

School boys were set the task of writing a poem, I composed a chorus in

Greek, on the recent War of Liberation. I can well imagine that this

Greek poem had about as much resemblance to a real Greek oration and

poetry, as the sonatas and overtures I used to compose at that time had

to thoroughly professional music. My attempt was scornfully rejected as

a piece of impudence. After that I have no further recollections of my

school. My continued attendance was a pure sacrifice on my side, made

out of consideration for my family: I did not pay the slightest

attention to what was taught in the lessons, but secretly occupied

myself all the while with reading any book that happened to attract me.

As my musical instruction also did me no good, I continued in my wilful

process of self-education by copying out the scores of my beloved

masters, and in so doing acquired a neat handwriting, which in later

years has often been admired. I believe my copies of the C minor

Symphony and the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven are still preserved as

souvenirs.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became the mystical goal of all my strange

thoughts and desires about music. I was first attracted to it by the

opinion prevalent among musicians, not only in Leipzig but elsewhere,

that this work had been written by Beethoven when he was already half

mad. It was considered the ‘non plus ultra’ of all that was fantastic

and incomprehensible, and this was quite enough to rouse in me a

passionate desire to study this mysterious work. At the very first

glance at the score, of which I obtained possession with such

difficulty, I felt irresistibly attracted by the long-sustained pure

fifths with which the first phrase opens: these chords, which, as I

related above, had played such a supernatural part in my childish

impressions of music, seemed in this case to form the spiritual keynote

of my own life. This, I thought, must surely contain the secret of all

secrets, and accordingly the first thing to be done was to make the

score my own by a process of laborious copying. I well remember that on

one occasion the sudden appearance of the dawn made such an uncanny

impression on my excited nerves that I jumped into bed with a scream as

though I had seen a ghost. The symphony at that time had not yet been

arranged for the piano; it had found so little favour that the

publisher did not feel inclined to run the risk of producing it. I set

to work at it, and actually composed a complete piano solo, which I

tried to play to myself. I sent my work to Schott, the publisher of the

score, at Mainz. I received in reply a letter saying ‘that the

publishers had not yet decided to issue the Ninth Symphony for the

piano, but that they would gladly keep my laborious work,’ and offered

me remuneration in the shape of the score of the great Missa Solemnis

in D, which I accepted with great pleasure.

In addition to this work I practised the violin for some time, as my

harmony master very rightly considered that some knowledge of the

practical working of this instrument was indispensable for any one who

had the intention of composing for the orchestra. My mother, indeed,

paid the violinist Sipp (who was still playing in the Leipzig orchestra

in 1865) eight thalers for a violin (I do not know what became of it),

with which for quite three months I must have inflicted unutterable

torture upon my mother and sister by practising in my tiny little room.

I got so far as to play certain Variations in F sharp by Mayseder, but

only reached the second or third. After that I have no further

recollections of this practising, in which my family fortunately had

very good reasons of their own for not encouraging me.

But the time now arrived when my interest in the theatre again took a

passionate hold upon me. A new company had been formed in my birthplace

under very good auspices. The Board of Management of the Court Theatre

at Dresden had taken over the management of the Leipzig theatre for

three years. My sister Rosalie was a member of the company, and through

her I could always gain admittance to the performances; and that which

in my childhood had been merely the interest aroused by a strange

spirit of curiosity now became a more deep-seated and conscious

passion.

Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, the plays of Schiller, and to crown

all, Goethe’s Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. The Opera was

giving the first performances of Marschner’s Vampir and Templer und

Judin. The Italian company arrived from Dresden, and fascinated the

Leipzig audience by their consummate mastery of their art. Even I was

almost carried away by the enthusiasm with which the town was

over-whelmed, into forgetting the boyish impressions which Signor

Sassaroli had stamped upon my mind, when another miracle—which also

came to us from Dresden—suddenly gave a new direction to my artistic

feelings and exercised a decisive influence over my whole life. This

consisted of a special performance given by Wilhelmine

Schroder-Devrient, who at that time was at the zenith of her artistic

career, young, beautiful, and ardent, and whose like I have never again

seen on the stage. She made her appearance in Fidelio.

If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced

so profound an impression upon me. Any one who can remember that

wonderful woman at this period of her life must to some extent have

experienced the almost Satanic ardour which the intensely human art of

this incomparable actress poured into his veins. After the performance

I rushed to a friend’s house and wrote a short note to the singer, in

which I briefly told her that from that moment my life had acquired its

true significance, and that if in days to come she should ever hear my

name praised in the world of Art, she must remember that she had that

evening made me what I then swore it was my destiny to become. This

note I left at her hotel, and ran out into the night as if I were mad.

In the year 1842, when I went to Dresden to make my debut with Rienzi,

I paid several visits to the kind-hearted singer, who startled me on

one occasion by repeating this letter word for word. It seemed to have

made an impression on her too, as she had actually kept it.

At this point I feel myself obliged to acknowledge that the great

confusion which now began to prevail in my life, and particularly in my

studies, was due to the inordinate effect this artistic interpretation

had upon me. I did not know where to turn, or how to set about

producing something myself which might place me in direct contact with

the impression I had received, while everything that could not be

brought into touch with it seemed to me so shallow and meaningless that

I could not possibly trouble myself with it. I should have liked to

compose a work worthy of a Schroder-Devrient; but as this was quite

beyond my power, in my head-long despair I let all artistic endeavour

slide, and as my work was also utterly insufficient to absorb me, I

flung myself recklessly into the life of the moment in the company of

strangely chosen associates, and indulged in all kinds of youthful

excesses.

I now entered into all the dissipations of raw manhood, the outward

ugliness and inward emptiness of which make me marvel to this day. My

intercourse with those of my own age had always been the result of pure

chance. I cannot remember that any special inclination or attraction

determined me in the choice of my young friends. While I can honestly

say that I was never in a position to stand aloof out of envy from any

one who was specially gifted, I can only explain my indifference in the

choice of my associates by the fact that through inexperience regarding

the sort of companionship that would be of advantage to me, I cared

only to have some one who would accompany me in my excursions, and to

whom I could pour out my feelings to my heart’s content without caring

what effect it might have upon him. The result of this was that after a

stream of confidences to which my own excitement was the only response,

I at length reached the point when I turned and looked at my friend; to

my astonishment I generally found that there was no question of

response at all, and as soon as I set my heart on drawing something

from him in return, and urged him to confide in me, when he really had

nothing to tell, the connection usually came to an end and left no

trace on my life. In a certain sense my strange relationship with

Flachs was typical of the great majority of my ties in after-life.

Consequently, as no lasting personal bond of friendship ever found its

way into my life, it is easy to understand how delight in the

dissipations of student life could become a passion of some duration,

because in it individual intercourse is entirely replaced by a common

circle of acquaintances. In the midst of rowdyism and ragging of the

most foolish description, I remained quite alone, and it is quite

possible that these frivolities formed a protecting hedge round my

inmost soul, which needed time to grow to its natural strength and not

be weakened by reaching maturity too soon.

My life seemed to break up in all directions; I had to leave St.

Nicholas’s School at Easter 1830, as I was too deeply in disgrace with

the staff of masters ever to hope for any promotion in the University

from that quarter. It was now determined that I should study privately

for six months and then go to St. Thomas’s School, where I should be in

fresh surroundings and be able to work up and qualify in a short time

for the University. My uncle Adolph, with whom I was constantly

renewing my friendship, and who also encouraged me about my music and

exercised a good influence over me in that respect, in spite of the

utter degradation of my life at that time, kept arousing in me an ever

fresh desire for scientific studies. I took private lessons in Greek

from a scholar, and read Sophocles with him. For a time I hoped this

noble poet would again inspire me to get a real hold on the language,

but the hope was vain. I had not chosen the right teacher, and,

moreover, his sitting-room in which we pursued our studies looked out

on a tanyard, the repulsive odour of which affected my nerves so

strongly that I became thoroughly disgusted both with Sophocles and

Greek. My brother-in-law, Brockhaus, who wanted to put me in the way of

earning some pocket-money, gave me the correcting of the proof-sheets

of a new edition he was bringing out of Becker’s Universal History,

revised by Lobell. This gave me a reason for improving by private study

the superficial general instruction on every subject which is given at

school, and I thus acquired the valuable knowledge which I was destined

to have in later life of most of the branches of learning so

uninterestingly taught in class. I must not forget to mention that, to

a certain extent, the attraction exercised over me by this first closer

study of history was due to the fact that it brought me in eightpence a

sheet, and I thus found myself in one of the rarest positions in my

life, actually earning money; yet I should be doing myself an injustice

if I did not bear in mind the vivid impressions I now for the first

time received upon turning my serious attention to those periods of

history with which I had hitherto had a very superficial acquaintance.

All I recollect about my school days in this connection is that I was

attracted by the classical period of Greek history; Marathon, Salamis,

and Thermopylae composed the canon of all that interested me in the

subject. Now for the first time I made an intimate acquaintance with

the Middle Ages and the French Revolution, as my work in correcting

dealt precisely with the two volumes which contained these two periods.

I remember in particular that the description of the Revolution filled

me with sincere hatred for its heroes; unfamiliar as I was with the

previous history of France, my human sympathy was horrified by the

cruelty of the men of that day, and this purely human impulse remained

so strong in me that I remember how even quite recently it cost me a

real struggle to give any weight to the true political significance of

those acts of violence.

How great, then, was my astonishment when one day the current political

events of the time enabled me, as it were, to gain a personal

experience of the sort of national upheavals with which I had come into

distant contact in the course of my proof-correcting. The special

editions of the Leipzig Gazette brought us the news of the July

Revolution in Paris. The King of France had been driven from his

throne; Lafayette, who a moment before had seemed a myth to me, was

again riding through a cheering crowd in the streets of Paris; the

Swiss Guards had once more been butchered in the Tuileries, and a new

King knew no better way of commending himself to the populace than by

declaring himself the embodiment of the Republic. Suddenly to become

conscious of living at a time in which such things took place could not

fail to have a startling effect on a boy of seventeen. The world as a

historic phenomenon began from that day in my eyes, and naturally my

sympathies were wholly on the side of the Revolution, which I regarded

in the light of a heroic popular struggle crowned with victory, and

free from the blemish of the terrible excesses that stained the first

French Revolution. As the whole of Europe, including some of the German

states, was soon plunged more or less violently into rebellion, I

remained for some time in a feverish state of suspense, and now first

turned my attention to the causes of these upheavals, which I regarded

as struggles of the young and hopeful against the old and effete

portion of mankind. Saxony also did not remain unscathed; in Dresden it

came to actual fighting in the streets, which immediately produced a

political change in the shape of the proclamation of the regency of the

future King Frederick, and the granting of a constitution. This event

filled me with such enthusiasm that I composed a political overture,

the prelude of which depicted dark oppression in the midst of which a

strain was at last heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I

wrote the words Friedrich und Freiheil; this strain was intended to

develop gradually and majestically into the fullest triumph, which I

hoped shortly to see successfully performed at one of the Leipzig

Garden Concerts.

However, before I was able to develop my politico-musical conceptions

further, disorders broke out in Leipzig itself which summoned me from

the precincts of Art to take a direct share in national life. National

life in Leipzig at this time meant nothing more than antagonism between

the students and the police, the latter being the arch-enemy upon whom

the youthful love of liberty vented itself. Some students had been

arrested in a street broil who were now to be rescued. The

under-graduates, who had been restless for some days, assembled one

evening in the Market Place and the Clubs, mustered together, and made

a ring round their leaders. The whole proceeding was marked by a

certain measured solemnity, which impressed me deeply. They sang

Gaudeamus igitur, formed up into column, and picking up from the crowd

any young men who sympathised with them, marched gravely and resolutely

from the Market Place to the University buildings, to open the cells

and set free the students who had been arrested. My heart beat fast as

I marched with them to this ‘Taking of the Bastille,’ but things did

not turn out as we expected, for in the courtyard of the Paulinum the

solemn procession was stopped by Rector Krug, who had come down to meet

it with his grey head bared; his assurance that the captives had

already been released at his request was greeted with a thundering

cheer, and the matter seemed at an end.

But the tense expectation of a revolution had grown too great not to

demand some sacrifice. A summons was suddenly spread calling us to a

notorious alley in order to exercise popular justice upon a hated

magistrate who, it was rumoured, had unlawfully taken under his

protection a certain house of ill-fame in that quarter. When I reached

the spot with the tail-end of the crowd, I found the house had been

broken into and all sorts of violence had been committed. I recall with

horror the intoxicating effect this unreasoning fury had upon me, and

cannot deny that without the slightest personal provocation I shared,

like one possessed, in the frantic onslaught of the undergraduates, who

madly shattered furniture and crockery to bits. I do not believe that

the ostensible motive for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be

found in a fact that was a grave menace to public morality, had any

weight with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish

fury of these popular outbursts that drew me, too, like a madman into

their vortex.

The fact that such fits of fury are not quick to abate, but, in

accordance with certain natural laws, reach their proper conclusion

only after they have degenerated into frenzy, I was to learn in my own

person. Scarcely did the summons ring out for us to march to another

resort of the same kind than I too found myself in the tide which set

towards the opposite end of the town. There the same exploits were

repeated, and the most ludicrous outrages perpetrated. I cannot

remember that the enjoyment of alcoholic drinks contributed to the

intoxication of myself and my immediate fellows. I only know that I

finally got into the state that usually succeeds a debauch, and upon

waking next morning, as if from a hideous nightmare, had to convince

myself that I had really taken part in the events of the previous night

by a trophy I possessed in the shape of a tattered red curtain, which I

had brought home as a token of my prowess. The thought that people

generally, and my own family in particular, were wont to put a lenient

construction upon youthful escapades was a great comfort to me;

outbursts of this kind on the part of the young were regarded as

righteous indignation against really serious scandals, and there was no

need for me to be afraid of owning up to having taken part in such

excesses.

The dangerous example, however, which had been set by the

undergraduates incited the lower classes and the mob to similar

excesses on the following nights, against employers and any who were

obnoxious to them. The matter at once assumed a more serious

complexion; property was threatened, and a conflict between rich and

poor stood grinning at our doors. As there were no soldiers in the

town, and the police were thoroughly disorganised, the students were

called in as a protection against the lower orders. An undergraduate’s

hour of glory now began, such as I could only have thirsted for in my

schoolboy dreams. The student became the tutelar deity of Leipzig,

called on by the authorities to arm and band together in defence of

property, and the same young men who two days before had yielded to a

rage for destruction, now mustered in the University courtyard. The

proscribed names of the students’ clubs and unions were shouted by the

mouths of town councillors and chief constables in order to summon

curiously equipped undergraduates, who thereupon, in simple mediaeval

array of war, scattered throughout the town, occupied the guard-rooms

at the gates, provided sentinels for the grounds of various wealthy

merchants, and, as occasion demanded, took places which seemed

threatened, more especially inns, under their permanent protection.

Though, unluckily, I was not yet a member of their body, I anticipated

the delights of academic citizenship by half-impudent, half-obsequious

solicitation of the leaders of the students whom I honoured most. I had

the good fortune to recommend myself particularly to these ‘cocks of

the walk,’ as they were styled, on account of my relationship to

Brockhaus, in whose grounds the main body of these champions were

encamped for some time. My brother-in-law was among those who had been

seriously threatened, and it was only owing to really great presence of

mind and assurance that he succeeded in saving his printing works, and

especially his steam presses, which were the chief object of attack,

from destruction. To protect his property against further assault,

detachments of students were told off to his grounds as well; the

excellent entertainment which the generous master of the house offered

his jovial guardians in his pleasant summer-house enticed the pick of

the students to him. My brother-in-law was for several weeks guarded

day and night against possible attacks by the populace, and on this

occasion, as the mediator of a flowing hospitality, I celebrated among

the most famous ‘bloods’ of the University the true saturnalia of my

scholarly ambition.

For a still longer period the guarding of the gates was entrusted to

the students; the unheard-of splendour which accordingly became

associated with this post drew fresh aspirants to the spot from far and

near. Every day huge chartered vehicles discharged at the Halle Gate

whole bands of the boldest sons of learning from Halle, Jena,

Gottingen, and the remotest regions. They got down close to the guards

at the gate, and for several weeks never set foot in an inn or any

other dwelling; they lived at the expense of the Council, drew vouchers

on the police for food and drink, and knew but one care, that the

possibility of a general quieting of men’s minds would make their

opportune guardianship superfluous. I never missed a day on guard or a

night either, alas! trying to impress on my family the urgent need for

my personal endurance. Of course, the quieter and really studious

spirits among us soon resigned these duties, and only the flower of the

flock of undergraduates remained so staunch that it became difficult

for the authorities to relieve them of their task. I held out to the

very last, and succeeded in making most astonishing friends for my age.

Many of the most audacious remained in Leipzig even when there was no

guard duty to fulfil, and peopled the place for some time with

champions of an extraordinarily desperate and dissipated type, who had

been repeatedly sent down from various universities for rowdyism or

debt, and who now, thanks to the exceptional circumstances of the day,

found a refuge in Leipzig, where at first they had been received with

open arms by the general enthusiasm of their comrades.

In the presence of all these phenomena I felt as if I were surrounded

by the results of an earthquake which had upset the usual order of

things. My brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, who could justly taunt

the former authorities of the place with their inability to maintain

peace and order, was carried away by the current of a formidable

movement of opposition. He made a daring speech at the Guildhall before

their worships the Town Council, which brought him popularity, and he

was appointed second-in-command of the newly constituted Leipzig

Municipal Guard. This body at length ousted my adored students from the

guard-rooms of the town gates, and we no longer had the right of

stopping travellers and inspecting their passes. On the other hand, I

flattered myself that I might regard my new position as a boy citizen

as equivalent to that of the French National Guard, and my

brother-in-law, Brockhaus, as a Saxon Lafayette, which, at all events,

succeeded in furnishing my soaring excitement with a healthy stimulant.

I now began to read the papers and cultivate politics enthusiastically;

however, the social intercourse of the civic world did not attract me

sufficiently to make me false to my beloved academic associates. I

followed them faithfully from the guard-rooms to the ordinary bars,

where their splendour as men of the literary world now sought

retirement.

My chief ambition was to become one of them as soon as possible. This,

however, could only be accomplished by being again entered at a grammar

school. St. Thomas’s, whose headmaster was a feeble old man, was the

place where my wishes could be most speedily attained.

I joined the school in the autumn of 1830 simply with the intention of

qualifying myself for the Leaving Examination by merely nominal

attendance there. The chief thing in connection with it was that I and

friends of the same bent succeeded in establishing a sham students’

association called the Freshman’s Club. It was formed with all possible

pedantry, the institution of the ‘Comment’ was introduced,

fencing-practice and sword-bouts were held, and an inaugural meeting to

which several prominent students were invited, and at which I presided

as ‘Vice’ in white buckskin trousers and great jack-boots, gave me a

foretaste of the delights awaiting me as a full-blown son of the Muses.

The masters of St. Thomas’s, however, were not quite so ready to fall

in with my aspirations to studentship; at the end of the half-year they

were of the opinion that I had not given a thought to their

institution, and nothing could persuade them that I had earned a title

to academic citizenship by any acquisition of knowledge. Some sort of

decision was necessary, so I accordingly informed my family that I had

made up my mind not to study for a profession at the University, but to

become a musician. There was nothing to prevent me matriculating as

‘Studiosus Musicae,’ and, without therefore troubling myself about the

pedantries of the authorities at St. Thomas’s, I defiantly quitted that

seat of learning from which I had derived small profit, and presented

myself forthwith to the rector of the University, whose acquaintance I

had made on the evening of the riot, to be enrolled as a student of

music. This was accordingly done without further ado, on the payment of

the usual fees.

I was in a great hurry about it, for in a week the Easter vacation

would begin, and the ‘men’ would go down from Leipzig, when it would be

impossible to be elected member of a club until the vacation was over,

and to stay all those weeks at home in Leipzig without having the right

to wear the coveted colours seemed to me unendurable torture. Straight

from the rector’s presence I ran like a wounded animal to the fencing

school, to present myself for admission to the Saxon Club, showing my

card of matriculation. I attained my object, I could wear the colours

of the Saxonia, which was in the fashion at that time, and in great

request because it numbered so many delightful members in its ranks.

The strangest fate was to befall me in this Easter vacation, during

which I was really the only remaining representative of the Saxon Club

in Leipzig. In the beginning this club consisted chiefly of men of good

family as well as the better class elements of the student world; all

of them were members of highly placed and well-to-do families in Saxony

in general, and in particular from the capital, Dresden, and spent

their vacation at their respective homes. There remained in Leipzig

during the vacations only those wandering students who had no homes,

and for whom in reality it was always or never holiday time. Among

those a separate club had arisen of daring and desperate young

reprobates who had found a last refuge, as I said, at Leipzig in the

glorious period I have recorded. I had already made the personal

acquaintance of these swashbucklers, who pleased my fancy greatly, when

they were guarding the Brockhaus grounds. Although the regular duration

of a university course did not exceed three years, most of these men

had never left their universities for six or seven years.

I was particularly fascinated by a man called Gebhardt, who was endowed

with extraordinary physical beauty and strength, and whose slim heroic

figure towered head and shoulders above all his companions. When he

walked down the street arm-in-arm with two of the strongest of his

comrades, he used suddenly to take it into his head, by an easy

movement of his arm, to lift his friends high in the air and flutter

along in this way as though he had a pair of human wings. When a cab

was going along the streets at a sharp trot, he would seize a spoke of

the wheel with one hand and force it to pull up. Nobody ever told him

that he was stupid because they were afraid of his strength, hence his

limitations were scarcely noticed. His redoubtable strength, combined

with a temperate disposition, lent him a majestic dignity which placed

him above the level of an ordinary mortal. He had come to Leipzig from

Mecklenburg in the company of a certain Degelow, who was as powerful

and adroit, though by no means of such gigantic proportions, as his

friend, and whose chief attraction lay in his great vivacity and

animated features, he had led a wild and dissipated life in which play,

drink, passionate love affairs, and constant and prompt duelling had

rung the changes. Ceremonious politeness, an ironic and pedantic

coldness, which testified to bold self-confidence, combined with a very

hot temper, formed the chief characteristics of this personage and

natures akin to his. Degelow’s wildness and passion were lent a curious

diabolical charm by the possession of a malicious humour which he often

turned against himself, whereas towards others he exercised a certain

chivalrous tenderness.

These two extraordinary men were joined by others who possessed all the

qualities essential to a reckless life, together with real and

headstrong valour. One of them, named Stelzer, a regular Berserker out

of the Nibelungenlied, who was nick-named Lope, was in his twentieth

term. While these men openly and consciously belonged to a world doomed

to destruction, and all their actions and escapades could only be

explained by the hypothesis that they all believed that inevitable ruin

was imminent, I made in their company the acquaintance of a certain

Schroter, who particularly attracted me by his cordial disposition,

pleasant Hanoverian accent, and refined wit. He was not one of the

regular young dare-devils, towards whom he adopted a calm observant

attitude, while they were all fond of him and glad to see him. I made a

real friend of this Schroter, although he was much older than I was.

Through him I became acquainted with the works and poems of H. Heine,

and from him I acquired a certain neat and saucy wit, and I was quite

ready to surrender myself to his agreeable influence in the hope of

improving my outward bearing. It was his company in particular that I

sought every day; in the afternoon I generally met him in the Rosenthal

or Kintschy’s Chalet, though always in the presence of those wonderful

Goths who excited at once my alarm and admiration.

They all belonged to university clubs which were on hostile terms with

the one of which I was a member. What this hostility between the

various clubs meant only those can judge who are familiar with the tone

prevalent among them in those days. The mere sight of hostile colours

sufficed to infuriate these men, who otherwise were kind and gentle,

provided they had taken the slightest drop too much. At all events, as

long as the old stagers were sober they would look with good-natured

complacency at a slight young fellow like me in the hostile colours

moving among them so amicably. Those colours I wore in my own peculiar

fashion. I had made use of the brief week during which my club was

still in Leipzig to become the possessor of a splendid ‘Saxon’ cap,

richly embroidered with silver, and worn by a man called Muller, who

was afterwards a prominent constable at Dresden. I had been seized with

such a violent craving for this cap that I managed to buy it from him,

as he wanted money to go home. In spite of this remarkable cap I was,

as I have said, welcome in the den of this band of rowdies: my friend

Schroter saw to that. It was only when the grog, which was the

principal beverage of these wild spirits, began to work that I used to

notice curious glances and overhear doubtful speeches, the significance

of which was for some time hidden from me by the dizziness in which my

own senses were plunged by this baneful drink.

As I was inevitably bound on this account to be mixed up in quarrels

for some time to come, it afforded me a great satisfaction that my

first fight, as a matter of fact, arose from an incident more

creditable to me than those provocations which I had left half

unnoticed. One day Degelow came up to Schroter and me in a wine-bar

that we often frequented, and in quite a friendly manner confessed to

us confidentially his liking for a young and very pretty actress whose

talent Schroter disputed. Degelow rejoined that this was as it might

be, but that, for his part, he regarded the young lady as the most

respectable woman in the theatre. I at once asked him if he considered

my sister’s reputation was not as good. According to students’ notions

it was impossible for Degelow, who doubtless had not the remotest

intention of being insulting, to give me any assurance further than to

say that he certainly did not think my sister had an inferior

reputation, but that, nevertheless, he meant to abide by his assertion

concerning the young lady he had mentioned. Hereupon followed without

delay the usual challenge, opening with the words, ‘You’re an ass,’

which sounded almost ridiculous to my own ears when I said them to this

seasoned swashbuckler.

I remember that Degelow too gasped with astonishment, and lightning

seemed to flash from his eyes; but he controlled himself in the

presence of my friend, and proceeded to observe the usual formalities

of a challenge, and chose broadswords (krumme Sabel) as the weapons for

the fight. The event made a great stir among our companions, but I saw

less reason than before to abstain from my usual intercourse with them.

Only I became more strict about the behaviour of the swashbucklers, and

for several days no evening passed without producing a challenge

between me and some formidable bully, until at last Count Solms, the

only member of my club who had returned to Leipzig as yet, visited me

as though he were an intimate friend and inquired into what had

occurred. He applauded my conduct, but advised me not to wear my

colours until the return of our comrades from the vacation, and to keep

away from the bad company into which I had ventured. Fortunately I had

not long to wait; university life soon began again, and the fencing

ground was filled. The unenviable position, in which, in student

phrase, I was suspended with a half-dozen of the most terrible

swordsmen, earned me a glorious reputation among the ‘freshmen’ and

‘juniors,’ and even among the older ‘champions’ of the Saxonia.

My seconds were duly arranged, the dates for the various duels on hand

settled, and by the care of my seniors the needful time was secured for

me to acquire some sort of skill in fencing. The light heart with which

I awaited the fate which threatened me in at least one of the impending

encounters I myself could not understand at the time; on the other

hand, the way in which that fate preserved me from the consequences of

my rashness seems truly miraculous in my eyes to this day, and, worthy

of further description.

The preparations for a duel included obtaining some experience of these

encounters by being present at several of them. We freshmen attained

this object by what is called ‘carrying duty,’ that is to say, we were

entrusted with the rapiers of the corps (precious weapons of honour

belonging to the association), and had to take them first to the

grinder and thence to the scene of encounter, a proceeding which was

attended with some danger, as it had to be done surreptitiously, since

duelling was forbidden by law; in return we acquired the right of

assisting as spectators at the impending engagements.

When I had earned this honour, the meeting-place chosen for the duel I

was to watch was the billiard-room of an inn in the Burgstrasse; the

table had been moved to one side, and on it the authorised spectators

took their places. Among them I stood up with a beating heart to watch

the dangerous encounters between those doughty champions. I was told on

this occasion of the story of one of my friends (a Jew named Levy, but

known as Lippert), who on this very floor had given so much ground

before his antagonist that the door had to be opened for him, and he

fell back through it down the steps into the street, still believing he

was engaged in the duel. When several bouts had been finished, two men

came on to the ‘pitch,’ Tempel, the president of the Markomanen, and a

certain Wohlfart, an old stager, already in his fourteenth half-year of

study, with whom I also was booked for an encounter later on. When this

was the case, a man was not allowed to watch, in order that the weak

points of the duellist might not be betrayed to his future opponent.

Wohlfart was accordingly asked by my chiefs whether he wanted me

removed; whereupon he replied with calm contempt, ‘Let them leave the

little freshman there, in God’s name!’ Thus I became an eye-witness of

the disablement of a swordsman who nevertheless showed himself so

experienced and skilful on the occasion that I might well have become

alarmed for the issue of my future encounter with him. His gigantic

opponent cut the artery of his right arm, which at once ended the

fight; the surgeon declared that Wohlfart would not be able to hold a

sword again for years, under which circumstances my proposed meeting

with him was at once cancelled. I do not deny that this incident

cheered my soul.

Shortly afterwards the first general reunion of our club was held at

the Green Tap. These gatherings are regular hot-beds for the production

of duels. Here I brought upon myself a new encounter with one Tischer,

but learned at the same time that I had been relieved of two of my most

formidable previous engagements of the kind by the disappearance of my

opponents, both of whom had escaped on account of debt and left no

trace behind them. The only one of whom I could hear anything was the

terrible Stelzer, surnamed Lope. This fellow had taken advantage of the

passing of Polish refugees, who had at that time already been driven

over the frontier and were making their way through Germany to France,

to disguise himself as an ill-starred champion of freedom, and he

subsequently found his way to the Foreign Legion in Algeria. On the way

home from the gathering, Degelow, whom I was to meet in a few weeks,

proposed a ‘truce.’ This was a device which, if it was accepted, as it

was in this case, enabled the future combatants to entertain and talk

to one another, which was otherwise most strictly forbidden. We

wandered back to the town arm-in-arm; with chivalrous tenderness my

interesting and formidable opponent declared that he was delighted at

the prospect of crossing swords with me in a few weeks’ time; that he

regarded it as an honour and a pleasure, as he was fond of me and

respected me for my valorous conduct. Seldom has any personal success

flattered me more. We embraced, and amid protestations which, owing to

a certain dignity about them, acquired a significance I can never

forget, we parted. He informed me that he must first pay a visit to

Jena, where he had an appointment to fight a duel. A week later the

news of his death reached Leipzig; he had been mortally wounded in the

duel at Jena.

I felt as if I were living in a dream, out of which I was aroused by

the announcement of my encounter with Tischer. Though he was a

first-rate and vigorous fighter, he had been chosen by our chiefs for

my first passage of arms because he was fairly short. In spite of being

unable to feel any great confidence in my hastily acquired and little

practised skill in fencing, I looked forward to this my first duel with

a light heart. Although it was against the rules, I never dreamed of

telling the authorities that I was suffering from a slight rash which I

had caught at that time, and which I was informed made wounds so

dangerous that if it were reported it would postpone the meeting, in

spite of the fact that I was modest enough to be prepared for wounds. I

was sent for at ten in the morning, and left home smiling to think what

my mother and sisters would say if in a few hours I were brought back

in the alarming state I anticipated. My chief, Herr v. Schonfeld, was a

pleasant, quiet sort of man, who lived on the marsh. When I reached his

house, he leant out of the window with his pipe in his mouth, and

greeted me with the words: ‘You can go home, my lad, it is all off;

Tischer is in hospital.’ When I got upstairs I found several ‘leading

men’ assembled, from whom I learned that Tischer had got very drunk the

night before, and had in consequence laid himself open to the most

outrageous treatment by the inhabitants of a house of ill-fame. He was

terribly hurt, and had been taken by the police in the first instance

to the hospital. This inevitably meant rustication, and, above all,

expulsion from the academic association to which he belonged.

I cannot clearly recall the incidents that removed from Leipzig the few

remaining fire-eaters to whom I had pledged myself since that fatal

vacation-time; I only know that this aide of my fame as a student

yielded to another. We celebrated the ‘freshmen’s gathering,’ to which

all those who could manage it drove a four-in-hand in a long procession

through the town. After the president of the club had profoundly moved

me with his sudden and yet prolonged solemnity, I conceived the desire

to be among the very last to return home from the outing. Accordingly I

stayed away three days and three nights, and spent the time chiefly in

gambling, a pastime which from the first night of our festivity cast

its devilish snares around me. Some half-dozen of the smartest club

members chanced to be together at early dawn in the Jolly Peasant, and

forthwith formed the nucleus of a gambling club, which was reinforced

during the day by recruits coming back from the town. Members came to

see whether we were still at it, members also went away, but I with the

original six held out for days and nights without faltering.

The desire that first prompted me to take part in the play was the wish

to win enough for my score (two thalers): this I succeeded in doing,

and thereupon I was inspired with the hope of being able to settle all

the debts I had made at that time by my winnings at play. Just as I had

hoped to learn composition most quickly by Logier’s method, but had

found myself hampered in my object for a long period by unexpected

difficulties, so my plan for speedily improving my financial position

was likewise doomed to disappointment. To win was not such an easy

matter, and for some three months I was such a victim to the rage for

gambling that no other passion was able to exercise the slightest

influence over my mind.

Neither the Fechtboden (where the students’ fights were practised), nor

the beer-house, nor the actual scene of the fights, ever saw my face

again. In my lamentable position I racked my brains all day to devise

ways and means of getting the money wherewith to gamble at night. In

vain did my poor mother try everything in her power to induce me not to

come home so late at night, although she had no idea of the real nature

of my debauches: after I had left the house in the afternoon I never

returned till dawn the next day, and I reached my room (which was at

some distance from the others) by climbing over the gate, for my mother

had refused to give me a latch-key.

In despair over my ill-luck, my passion for gambling grew into a

veritable mania, and I no longer felt any inclination for those things

which at one time had lured me to student life. I became absolutely

indifferent to the opinion of my former companions and avoided them

entirely; I now lost myself in the smaller gambling dens of Leipzig,

where only the very scum of the students congregated. Insensible to any

feeling of self-respect, I bore even the contempt of my sister Rosalie;

both she and my mother hardly ever deigning to cast a glance at the

young libertine whom they only saw at rare intervals, looking deadly

pale and worn out: my ever-growing despair made me at last resort to

foolhardiness as the only means of forcing hostile fate to my side. It

suddenly struck me that only by dint of big stakes could I make big

profits. To this end I decided to make use of my mother’s pension, of

which I was trustee of a fairly large sum. That night I lost everything

I had with me except one thaler: the excitement with which I staked

that last coin on a card was an experience hitherto quite strange to my

young life. As I had had nothing to eat, I was obliged repeatedly to

leave the gambling table owing to sickness. With this last thaler I

staked my life, for my return to my home was, of course, out of the

question. Already I saw myself in the grey dawn, a prodigal son,

fleeing from all I held dear, through forest and field towards the

unknown. My mood of despair had gained so strong a hold upon me that,

when my card won, I immediately placed all the money on a fresh stake,

and repeated this experiment until I had won quite a considerable

amount. From that moment my luck grew continuously. I gained such

confidence that I risked the most hazardous stakes: for suddenly it

dawned upon me that this was destined to be my last day with the cards.

My good fortune now became so obvious that the bank thought it wise to

close. Not only had I won back all the money I had lost, but I had won

enough to pay off all my debts as well. My sensations during the whole

of this process were of the most sacred nature: I felt as if God and

His angels were standing by my side and were whispering words of

warning and of consolation into my ears.

Once more I climbed over the gate of my home in the early hours of the

morning, this time to sleep peacefully and soundly and to awake very

late, strengthened and as though born again.

No sense of shame deterred me from telling my mother, to whom I

presented her money, the whole truth about this decisive night. I

voluntarily confessed my sin in having utilised her pension, sparing no

detail. She folded her hands and thanked God for His mercy, and

forthwith regarded me as saved, believing it impossible for me ever to

commit such a crime again.

And, truth to tell, gambling had lost all fascination for me from that

moment. The world, in which I had moved like one demented, suddenly

seemed stripped of all interest or attraction. My rage for gambling had

already made me quite indifferent to the usual student’s vanities, and

when I was freed from this passion also, I suddenly found myself face

to face with an entirely new world.

To this world I belonged henceforth: it was the world of real and

serious musical study, to which I now devoted myself heart and soul.

Even during this wild period of my life, my musical development had not

been entirely at a standstill; on the contrary, it daily became plainer

that music was the only direction towards which my mental tendencies

had a marked bent. Only I had got quite out of the habit of musical

study. Even now it seems incredible that I managed to find time in

those days to finish quite a substantial amount of composition. I have

but the faintest recollection of an Overture in C major (6/8 time), and

of a Sonata in B flat major arranged as a duet; the latter pleased my

sister Ottilie, who played it with me, so much that I arranged it for

orchestra. But another work of this period, an Overture in B flat

major, left an indelible impression on my mind on account of an

incident connected with it. This composition, in fact, was the outcome

of my study of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in about the same degree as

Leubald und Adelaïde was the result of my study of Shakespeare. I had

made a special point of bringing out the mystic meaning in the

orchestra, which I divided into three distinctly different and opposite

elements. I wanted to make the characteristic nature of these elements

clear to the score reader the moment he looked at it by a striking

display of colour, and only the fact that I could not get any green ink

made this picturesque idea impossible. I employed black ink for the

brass instruments alone, the strings were to have red and the wind

green ink. This extraordinary score I gave for perusal to Heinrich

Dorn, who was at that time musical director of the Leipzig theatre. He

was very young, and impressed me as being a very clever musician and a

witty man of the world, whom the Leipzig public made much of.

Nevertheless, I have never been able to understand how he could have

granted my request to produce this overture.

Some time afterwards I was rather inclined to believe with others, who

knew how much he enjoyed a good joke, that he intended to treat himself

to a little fun. At the time, however, he vowed that he thought the

work interesting, and maintained that if it were only brought out as a

hitherto unknown work by Beethoven, the public would receive it with

respect, though without understanding.

It was the Christmas of the fateful year 1830; as usual, there would be

no performance at the theatre on Christmas Eve, but instead a concert

for the poor had been organised, which received but scant support. The

first item on the programme was called by the exciting title ‘New

Overture’—nothing more! I had surreptitiously listened to the rehearsal

with some misgiving. I was very much impressed by the coolness with

which Dorn fenced with the apparent confusion which the members of the

orchestra showed with regard to this mysterious composition. The

principal theme of the Allegro was contained in four bars; after every

fourth bar, however, a fifth bar had been inserted, which had nothing

to do with the melody, and which was announced by a loud bang on the

kettle-drum on the second beat. As this drum-beat stood out alone, the

drummer, who continually thought he was making a mistake, got confused,

and did not give the right sharpness to the accent as prescribed by the

score. Listening from my hidden corner, and frightened at my original

intention, this accidentally different rendering did not displease me.

To my genuine annoyance, however, Dorn called the drummer to the front

and insisted on his playing the accents with the prescribed sharpness.

When, after the rehearsal, I told the musical director of my misgivings

about this important fact, I could not get him to promise a milder

interpretation of the fatal drum-beat; he stuck to it that the thing

would sound very well as it was. In spite of this assurance my

restlessness grew, and I had not the courage to introduce myself to my

friends in advance as the author of the ‘New Overture.’

My sister Ottilie, who had already been forced to survive the secret

readings of Leubald und Adelaïde, was the only person willing to come

with me to hear my work. It was Christmas Eve, and there was to be the

usual Christmas tree, presents, etc., at my brother-in-law’s, Friedrich

Brockhaus, and both of us naturally wanted to be there. My sister, in

particular, who lived there, had a good deal to do with the

arrangements, and could only get away for a short while, and that with

great difficulty; our amiable relation accordingly had the carriage

ready for her so that she might get back more quickly. I made use of

this opportunity to inaugurate, as it were, my entree into the musical

world in a festive manner. The carriage drew up in front of the

theatre. Ottilie went into my brother-in-law’s box, which forced me to

try and find a seat in the pit. I had forgotten to buy a ticket, and

was refused admission by the man at the door. Suddenly the tuning up of

the orchestra grew louder and louder, and I thought I should have to

miss the beginning of my work. In my anxiety I revealed myself to the

man at the door as the composer of the ‘New Overture,’ and in this way

succeeded in passing without a ticket. I pushed my way through to one

of the first rows of the pit, and sat down in terrible anxiety.

The Overture began: after the theme of the ‘black’ brass instruments

had made itself heard with great emphasis, the ‘red’ Allegro theme

started, in which, as I have already mentioned, every fifth bar was

interrupted by the drum-beat from the ‘black’ world. What kind of

effect the ‘green’ theme of the wind instruments, which joined in

afterwards, produced upon the listeners, and what they must have

thought when ‘black,’ ‘red,’ and ‘green’ themes became intermingled,

has always remained a mystery to me, for the fatal drum-beat, brutally

hammered out, entirely deprived me of my senses, especially as this

prolonged and continually recurring effect now began to rouse, not only

the attention, but the merriment of the audience. I heard my neighbours

calculating the return of this effect; knowing the absolute correctness

of their calculation, I suffered ten thousand torments, and became

almost unconscious. At last I awoke from my nightmare when the

Overture, to which I had disdained to give what I considered a trite

ending, came to a standstill most unexpectedly.

No phantoms like those in Hoffmann’s Tales could have succeeded in

producing the extraordinary state in which I came to my senses on

noticing the astonishment of the audience at the end of the

performance. I heard no exclamations of disapproval, no hissing, no

remarks, not even laughter; all I saw was intense astonishment at such

a strange occurrence, which impressed them, as it did me, like a

horrible nightmare. The worst moment, however, came when I had to leave

the pit and take my sister home. To get up and pass through the people

in the pit was horrible indeed. Nothing, however, equalled the pain of

coming face to face with the man at the door; the strange look he gave

me haunted me ever afterwards, and for a considerable time I avoided

the pit of the Leipzig theatre.

My next step was to find my sister, who had gone through the whole sad

experience with infinite pity; in silence we drove home to be present

at a brilliant family festivity, which contrasted with grim irony with

the gloom of my bewilderment.

In spite of it all I tried to believe in myself, and thought I could

find comfort in my overture to the Braut von Messina, which I believed

to be a better work than the fatal one I had just heard. A

reinstatement, however, was out of the question, for the directors of

the Leipzig theatre regarded me for a long time as a very doubtful

person, in spite of Dorn’s friendship. It is true that I still tried my

hand at sketching out compositions to Goethe’s Faust, some of which

have been preserved to this day: but soon my wild student’s life

resumed its sway and drowned the last remnant of serious musical study

in me.

I now began to imagine that because I had become a student I ought to

attend the University lectures. From Traugott Krug, who was well known

to me on account of his having suppressed the student’s revolt, I tried

to learn the first principles of philosophy; a single lesson sufficed

to make me give this up. Two or three times, however, I attended the

lectures on aesthetics given by one of the younger professors, a man

called Weiss. This perseverance was due to the interest which Weiss

immediately aroused in me. When I made his acquaintance at my uncle

Adolph’s house, Weiss had just translated the metaphysics of Aristotle,

and, if I am not mistaken, dedicated them in a controversial spirit to

Hegel.

On this occasion I had listened to the conversation of these two men on

philosophy and philosophers, which made a tremendous impression on me.

I remember that Weiss was an absent-minded man, with a hasty and abrupt

manner of speaking; he had an interesting and pensive expression which

impressed me immensely. I recollect how, on being accused of a want of

clearness in his writing and style, he justified himself by saying that

the deep problems of the human mind could not in any case be solved by

the mob. This maxim, which struck me as being very plausible, I at once

accepted as the principle for all my future writing. I remember that my

eldest brother Albert, to whom I once had to write for my mother, grew

so disgusted with my letter and style that he said he thought I must be

going mad.

In spite of my hopes that Weiss’s lectures would do me much good, I was

not capable of continuing to attend them, as my desires in those days

drove me to anything but the study of aesthetics. Nevertheless, my

mother’s anxiety at this time on my behalf made me try to take up music

again. As Muller, the teacher under whom I had studied till that time,

had not been able to inspire me with a permanent love of study, it was

necessary to discover whether another teacher might not be better able

to induce me to do serious work.

Theodor Weinlich, who was choirmaster and musical director at St.

Thomas’s Church, held at that time this important and ancient post

which was afterwards occupied by Schicht, and before him by no less a

person than Sebastian Bach. By education he belonged to the old Italian

school of music, and had studied in Bologna under Pater Martini. He had

made a name for himself in this art by his vocal compositions, in which

his fine manner of treating the parts was much praised. He himself told

me one day that a Leipzig publisher had offered him a very substantial

fee if he would write for his firm another book of vocal exercises

similar to the one which had proved so profitable to his first

publisher. Weinlich told him that he had not got any exercises of the

kind ready at the moment, but offered him instead a new Mass, which the

publisher refused with the words: ‘Let him who got the meat gnaw the

bones.’ The modesty with which Weinlich told me this little story

showed how excellent a man he was. As he was in a very bad and weak

state of health when my mother introduced me to him, he at first

refused to take me as a pupil. But, after having resisted all

persuasions, he at last took pity on my musical education, which, as he

soon discovered from a fugue which I had brought with me, was

exceedingly faulty. He accordingly promised to teach me, on condition

that I should give up all attempts at composing for six months, and

follow his instructions implicitly. To the first part of my promise I

remained faithful, thanks to the vast vortex of dissipation into which

my life as a student had drawn me.

When, however, I had to occupy myself for any length of time with

nothing but four-part harmony exercises in strictly rigorous style, it

was not only the student in me, but also the composer of so many

overtures and sonatas, that was thoroughly disgusted. Weinlich, too,

had his grievances against me, and decided to give me up.

During this period I came to the crisis of my life, which led to the

catastrophe of that terrible evening at the gambling den. But an even

greater blow than this fearful experience awaited me when Weinlich

decided not to have anything more to do with me. Deeply humiliated and

miserable, I besought the gentle old man, whom I loved dearly, to

forgive me, and I promised him from that moment to work with unflagging

energy. One morning at seven o’clock Weinlich sent for me to begin the

rough sketch for a fugue; he devoted the whole morning to me, following

my work bar by bar with the greatest attention, and giving me his

valuable advice. At twelve o’clock he dismissed me with the instruction

to perfect and finish the sketch by filling in the remaining parts at

home.

When I brought him the fugue finished, he handed me his own treatment

of the same theme for comparison. This common task of fugue writing

established between me and my good-natured teacher the tenderest of

ties, for, from that moment, we both enjoyed the lessons. I was

astonished how quickly the time flew. In eight weeks I had not only

gone through a number of the most intricate fugues, but had also waded

through all kinds of difficult evolutions in counterpoint, when one

day, on bringing him an extremely elaborate double fugue, he took my

breath away by telling me that after this there was nothing left for

him to teach me.

As I was not aware of any great effort on my part, I often wondered

whether I had really become a well-equipped musician. Weinlich himself

did not seem to attach much importance to what he had taught me: he

said, ‘Probably you will never write fugues or canons; but what you

have mastered is Independence: you can now stand alone and rely upon

having a fine technique at your fingers’ ends if you should want it.’

The principal result of his influence over me was certainly the growing

love of clearness and fluency to which he had trained me. I had already

had to write the above-mentioned fugue for ordinary voices; my feeling

for the melodious and vocal had in this way been awakened. In order to

keep me strictly under his calming and friendly influence, he had at

the same time given me a sonata to write which, as a proof of my

friendship for him, I had to build up on strictly harmonic and thematic

lines, for which he recommended me a very early and childlike sonata by

Pleyel as a model.

Those who had only recently heard my Overture must, indeed, have

wondered how I ever wrote this sonata, which has been published through

the indiscretion of Messrs. Breitkopf and Hartel (to reward me for my

abstemiousness, Weinlich induced them to publish this poor

composition). From that moment he gave me a free hand. To begin with I

was allowed to compose a Fantasia for the pianoforte (in F sharp minor)

which I wrote in a quite informal style by treating the melody in

recitative form; this gave me intense satisfaction because it won me

praise from Weinlich.

Soon afterwards I wrote three overtures which all met with his entire

approval. In the following winter (1831-1832) I succeeded in getting

the first of them, in D minor, performed at one of the Gewandhaus

concerts.

At that time a very simple and homely tone reigned supreme in this

institution. The instrumental works were not conducted by what we call

‘a conductor of the orchestra,’ but were simply played to the audience

by the leader of the orchestra. As soon as the singing began, Pohlenz

took his place at the conductor’s desk; he belonged to the type of fat

and pleasant musical directors, and was a great favourite with the

Leipzig public. He used to come on the platform with a very

important-looking blue baton in his hand.

One of the strangest events which occurred at that time was the yearly

production of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven; after the first three

movements had been played straight through like a Haydn symphony, as

well as the orchestra could manage it, Pohlenz, instead of having to

conduct a vocal quartette, a cantata, or an Italian aria, took his

place at the desk to undertake this highly complicated instrumental

work, with its particularly enigmatical and incoherent opening, one of

the most difficult tasks that could possibly be found for a musical

conductor. I shall never forget the impression produced upon me at the

first rehearsal by the anxiously and carefully played 3/4 time, and the

way in which the wild shrieks of the trumpet (with which this movement

begins) resulted in the most extraordinary confusion of sound.

He had evidently chosen this tempo in order, in some way, to manage the

recitative of the double basses; but it was utterly hopeless. Pohlenz

was in a bath of perspiration, the recitative did not come off, and I

really began to think that Beethoven must have written nonsense; the

double bass player, Temmler, a faithful veteran of the orchestra,

prevailed upon Pohlenz at last, in rather coarse and energetic

language, to put down the baton, and in this way the recitative really

proceeded properly. All the same, I felt at this time that I had come

to the humble conclusion, in a way I can hardly explain, that this

extraordinary work was still beyond my comprehension. For a long time I

gave up brooding over this composition, and I turned my thoughts with

simple longing towards a clearer and calmer musical form.

My study of counterpoint had taught me to appreciate, above all,

Mozart’s light and flowing treatment of the most difficult technical

problems, and the last movement of his great Symphony in C major in

particular served me as example for my own work. My D minor Overture,

which clearly showed the influence of Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture,

had been favourably received by the public; my mother began to have

faith in me again, and I started at once on a second overture (in C

major), which really ended with a ‘Fugato’ that did more credit to my

new model than I had ever hoped to accomplish.

This overture, also, was soon afterwards performed at a recital given

by the favourite singer, Mlle. Palazzesi (of the Dresden Italian

Opera). Before this I had already introduced it at a concert given by a

private musical society called ‘Euterpe’, when I had conducted it

myself.

I remember the strange impression I received from a remark that my

mother made on that occasion; as a matter of fact this work, which was

written in a counterpoint style, without any real passion or emotion,

had produced a strange effect upon her. She gave vent to her

astonishment by warmly praising the Egmont Overture, which was played

at the same concert, maintaining that ‘this kind of music was after all

more fascinating than any stupid fugue.’

At this time I also wrote (as my third opus) an overture to Raupach’s

drama, Konig Enzio, in which again Beethoven’s influence made itself

even more strongly felt. My sister Rosalie succeeded in getting it

performed at the theatre before the play; for the sake of prudence they

did not announce it on the programme the first time. Dorn conducted it,

and as the performance went off all right, and the public showed no

dissatisfaction, my overture was played with my full name on the

programme several times during the run of the above-mentioned drama.

After this I tried my hand at a big Symphony (in C major); in this work

I showed what I had learnt by using the influence of my study of

Beethoven and Mozart towards the achievement of a really pleasant and

intelligible work, in which the fugue was again present at the end,

while the themes of the various movements were so constructed that they

could be played consecutively.

Nevertheless, the passionate and bold element of the Sinfonia Eroica

was distinctly discernible, especially in the first movement. The slow

movement, on the contrary, contained reminiscences of my former musical

mysticism. A kind of repeated interrogative exclamation of the minor

third merging into the fifth connected in my mind this work (which I

had finished with the utmost effort at clearness) with my very earliest

period of boyish sentimentality.

When, in the following year, I called on Friedrich Rochlitz, at that

time the ‘Nestor’ of the musical aesthetes in Leipzig, and president of

the Gewandhaus, I prevailed upon him to promise me a performance of my

work. As he had been given my score for perusal before seeing me, he

was quite astonished to find that I was a very young man, for the

character of my music had prepared him to see a much older and more

experienced musician. Before this performance took place many things

happened which I must first mention, as they were of great importance

to my life.

My short and stormy career as a student had drowned in me not only all

longing for further development, but also all interest in intellectual

and spiritual pursuits. Although, as I have pointed out, I had never

alienated myself entirely from music, my revived interest in politics

aroused my first real disgust for my senseless student’s life, which

soon left no deeper traces on my mind than the remembrance of a

terrible nightmare.

The Polish War of Independence against Russian supremacy filled me with

growing enthusiasm. The victories which the Poles obtained for a short

period during May, 1831, aroused my enthusiastic admiration: it seemed

to me as though the world had, by some miracle, been created anew. As a

contrast to this, the news of the battle of Ostrolenka made it appear

as if the end of the world had come. To my astonishment, my boon

companions scoffed at me when I commented upon some of these events;

the terrible lack of all fellow-feeling and comradeship amongst the

students struck me very forcibly. Any kind of enthusiasm had to be

smothered or turned into pedantic bravado, which showed itself in the

form of affectation and indifference. To get drunk with deliberate

cold-bloodedness, without even a glimpse of humour, was reckoned almost

as brave a feat as duelling. Not until much later did I understand the

far nobler spirit which animated the lower classes in Germany in

comparison with the sadly degenerate state of the University students.

In those days I felt terribly indignant at the insulting remarks which

I brought upon myself when I deplored the battle of Ostrolenka.

To my honour be it said, that these and similar impressions helped to

make me give up my low associates. During my studies with Weinlich the

only little dissipation I allowed myself was my daily evening visit to

Kintschy, the confectioner in the Klostergasse, where I passionately

devoured the latest newspapers. Here I found many men who held the same

political views as myself, and I specially loved to listen to the eager

political discussions of some of the old men who frequented the place.

The literary journals, too, began to interest me; I read a great deal,

but was not very particular in my choice. Nevertheless, I now began to

appreciate intelligence and wit, whereas before only the grotesque and

the fantastic had had any attraction for me.

My interest in the issue of the Polish war, however, remained

paramount. I felt the siege and capture of Warsaw as a personal

calamity. My excitement when the remains of the Polish army began to

pass through Leipzig on their way to France was indescribable, and I

shall never forget the impression produced upon me by the first batch

of these unfortunate soldiers on the occasion of their being quartered

at the Green Shield, a public-house in the Meat Market. Much as this

depressed me, I was soon roused to a high pitch of enthusiasm, for in

the lounge of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, where that night Beethoven’s C

minor Symphony was being played, a group of heroic figures, the

principal leaders of the Polish revolution, excited my admiration. I

felt more particularly attracted by Count Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, a man

of exceptionally powerful physique and noble appearance, who impressed

me by his dignified and aristocratic manner and his quiet

self-reliance—qualities with which I had not met before. When I saw a

man of such kingly bearing in a tight-fitting coat and red velvet cap,

I at once realised my foolishness in ever having worshipped the

ludicrously dressed up little heroes of our students’ world. I was

delighted to meet this gentleman again at the house of my

brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, where I saw him frequently.

My brother-in-law had the greatest pity and sympathy for the Polish

rebels, and was the president of a committee whose task it was to look

after their interests, and for a long time he made many personal

sacrifices for their cause.

The Brockhaus establishment now became tremendously attractive to me.

Around Count Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, who remained the lodestar of this

small Polish world, gathered a great many other wealthy exiles, amongst

whom I chiefly remember a cavalry captain of the name of Bansemer, a

man of unlimited kindness, but of a rather frivolous nature; he

possessed a marvellous team of four horses which he drove at such

breakneck speed as to cause great annoyance to the people of Leipzig.

Another man of importance with whom I remember dining was General Bem,

whose artillery had made such a gallant stand at Ostrolenka.

Many other exiles passed through this hospitable house, some of whom

impressed us by their melancholy, warlike bearing, others by their

refined behaviour. Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, however, remained my ideal of

a true man, and I loved him with a profound adoration. He, too, began

to be interested in me; I used to call upon him nearly every day, and

was sometimes present at a sort of martial feast, from which he often

withdrew in order to be able to open his heart to me about the

anxieties which oppressed him. He had, in fact, received absolutely no

news of the whereabouts of his wife and little son since they separated

at Volhynien. Besides this, he was under the shadow of a great sorrow

which drew all sympathetic natures to him. To my sister Louise he had

confided the terrible calamity that had once befallen him. He had been

married before, and while staying with his wife in one of his lonely

castles, in the dead of night he had seen a ghostly apparition at the

window of his bedroom. Hearing his name called several times, he had

taken up a revolver to protect himself from possible danger, and had

shot his own wife, who had had the eccentric idea of teasing him by

pretending to be a ghost. I had the pleasure of sharing his joy on

hearing that his family was safe. His wife joined him in Leipzig with

their beautiful boy, Janusz. I felt sorry not to be able to feel the

same sympathy for this lady as I did for her husband; perhaps one of

the reasons of my antipathy was the obvious and conspicuous way in

which she made herself up, by means of which the poor woman probably

tried to hide how much her beauty had suffered through the terrible

strain of the past events. She soon went back to Galicia to try and

save what she could of their property, and also to provide her husband

with a pass from the Austrian Government, by means of which he could

follow her.

Then came the third of May. Eighteen of the Poles who were still in

Leipzig met together at a festive dinner in a hotel outside the town;

on this day was to be celebrated the first anniversary of the third of

May, so dear to the memory of the Poles. Only the chiefs of the Leipzig

Polish Committee received invitations, and as a special favour I also

was asked. I shall never forget that occasion. The dinner became an

orgy; throughout the evening a brass band from the town played Polish

folksongs, and these were sung by the whole company, led by a

Lithuanian called Zan, in a manner now triumphant and now mournful. The

beautiful ‘Third of May’ song more particularly drew forth a positive

uproar of enthusiasm. Tears and shouts of joy grew into a terrible

tumult; the excited men grouped themselves on the grass swearing

eternal friendship in the most extravagant terms, for which the word

‘Oiczisna’ (Fatherland) provided the principal theme, until at last

night threw her veil over this wild debauch.

That evening afterwards served me as the theme for an orchestral

composition (in the form of an overture) named Polonia; I shall recount

the fate of this work later on. My friend Tyszkiewitcz’s passport now

arrived, and he made up his mind to go back to Galicia via Brunn,

although his friends considered it was very rash of him to do so. I

very much wanted to see something of the world, and Tyszkiewitcz’s

offer to take me with him, induced my mother to consent to my going to

Vienna, a place that I had long wished to visit. I took with me the

scores of my three overtures which had already been performed, and also

that of my great symphony as yet unproduced, and had a grand time with

my Polish patron, who took me in his luxurious travelling-coach as far

as the capital of Moravia. During a short stop at Dresden the exiles of

all classes gave our beloved Count a friendly farewell dinner in Pirna,

at which the champagne flowed freely, while the health was drunk of the

future ‘Dictator of Poland.’

At last we separated at Brunn, from which place I continued my journey

to Vienna by coach. During the afternoon and night, which I was obliged

to spend in Brunn by myself, I went through terrible agonies from fear

of the cholera which, as I unexpectedly heard, had broken out in this

place. There I was all alone in a strange place, my faithful friend

just departed, and on hearing of the epidemic I felt as if a malicious

demon had caught me in his snare in order to annihilate me. I did not

betray my terror to the people in the hotel, but when I was shown into

a very lonely wing of the house and left by myself in this wilderness,

I hid myself in bed with my clothes on, and lived once again through

all the horrors of ghost stories as I had done in my boyhood. The

cholera stood before me like a living thing; I could see and touch it;

it lay in my bed and embraced me. My limbs turned to ice, I felt frozen

to the very marrow. Whether I was awake or asleep I never knew; I only

remember how astonished I was when, on awakening, I felt thoroughly

well and healthy.

At last I arrived in Vienna, where I escaped the epidemic which had

penetrated as far as that town. It was midsummer of the year 1832.

Owing to the introductions I had with me, I found myself very much at

home in this lively city, in which I made a pleasant stay of six weeks.

As my sojourn, however, had no really practical purpose, my mother

looked upon the cost of this holiday, short as it seemed, as an

unnecessary extravagance on my part. I visited the theatres, heard

Strauss, made excursions, and altogether had a very good time. I am

afraid I contracted a few debts as well, which I paid off later on when

I was conductor of the Dresden orchestra. I had received very pleasant

impressions of musical and theatrical life, and for a long time Vienna

lived in my memory as the acme of that extraordinarily productive

spirit peculiar to its people. I enjoyed most of all the performances

at the Theater an der Wien, at which they were acting a grotesque fairy

play called Die Abenteuer Fortunat’s zu Wasser und zu Land, in which a

cab was called on the shores of the Black Sea and which made a

tremendous impression on me. About the music I was more doubtful. A

young friend of mine took me with immense pride to a performance of

Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris, which was made doubly attractive by a

first-rate cast including Wild, Staudigl and Binder: I must confess

that on the whole I was bored by this work, but I did not dare say so.

My ideas of Gluck had attained gigantic proportions from my reading of

Hoffmann’s well-known Phantasies; my anticipation of this work

therefore, which I had not studied yet, had led me to expect a

treatment full of overpowering dramatic force. It is possible that

Schroder-Devrient’s acting in Fidelio had taught me to judge everything

by her exalted standard.

With the greatest trouble I worked myself up to some kind of enthusiasm

for the great scene between Orestes and the Furies. I hoped against

hope that I should be able to admire the remainder of the opera. I

began to understand the Viennese taste, however, when I saw how great a

favourite the opera Zampa became with the public, both at the Karnthner

Thor and at the Josephstadt. Both theatres competed vigorously in the

production of this popular work, and although the public had seemed mad

about Iphigenia, nothing equalled their enthusiasm for Zampa. No sooner

had they left the Josephstadt Theatre in the greatest ecstasies about

Zampa than they proceeded to the public-house called the Strausslein.

Here they were immediately greeted by the strains of selections from

Zampa which drove the audience to feverish excitement. I shall never

forget the extraordinary playing of Johann Strauss, who put equal

enthusiasm into everything he played, and very often made the audience

almost frantic with delight.

At the beginning of a new waltz this demon of the Viennese musical

spirit shook like a Pythian priestess on the tripod, and veritable

groans of ecstasy (which, without doubt, were more due to his music

than to the drinks in which the audience had indulged) raised their

worship for the magic violinist to almost bewildering heights of

frenzy.

The hot summer air of Vienna was absolutely impregnated with Zampa and

Strauss. A very poor students’ rehearsal at the Conservatoire, at which

they performed a Mass by Cherubini, seemed to me like an alms paid

begrudgingly to the study of classical music. At the same rehearsal one

of the professors, to whom I was introduced, tried to make the students

play my Overture in D minor (the one already performed in Leipzig). I

do not know what his opinion was, nor that of the students, with regard

to this attempt; I only know they soon gave it up.

On the whole I had wandered into doubtful musical bypaths; and I now

withdrew from this first educational visit to a great European art

centre in order to start on a cheap, but long and monotonous return

journey to Bohemia, by stage-coach. My next move was a visit to the

house of Count Pachta, of whom I had pleasant recollections from my

boyhood days. His estate, Pravonin, was about eight miles from Prague.

Received in the kindest possible way by the old gentleman and his

beautiful daughters, I enjoyed his delightful hospitality until late

into the autumn. A youth of nineteen, as I then was, with a

fast-growing beard (for which my sisters had already prepared the young

ladies by letter), the continual and close intimacy with such kind and

pretty girls could hardly fail to make a strong impression on my

imagination. Jenny, the elder of the two, was slim, with black hair,

blue eyes, and wonderfully noble features; the younger one, Auguste,

was a little smaller, and stouter, with a magnificent complexion, fair

hair, and brown eyes. The natural and sisterly manner with which both

girls treated me and conversed with me did not blind me to the fact

that I was expected to fall in love with one or the other of them. It

amused them to see how embarrassed I got in my efforts to choose

between them, and consequently they teased me tremendously.

Unfortunately, I did not act judiciously with regard to the daughters

of my host: in spite of their homely education, they belonged to a very

aristocratic house, and consequently hesitated between the hope of

marrying men of eminent position in their own sphere, and the necessity

of choosing husbands amongst the higher middle classes, who could

afford to keep them in comfort. The shockingly poor, almost mediaeval,

education of the Austrian so-called cavalier, made me rather despise

the latter; the girls, too, had suffered from the same lack of proper

training. I soon noticed with disgust how little they knew about things

artistic, and how much value they attached to superficial things.

However much I might try to interest them in those higher pursuits

which had become necessary to me, they were incapable of appreciating

them. I advocated a complete change from the bad library novels, which

represented their only reading, from the Italian operatic arias, sung

by Auguste, and, last but not least, from the horsy, insipid cavaliers,

who paid their court to both Jenny and her sister in the most coarse

and offensive manner. My zeal in this latter respect soon gave rise to

great unpleasantness. I became hard and insulting, harangued them about

the French Revolution, and begged them with fatherly admonitions ‘for

the love of heaven’ to be content with well-educated middle-class men,

and give up those impertinent suitors who could only harm their

reputation. The indignation provoked by my friendly advice I often had

to ward off with the harshest retorts. I never apologised, but tried by

dint of real or feigned jealousy to get our friendship back on the old

footing. In this way, undecided, half in love and half angry, one cold

November day I said good-bye to these pretty children. I soon met the

whole family again at Prague, where I made a long sojourn, without,

however, staying at the Count’s residence.

My stay at Prague was to be of great musical importance to me. I knew

the director of the Conservatoire, Dionys Weber, who promised to bring

my symphony before the public; I also spent much of my time with an

actor called Moritz, to whom, as an old friend of our family, I had

been recommended, and there I made the acquaintance of the young

musician Kittl.

Moritz, who noticed that not a day passed but what I went to the

much-feared chief of the Conservatoire upon some pressing musical

business, once despatched me with an improvised parody on Schiller’s

Burgschaft:—

Zu Dionys dem Direktor schlich

Wagner, die Partitur im Gewande;

Ihn schlugen die Schuler im Bande:

‘Was wolltest du mit den Noten sprich?’

Entgegnet ihm finster der Wutherich:

‘Die Stadt vom schlechten Geschmacke befreien!

Das sollst du in den Rezensionen bereuen.’[5]

[5] To Dionys, the Director,

crept Wagner, the score in his pocket;

The students arrested him forthwith:

‘What do’st thou with that music, say?’

Thus asked him the angry tyrant:

‘To free the town from taste too vile!

For this the critics will make thee suffer.’

Truly I had to deal with a kind of ‘Dionysius the Tyrant.’ A man who

did not acknowledge Beethoven’s genius beyond his Second Symphony, a

man who looked upon the Eroica as the acme of bad taste on the master’s

part; who praised Mozart alone, and next to him tolerated only

Lindpaintner: such a man was not easy to approach, and I had to learn

the art of making use of tyrants for one’s own purposes. I

dissimulated; I pretended to be struck by the novelty of his ideas,

never contradicted him, and, to point out the similarity of our

standpoints, I referred him to the end fugue in my Overture and in my

Symphony (both in C major), which I had only succeeded in making what

they were through having studied Mozart. My reward soon followed:

Dionys set to work to study my orchestral creations with almost

youthful energy.

The students of the Conservatoire were compelled to practise with the

greatest exactitude my new symphony under his dry and terribly noisy

baton. In the presence of several of my friends, amongst whom was also

the dear old Count Pachta in his capacity of President of the

Conservatoire Committee, we actually held a first performance of the

greatest work that I had written up to that date.

During these musical successes I went on with my love-making in the

attractive house of Count Pachta, under the most curious circumstances.

A confectioner of the name of Hascha was my rival. He was a tall, lanky

young man who, like most Bohemians, had taken up music as a hobby; he

played the accompaniments to Auguste’s songs, and naturally fell in

love with her. Like myself, he hated the frequent visits of the

cavaliers, which seemed to be quite the custom in this city; but while

my displeasure expressed itself in humour, his showed itself in gloomy

melancholy. This mood made him behave boorishly in public: for

instance, one evening, when the chandelier was to be lighted for the

reception of one of these gentlemen, he ran his head purposely against

this ornament and broke it. The festive illumination was thus rendered

impossible; the Countess was furious, and Hascha had to leave the house

never to return.

I well remember that the first time I was conscious of any feelings of

love, these manifested themselves as pangs of jealousy, which had,

however, nothing to do with real love: this happened one evening when I

called at the house. The Countess kept me by her side in an ante-room,

while the girls, beautifully dressed and gay, flirted in the

reception-room with those hateful young noblemen. All I had ever read

in Hoffmann’s Tales of certain demoniacal intrigues, which until that

moment had been obscure to me, now became really tangible facts, and I

left Prague with an obviously unjust and exaggerated opinion of those

things and those people, through whom I had suddenly been dragged into

an unknown world of elementary passions.

On the other hand I had gained by my stay at Pravonin: I had written

poetry as well as musical compositions. My musical work was a setting

of Glockentone, a poem by the friend of my youth, Theodor Apel. I had

already written an aria for soprano which had been performed the winter

before at one of the theatre concerts. But my new work was decidedly

the first vocal piece I had written with real inspiration; generally

speaking, I suppose it owed its’ characteristics to the influence of

Beethoven’s Liederkreis: all the same, the impression that it has left

on my mind is that it was absolutely part of myself, and pervaded by a

delicate sentimentality which was brought into relief by the dreaminess

of the accompaniment. My poetical efforts lay in the direction of a

sketch of a tragi-operatic subject, which I finished in its entirety in

Prague under the title of Die Hochzeit (‘The Wedding’). I wrote it

without anybody’s knowledge, and this was no easy matter, seeing that I

could not write in my chilly little hotel-room, and had therefore to go

to the house of Moritz, where I generally spent my mornings. I remember

how I used quickly to hide my manuscript behind the sofa as soon as I

heard my host’s footsteps.

An extraordinary episode was connected with the plot of this work.

Already years ago I had come across a tragic story, whilst perusing

Busching’s book on chivalry, the like of which I have never since read.

A lady of noble birth had been assaulted one night by a man who

secretly cherished a passionate love for her, and in the struggle to

defend her honour superhuman strength was given her to fling him into

the courtyard below. The mystery of his death remained unexplained

until the day of his solemn obsequies, when the lady herself, who

attended them and was kneeling in solemn prayer, suddenly fell forward

and expired. The mysterious strength of this profound and passionate

story made an indelible impression upon my mind. Fascinated, moreover,

by the peculiar treatment of similar phenomena in Hoffmann’s Tales, I

sketched a novel in which musical mysticism, which I still loved so

deeply, played an important part. The action was supposed to take place

on the estate of a rich patron of the fine arts: a young couple was

going to be married, and had invited the friend of the bride-groom, an

interesting but melancholy and mysterious young man, to their wedding.

Intimately connected with the whole affair was a strange old organist.

The mystic relations which gradually developed between the old

musician, the melancholy young man and the bride, were to grow out of

the unravelment of certain intricate events, in a somewhat similar

manner to that of the mediaeval story above related. Here was the same

idea: the young man mysteriously killed, the equally strange sudden

death of his friend’s bride, and the old organist found dead on his

bench after the playing of an impressive requiem, the last chord of

which was inordinately prolonged as if it never would end.

I never finished this novel: but as I wanted to write the libretto for

an opera, I took up the theme again in its original shape, and built on

this (as far as the principal features went) the following dramatic

plot:—

Two great houses had lived in enmity, and had at last decided to end

the family feud. The aged head of one of these houses invited the son

of his former enemy to the wedding of his daughter with one of his

faithful partisans. The wedding feast is thus used as an opportunity

for reconciling the two families. Whilst the guests are full of the

suspicion and fear of treachery, their young leader falls violently in

love with the bride of his newly found ally. His tragic glance deeply

affects her; the festive escort accompanies her to the bridal chamber,

where she is to await her beloved; leaning against her tower-window she

sees the same passionate eyes fixed on her, and realises that she is

face to face with a tragedy.

When he penetrates into her chamber, and embraces her with frantic

passion, she pushes him backwards towards the balcony, and throws him

over the parapet into the abyss, from whence his mutilated remains are

dragged by his companions. They at once arm themselves against the

presumed treachery, and call for vengeance; tumult and confusion fill

the courtyard: the interrupted wedding feast threatens to end in a

night of slaughter. The venerable head of the house at last succeeds in

averting the catastrophe. Messengers are sent to bear the tidings of

the mysterious calamity to the relatives of the victim: the corpse

itself shall be the medium of reconciliation, for, in the presence of

the different generations of the suspected family, Providence itself

shall decide which of its members has been guilty of treason. During

the preparations for the obsequies the bride shows signs of approaching

madness; she flies from her bridegroom, refuses to be united to him,

and locks herself up in her tower-chamber. Only when, at night, the

gloomy though gorgeous ceremony commences, does she appear at the head

of her women to be present at the burial service, the gruesome

solemnity of which is interrupted by the news of the approach of

hostile forces and then by the armed attack of the kinsmen of the

murdered man. When the avengers of the presumed treachery penetrate

into the chapel and call upon the murderer to declare himself, the

horrified lord of the manor points towards his daughter who, turning

away from her bridegroom, falls lifeless by the coffin of her victim.

This nocturnal drama, through which ran reminiscences of Leubald und

Adelaïde (the work of my far-off boyhood), I wrote in the darkest vein,

but in a more polished and more noble style, disdaining all

light-effects, and especially all operatic embellishments. Tender

passages occurred here and there all the same, and Weinlich, to whom I

had already shown the beginning of my work on my return to Leipzig,

praised me for the clearness and good vocal quality of the introduction

I had composed to the first act; this was an Adagio for a vocal

septette, in which I had tried to express the reconciliation of the

hostile families, together with the emotions of the wedded couple and

the sinister passion of the secret lover. My principal object was, all

the same, to win my sister Rosalie’s approval. My poem, however, did

not find favour in her eyes: she missed all that which I had purposely

avoided, insisted on the ornamentation and development of the simple

situation, and desired more brightness generally. I made up my mind in

an instant: I took the manuscript, and without a suggestion of

ill-temper, destroyed it there and then. This action had nothing

whatever to do with wounded vanity. It was prompted merely by my desire

honestly to prove to my sister how little I thought of my own work and

how much I cared for her opinion. She was held in great and loving

esteem by my mother and by the rest of our family, for she was their

principal breadwinner: the important salary she earned as an actress

constituted nearly the whole income out of which my mother had to

defray the household expenses. For the sake of her profession she

enjoyed many advantages at home. Her part of the house had been

specially arranged so that she should have all the necessary comfort

and peace for her studies; on marketing days, when the others had to

put up with the simplest fare, she had to have the same dainty food as

usual. But more than any of these things did her charming gravity and

her refined way of speaking place her above the younger children. She

was thoughtful and gentle and never joined us in our rather loud

conversation. Of course, I had been the one member of the family who

had caused the greatest anxieties both to my mother and to my motherly

sister, and during my life as a student the strained relations between

us had made a terrible impression on me. When therefore they tried to

believe in me again, and once more showed some interest in my work, I

was full of gratitude and happiness. The thought of getting this sister

to look kindly upon my aspirations, and even to expect great things of

me, had become a special stimulus to my ambition. Under these

circumstances a tender and almost sentimental relationship grew up

between Rosalie and myself, which in its purity and sincerity could vie

with the noblest form of friendship between man and woman. This was

principally due to her exceptional individuality. She had not any real

talent, at least not for acting, which had often been considered stagey

and unnatural. Nevertheless she was much appreciated owing to her

charming appearance as well as to her pure and dignified womanliness,

and I remember many tokens of esteem which she received in those days.

All the same, none of these advances ever seemed to lead to the

prospect of a marriage, and year by year went by without bringing her

hopes of a suitable match—a fact which to me appeared quite

unaccountable. From time to time I thought I noticed that Rosalie

suffered from this state of affairs. I remember one evening when,

believing herself to be alone, I heard her sobbing and moaning; I stole

away unnoticed, but her grief made such an impression upon me that from

that moment I vowed to bring some joy into her life, principally by

making a name for myself. Not without reason had our stepfather Geyer

given my gentle sister the nickname of ‘Geistchen’ (little spirit), for

if her talent as an actress was not great, her imagination and her love

of art and of all high and noble things were perhaps, on that account

alone, all the greater. From her lips I had first heard expressions of

admiration and delight concerning those subjects which became dear to

me later on, and she moved amongst a circle of serious and interesting

people who loved the higher things of life without this attitude ever

degenerating into affectation.

On my return from my long journey I was introduced to Heinrich Laube,

whom my sister had added to her list of intimate friends. It was at the

time when the after-effects of the July revolution were beginning to

make themselves felt amongst the younger men of intellect in Germany,

and of these Laube was one of the most conspicuous. As a young man he

came from Silesia to Leipzig, his principal object being to try and

form connections in this publishing centre which might be of use to him

in Paris, whither he was going, and from which place Borne also made a

sensation amongst us by his letters. On this occasion Laube was present

at a representation of a play by Ludwig Robert, Die Macht der

Verhallnisse (‘The Power of Circumstances’). This induced him to write

a criticism for the Leipzig Tageblatt, which made such a sensation

through its terse and lively style that he was at once offered, in

addition to other literary work, the post of editor of Die elegante

Welt. In our house he was looked upon as a genius; his curt and often

biting manner of speaking, which seemed to exclude all attempt at

poetic expression, made him appear both original and daring: his sense

of justice, his sincerity and fearless bluntness made one respect his

character, hardened as it had been in youth by great adversity. On me

he had a very inspiring effect, and I was very much astonished to find

that he thought so much of me as to write a flattering notice about my

talent in his paper after hearing the first performance of my symphony.

This performance took place in the beginning of the year 1833 at the

Leipzig Schneider-Herberge. It was, by the bye, in this dignified old

hall that the society ‘Euterpe’ held its concerts! The place was dirty,

narrow, and poorly lighted, and it was here that my work was introduced

to the Leipzig public for the first time, and by means of an orchestra

that interpreted it simply disgracefully. I can only think of that

evening as a gruesome nightmare; and my astonishment was therefore all

the greater at seeing the important notice which Laube wrote about the

performance. Full of hope, I therefore looked forward to a performance

of the same work at the Gewandhaus concert, which followed soon after,

and which came off brilliantly in every way. It was well received and

well spoken of in all the papers; of real malice there was not a

trace—on the contrary, several notices wore encouraging, and Laube, who

had quickly become celebrated, confided to me that he was going to

offer me a libretto for an opera, which he had first written for

Meyerbeer. This staggered me somewhat, for I was not in the least

prepared to pose as a poet, and my only idea was to write a real plot

for an opera. As to the precise manner, however, in which such a book

had to be written, I already had a very definite and instinctive

notion, and I was strengthened in the certainty of my own feelings in

the matter when Laube now explained the nature of his plot to me. He

told me that he wanted to arrange nothing less than Kosziusko into a

libretto for grand opera! Once again I had qualms, for I felt at once

that Laube had a mistaken idea about the character of a dramatic

subject. When I inquired into the real action of the play, Laube was

astonished that I should expect more than the story of the Polish hero,

whose life was crowded with incident; in any case, he thought there was

quite sufficient action in it to describe the unhappy fate of a whole

nation. Of course the usual heroine was not missing; she was a Polish

girl who had a love affair with a Russian; and in this way some

sentimental situations were also to be found in the plot. Without a

moment’s delay I assured my sister Rosalie that I would not set this

story to music: she agreed with me, and begged me only to postpone my

answer to Laube. My journey to Wurzburg was of great help to me in this

respect, for it was easier to write my decision to Laube than to

announce it to him personally. He accepted the slight rebuff with good

grace, but he never forgave me, either then or afterwards, for writing

my own words!

When he heard what subject I had preferred to his brilliant political

poem, he made no effort to conceal his contempt for my choice. I had

borrowed the plot from a dramatic fairy tale by Gozzi, La Donna

Serpente, and called it Die Feen (‘The Fairies’). The names of my

heroes I chose from different Ossian and similar poems: my prince was

called Arindal; he was loved by a fairy called Ada, who held him under

her spell and kept him in fairyland, away from his realm, until his

faithful friends at last found him and induced him to return, for his

country was going to rack and ruin, and even its capital had fallen

into the enemy’s hands. The loving fairy herself sends the prince back

to his country; for the oracle has decreed that she shall lay upon her

lover the severest of tasks. Only by performing this task triumphantly

can he make it possible for her to leave the immortal world of fairies

in order to share the fate of her earthly lover, as his wife. In a

moment of deepest despair about the state of his country, the fairy

queen appears to him and purposely destroys his faith in her by deeds

of the most cruel and inexplicable nature. Driven mad by a thousand

fears, Arindal begins to imagine that all the time he has been dealing

with a wicked sorceress, and tries to escape the fatal spell by

pronouncing a curse upon Ada. Wild with sorrow, the unhappy fairy sinks

down, and reveals their mutual fate to the lover, now lost to her for

ever, and tells him that, as a punishment for having disobeyed the

decree of Fate, she is doomed to be turned into stone (in Gozzi’s

version she becomes a serpent). Immediately afterwards it appears that

all the catastrophes which the fairy had prophesied were but

deceptions: victory over the enemy as well as the growing prosperity

and welfare of the kingdom now follow in quick succession: Ada is taken

away by the Fates, and Arindal, a raving madman, remains behind alone.

The terrible sufferings of his madness do not, however, satisfy the

Fates: to bring about his utter ruin they appear before the repentant

man and invite him to follow them to the nether world, on the pretext

of enabling him to free Ada from the spell. Through the treacherous

promises of the wicked fairies Arindal’s madness grows into sublime

exaltation; and one of his household magicians, a faithful friend,

having in the meantime equipped him with magic weapons and charms, he

now follows the traitresses. The latter cannot get over their

astonishment when they see how Arindal overcomes one after the other of

the monsters of the infernal regions: only when they arrive at the

vault in which they show him the stone in human shape do they recover

their hope of vanquishing the valiant prince, for, unless he can break

the charm which binds Ada, he must share her fate and be doomed to

remain a stone for ever. Arindal, who until then has been using the

dagger and the shield given him by the friendly magician, now makes use

of an instrument—a lyre—which he has brought with him, and the meaning

of which he had not yet understood. To the sounds of this instrument he

now expresses his plaintive moans, his remorse, and his overpowering

longing for his enchanted queen. The stone is moved by the magic of his

love: the beloved one is released. Fairyland with all its marvels opens

its portals, and the mortal learns that, owing to his former

inconstancy, Ada has lost the right to become his wife on earth, but

that her beloved, through his great and magic power, has earned the

right to live for ever by her side in fairyland.

Although I had written Die Hochzeit in the darkest vein, without

operatic embellishments, I painted this subject with the utmost colour

and variety. In contrast to the lovers out of fairyland I depicted a

more ordinary couple, and I even introduced a third pair that belonged

to the coarser and more comical servant world. I purposely went to no

pains in the matter of the poetic diction and the verse. My idea was

not to encourage my former hopes of making a name as a poet; I was now

really a ‘musician’ and a ‘composer,’ and wished to write a decent

opera libretto simply because I was sure that nobody else could write

one for me; the reason being that such a book is something quite unique

and cannot be written either by a poet or by a mere man of letters.

With the intention of setting this libretto to music, I left Leipzig in

January, 1833, to stay in Wurzburg with my eldest brother Albert, who

at the time held an appointment at the theatre. It now seemed necessary

for me to begin to apply my musical knowledge to a practical purpose,

and to this end my brother had promised to help me in getting some kind

of post at the small Wurzburg theatre. I travelled by post to Bamberg

via Hof, and in Bamberg I stayed a few days in the company of a young

man called Schunke, who from a player on the horn had become an actor.

With the greatest interest I learned the story of Caspar Hauser, who at

that time was very well known, and who (if I am not mistaken) was

pointed out to me. In addition to this, I admired the peculiar costumes

of the market-women, thought with much interest of Hoffmann’s stay at

this place, and of how it had led to the writing of his Tales, and

resumed my journey (to Wurzburg) with a man called Hauderer, and

suffered miserably from the cold all the way.

My brother Albert, who was almost a new acquaintance to me, did his

best to make me feel at home in his not over luxurious establishment.

He was pleased to find me less mad than he had expected me to be from a

certain letter with which I had succeeded in frightening him some time

previously, and he really managed to procure me an exceptional

occupation as choir-master at the theatre, for which I received the

monthly fee of ten guilders. The remainder of the winter was devoted to

the serious study of the duties required of a musical director: in a

very short time I had to tackle two new grand operas, namely,

Marschner’s Vampir and Meyerbeer’s Robert der Teufel, in both of which

the chorus played a considerable part. At first I felt absolutely like

a beginner, and had to start on Camilla von Paer, the score of which

was utterly unknown to me. I still remember that I felt I was doing a

thing which I had no right to undertake: I felt quite an amateur at the

work. Soon, however, Marschner’s score interested me sufficiently to

make the labour seem worth my while. The score of Robert was a great

disappointment to me: from the newspapers I had expected plenty of

originality and novelty; I could find no trace of either in this

transparent work, and an opera with a finale like that of the second

act could not be named in the same breath with any of my favourite

works. The only thing that impressed me was the unearthly keyed trumpet

which, in the last act, represented the voice of the mother’s ghost.

It was remarkable to observe the aesthetic demoralisation into which I

now fell through having daily to deal with such a work. I gradually

lost my dislike for this shallow and exceedingly uninteresting

composition (a dislike I shared with many German musicians) in the

growing interest which I was compelled to take in its interpretation;

and thus it happened that the insipidness and affectation of the

commonplace melodies ceased to concern me save from the standpoint of

their capability of eliciting applause or the reverse. As, moreover, my

future career as musical conductor was at stake, my brother, who was

very anxious on my behalf, looked favourably on this lack of classical

obstinacy on my part, and thus the ground was gradually prepared for

that decline in my classical taste which was destined to last some

considerable time.

All the same, this did not occur before I had given some proof of my

great inexperience in the lighter style of writing. My brother wanted

to introduce a ‘Cavatine’ from the Piraten, by Bellini, into the same

composer’s opera, Straniera; the score was not to be had, and he

entrusted me with the instrumentation of this work. From the piano

score alone I could not possibly detect the heavy and noisy

instrumentation of the ritornelles and intermezzi which, musically,

were so very thin; the composer of a great C major Symphony with an end

fugue could only help himself out of the difficulty by the use of a few

flutes and clarinets playing in thirds. At the rehearsal the ‘Cavatine’

sounded so frightfully thin and shallow that my brother made me serious

reproaches about the waste of copying expenses. But I had my revenge:

to the tenor aria of ‘Aubry’ in Marschner’s Vampir I added an Allegro,

for which I also wrote the words.

My work succeeded splendidly, and earned the praise of both the public

and my brother. In a similar German style I wrote the music to my Feen

in the course of the year 1833. My brother and his wife left Wurzburg

after Easter in order to avail themselves of several invitations at

friends’ houses; I stayed behind with the children—three little girls

of tender years—which placed me in the extraordinary position of a

responsible guardian, a post for which I was not in the least suited at

that time of my life. My time was divided between my work and pleasure,

and in consequence I neglected my charges. Amongst the friends I made

there, Alexander Muller had much influence over me; he was a good

musician and pianist, and I used to listen for hours to his

improvisations on given themes—an accomplishment in which he so greatly

excelled, that I could not fail to be impressed. With him and some

other friends, amongst whom was also Valentin Hamm, I often made

excursions in the neighbourhood, on which occasions the Bavarian beer

and the Frankish wine were wont to fly. Valentin Hamm was a grotesque

individual, who entertained us often with his excellent violin playing;

he had an enormous stretch on the piano, for he could reach an interval

of a twelfth. Der Letzte Hieb, a public beer-garden situated on a

pleasant height, was a daily witness of my fits of wild and often

enthusiastic boisterousness; never once during those mild summer nights

did I return to my charges without having waxed enthusiastic over art

and the world in general. I also remember a wicked trick which has

always remained a blot in my memory. Amongst my friends was a fair and

very enthusiastic Swabian called Frohlich, with whom I had exchanged my

score of the C minor Symphony for his, which he had copied out with his

own hand. This very gentle, but rather irritable young man had taken

such a violent dislike to one Andre, whose malicious face I also

detested, that he declared that this person spoilt his evenings for

him, merely by being in the same room with him. The unfortunate object

of his hatred tried all the same to meet us whenever he could: friction

ensued, but Andre would insist upon aggravating us. One evening

Frohlich lost patience. After some insulting retort, he tried to chase

him from our table by striking him with a stick: the result was a fight

in which Frolich’s friends felt they must take part, though they all

seemed to do so with some reluctance. A mad longing to join the fray

also took possession of me. With the others I helped in knocking our

poor victim about, and I even heard the sound of one terrible blow

which I struck Andre on the head, whilst he fixed his eyes on me in

bewilderment.

I relate this incident to atone for a sin which has weighed very

heavily on my conscience ever since. I can compare this sad experience

only with one out of my earliest boyhood days, namely the drowning of

some puppies in a shallow pool behind my uncle’s house in Eisleben.

Even to this day I cannot think of the slow death of these poor little

creatures without horror. I have never quite forgotten some of my

thoughtless and reckless actions; for the sorrows of others, and in

particular those of animals, have always affected me deeply to the

extent of filling me with a disgust of life.

My first love affair stands out in strong contrast against these

recollections. It was only natural that one of the young chorus ladies

with whom I had to practise daily should know how to attract my

attentions. Therese Ringelmann, the daughter of a grave-digger, thanks

to her beautiful soprano voice, led me to believe that I could make a

great singer of her. After I told her of this ambitious scheme, she

paid much attention to her appearance, and dressed elegantly for the

rehearsals, and a row of white pearls which she wound through her hair

specially fascinated me. During the summer holidays I gave Therese

regular lessons in singing, according to a method which has always

remained a mystery to me ever since. I also called on her very often at

her house, where, fortunately, I never met her unpleasant father, but

always her mother and her sisters. We also met in the public gardens,

but false vanity always kept me from telling my friends of our

relations. I do not know whether the fault lay with her lowly birth,

her lack of education, or my own doubt about the sincerity of my

affections; but in any case when, in addition to the fact that I had my

reasons for being jealous, they also tried to urge me to a formal

engagement, this love affair came quietly to an end.

An infinitely more genuine affair was my love for Friederike Galvani,

the daughter of a mechanic, who was undoubtedly of Italian origin. She

was very musical, and had a lovely voice; my brother had patronised her

and helped her to a debut at his theatre, which test she stood

brilliantly. She was rather small, but had large dark eyes and a sweet

disposition. The first oboist of the orchestra, a good fellow as well

as a clever musician, was thoroughly devoted to her. He was looked upon

as her fiance, but, owing to some incident in his past, he was not

allowed to visit at her parents’ house, and the marriage was not to

take place for a long time yet. When the autumn of my year in Wurzburg

drew near, I received an invitation from friends to be present at a

country wedding at a little distance from Wurzburg; the oboist and his

fiancee had also been invited. It was a jolly, though primitive affair;

we drank and danced, and I even tried my hand at violin playing, but I

must have forgotten it badly, for even with the second violin I could

not manage to satisfy the other musicians. But my success with

Friederike was all the greater; we danced like mad through the many

couples of peasants until at one moment we got so excited that, losing

all self-control, we embraced each other while her real lover was

playing the dance music. For the first time in my life I began to feel

a flattering sensation of self-respect when Friederike’s fiance, on

seeing how we two flirted, accepted the situation with good grace, if

not without some sadness. I had never had the chance of thinking that I

could make a favourable impression on any young girl. I never imagined

myself good-looking, neither had I ever thought it possible that I

could attract the attention of pretty girls.

On the other hand, I had gradually acquired a certain self-reliance in

mixing with men of my own age. Owing to the exceptional vivacity and

innate susceptibility of my nature—qualities which were brought home to

me in my relations with members of my circle—I gradually became

conscious of a certain power of transporting or bewildering my more

indolent companions.

From my poor oboist’s silent self-control on becoming aware of the

ardent advances of his betrothed towards me, I acquired, as I have

said, the first suggestion of the fact that I might count for

something, not only among men, but also among women. The Frankish wine

helped to bring about a state of ever greater confusion, and under the

cover of its influence I at length declared myself, quite openly, to be

Friederike’s lover. Ever so far into the night, in fact, when day was

already breaking, we set off home together to Wurzburg in an open

wagon. This was the crowning triumph of my delightful adventure; for

while all the others, including, in the end, the jealous oboist, slept

off their debauch in the face of the dawning day, I, with my cheek

against Friederike’s, and listening to the warbling of the larks,

watched the coming of the rising sun.

On the following day we had scarcely any idea of what had happened. A

certain sense of shame, which was not unbecoming, held us aloof from

one another: and yet I easily won access to Friederike’s family, and

from that time forward was daily a welcome guest, when for some hours I

would linger in unconcealed intimate intercourse with the same domestic

circle from which the unhappy betrothed remained excluded. No word was

ever mentioned of this last connection; never once did it even dawn

upon Friederike to effect any change in the state of affairs, and it

seemed to strike no one that I ought, so to speak, to take the fiance’s

place. The confiding manner in which I was received by all, and

especially by the girl herself, was exactly similar to one of Nature’s

great processes, as, for instance, when spring steps in and winter

passes silently away. Not one of them ever considered the material

consequences of the change, and this is precisely the most charming and

flattering feature of this first youthful love affair, which was never

to degenerate into an attitude which might give rise to suspicion or

concern. These relations ended only with my departure from Wurzburg,

which was marked by the most touching and most tearful leavetaking.

For some time, although I kept up no correspondence, the memory of this

episode remained firmly imprinted on my mind. Two years later, while

making a rapid journey through the old district, I once more visited

Friederike: the poor child approached me utterly shamefaced. Her oboist

was still her lover, and though his position rendered marriage

impossible, the unfortunate young woman had become a mother. I have

heard nothing more of her since.

Amid all this traffic of love I worked hard at my opera, and, thanks to

the loving sympathy of my sister Rosalie, I was able to find the

necessary good spirits for the task. When at the commencement of the

summer my earnings as a conductor came to an end, this same sister

again made it her business loyally to provide me with ample

pocket-money, so that I might devote myself solely to the completion of

my work, without troubling about anything or being a burden to any one.

At a much later date I came across a letter of mine written to Rosalie

in those days, which were full of a tender, almost adoring love for

that noble creature.

When the winter was at hand my brother returned, and the theatre

reopened. Truth to tell, I did not again become connected with it, but

acquired a position, which was even more prominent, in the concerts of

the Musical Society in which I produced my great overture in C major,

my symphony, and eventually portions of my new opera as well. An

amateur with a splendid voice, Mademoiselle Friedel, sang the great

aria from Ada. In addition to this, a trio was given which, in one of

its passages, had such a moving effect upon my brother, who took part

in it, that, to his astonishment, as he himself admitted, he completely

lost his cue on account of it.

By Christmas my work had come to an end, my score was written out

complete with the most laudable neatness, and now I was to return to

Leipzig for the New Year, in order to get my opera accepted by the

theatre there. On the way home I visited Nuremberg, where I stayed a

week with my sister Clara and with her husband, who were engaged at the

theatre there. I well remember how happy and comfortable I felt during

this pleasant visit to the very same relatives who a few years

previously, when I had stayed with them at Magdeburg, had been upset by

my resolve to adopt music as a calling. Now I had become a real

musician, had written a grand opera, and had already brought out many

things without coming to grief. The sense of all this was a great joy

to me, while it was no less flattering to my relatives, who could not

fail to see that the supposed misfortune had in the end proved to my

advantage. I was in a jolly mood and quite unrestrained—a state of mind

which was very largely the result not only of my brother-in-law’s

cheerful and sociable household, but also of the pleasant tavern life

of the place. In a much more confident and elated spirit I returned to

Leipzig, where I was able to lay the three huge volumes of my score

before my highly delighted mother and sister.

Just then my family was the richer for the return of my brother Julius

from his long wanderings. He had worked a good while in Paris as a

goldsmith, and had now set up for himself in that capacity in Leipzig.

He too, like the rest, was eager to hear something out of my opera,

which, to be sure, was not so easy, as I entirely lacked the gift of

playing anything of the sort in an easy and intelligible way. Only when

I was able to work myself into a state of absolute ecstasy was it

possible for me to render something with any effect. Rosalie knew that

I meant it to draw a sort of declaration of love from her; but I have

never felt certain whether the embrace and the sisterly kiss which were

awarded me after I had sung my great aria from Ada, were bestowed on me

from real emotion or rather out of affectionate regard. On the other

hand, the zeal with which she urged my opera on the director of the

theatre, Ringelhardt, the conductor and the manager was unmistakable,

and she did it so effectually that she obtained their consent for its

performance, and that very speedily. I was particularly interested to

learn that the management immediately showed themselves eager to try to

settle the matter of the costumes for my drama: but I was astonished to

hear that the choice was in favour of oriental attire, whereas I had

intended, by the names I had selected, to suggest a northern character

for the setting. But it was precisely these names which they found

unsuitable, as fairy personages are not seen in the North, but only in

the East; while apart from this, the original by Gozzi, which formed

the basis of the work, undoubtedly bore an oriental character. It was

with the utmost indignation that I opposed the insufferable turban and

caftan style of dress, and vehemently advocated the knightly garb worn

in the early years of the Middle Ages. I then had to come to a thorough

understanding with the conductor, Stegmayer, on the subject of my

score. He was a remarkable, short, fat man, with fair curly hair, and

an exceptionally jovial disposition; he was, however, very hard to

bring to a point. When over our wine we always arrived at an

understanding very quickly, but as soon as we sat at the piano, I had

to listen to the most extraordinary objections concerning the trend of

which I was for some time extremely puzzled. As the matter was much

delayed by this vacillation, I put myself into closer communication

with the stage manager of the opera, Hauser, who at that time was much

appreciated as a singer and patron of art by the people of Leipzig.

With this man, too, I had the strangest experiences: he who had

captivated the audiences of Leipzig, more especially with his

impersonation of the barber and the Englishman in Fra Diavolo, suddenly

revealed himself in his own house as the most fanatical adherent of the

most old-fashioned music. I listened with astonishment to the scarcely

veiled contempt with which he treated even Mozart, and the only thing

he seemed to regret was that we had no operas by Sebastian Bach. After

he had explained to me that dramatic music had not actually been

written yet, and that properly speaking Gluck alone had shown any

ability for it, he proceeded to what seemed an exhaustive examination

of my own opera, concerning which all I had wished to hear from him was

whether it was fit to be performed. Instead of this, however, his

object seemed to be to point out the failure of my purpose in every

number. I sweated blood under the unparalleled torture of going through

my work with this man; and I told my mother and sister of my grave

depression. All these delays had already succeeded in making it

impossible to perform my opera at the date originally fixed, and now it

was postponed until August of the current year (1834).

An incident which I shall never forget inspired me with fresh courage.

Old Bierey, an experienced and excellent musician, and in his day a

successful composer, who, thanks more particularly to his long practice

as a conductor at the Breslau theatre, had acquired a perfectly

practical knowledge of such things, was then living at Leipzig, and was

a good friend of my people. My mother and sister begged him to give his

opinion about the fitness of my opera for the stage, and I duly

submitted the score to him. I cannot say how deeply affected and

impressed I was to see this old gentleman appear one day among my

relatives, and to hear him declare with genuine enthusiasm that he

simply could not understand how so young a man could have composed such

a score. His remarks concerning the greatness which he had recognised

in my talent were really irresistible, and positively amazed me. When

asked whether he considered the work presentable and calculated to

produce an effect, he declared his only regret was that he was no

longer at the head of a theatre, because, had he been, he would have

thought himself extremely lucky to secure such a man as myself

permanently for his enterprise. At this announcement my family was

overcome with joy, and their feelings were all the more justified

seeing that, as they all knew, Bierey was by no means an amiable

romancer, but a practical musician well seasoned by a life full of

experience.

The delay was now borne with better spirits, and for a long time I was

able to wait hopefully for what the future might bring. Among other

things, I now began to enjoy the company of a new friend in the person

of Laube, who at that time, although I had not set his Kosziusko to

music, was at the zenith of his fame. The first portion of his novel,

Young Europe, the form of which was epistolary, had appeared, and had a

most stimulating effect on me, more particularly in conjunction with

all the youthful hopefulness which at that time pulsated in my veins.

Though his teaching was essentially only a repetition of that in

Heinse’s Ardinghello, the forces that then surged in young breasts were

given full and eloquent expression. The guiding spirit of this tendency

was followed in literary criticism, which was aimed mainly at the

supposed or actual incapacity of the semi-classical occupants of our

various literary thrones. Without the slightest mercy the pedants,[6]

among whom Tieck for one was numbered, were treated as sheer

encumbrances and hindrances to the rise of a new literature. That which

led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard to those

German composers who hitherto had been admired and respected, was

partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, and the luring

sprightliness of their tone; but mainly the impression made by a fresh

visit of Schroder-Devrient to Leipzig, when her rendering of Borneo in

Bellini’s Romeo and Juliet carried every one by storm. The effect of it

was not to be compared with anything that had been witnessed

theretofore. To see the daring, romantic figure of the youthful lover

against a background of such obviously shallow and empty music prompted

one, at all events, to meditate doubtfully upon the cause of the great

lack of effect in solid German music as it had been applied hitherto to

the drama. Without for the moment plunging too deeply into this

meditation, I allowed myself to be borne along with the current of my

youthful feelings, then roused to ardour, and turned involuntarily to

the task of working off all that brooding seriousness which in my

earlier years had driven me to such pathetic mysticism.

[6] _Zöpfe_ in the German text.—TRANSLATOR.

What Pohlenz had not done by his conducting of the Ninth Symphony, what

the Vienna Conservatoire, Dionys Weber, and many other clumsy

performances (which had led me to regard classical music as absolutely

colourless) had not fully accomplished, was achieved by the

inconceivable charm of the most unclassical Italian music, thanks to

the wonderful, thrilling, and entrancing impersonation of Romeo by

Schroder-Devrient. What effect such powerful, and as regards their

causes, incomprehensible, effects had upon my opinion was shown in the

frivolous way in which I was able to contrive a short criticism of

Weber’s Euryanthe for the Elegante Zeitung. This opera had been

performed by the Leipzig company shortly before the appearance of

Schroder-Devrient: cold and colourless performers, among whom the

singer in the title-role, appearing in the wilderness with the full

sleeves which were then the pink of fashion, is still a disagreeable

memory. Very laboriously, and without verve, but simply with the object

of satisfying the demands of classical rules, this company did its

utmost to dispel even the enthusiastic impressions of Weber’s music

which I had formed in my youth. I did not know what answer to make to a

brother critic of Laube’s, when he pointed out to me the laboured

character of this operatic performance, as soon as he was able to

contrast it with the entrancing effect of that Romeo evening. Here I

found myself confronted with a problem, the solving of which I was just

at that time disposed to take as easily as possible, and displayed my

courage by discarding all prejudice, and that daringly, in the short

criticism just mentioned in which I simply scoffed at Euryanthe. Just

as I had had my season of wild oat sowing as a student, so now I boldly

rushed into the same courses in the development of my artistic taste.

It was May, and beautiful spring weather, and a pleasure trip that I

now undertook with a friend into the promised land of my youthful

romance, Bohemia, was destined to bring the unrestrained

‘Young-European’ mood in me to full maturity. This friend was Theodor

Apel. I had known him a long while, and had always felt particularly

flattered by the fact that I had won his hearty affection; for, as the

son of the gifted master of metre and imitator of Greek forms of

poetry, August Apel, I felt that admiring deference for him which I had

never yet been able to bestow upon the descendant of a famous man.

Being well-to-do and of a good family, his friendship gave me such

opportunities of coming into touch with the easy circumstances of the

upper classes as were not of frequent occurrence in my station of life.

While my mother, for instance, regarded my association with this highly

respectable family with great satisfaction, I for my part was extremely

gratified at the thought of the cordiality with which I was received in

such circles.

Apel’s earnest wish was to become a poet, and I took it for granted

that he had all that was needed for such a calling; above all, what

seemed to me so important, the complete freedom that his considerable

fortune assured him by liberating him from all need of earning his

living or of adopting a profession for a livelihood. Strange to say,

his mother, who on the death of his distinguished father had married a

Leipzig lawyer, was very anxious about the vocation he should choose,

and wished her son to make a fine career in the law, as she was not at

all disposed to favour his poetical gifts. And it was to her attempts

to convert me to her view, in order that by my influence I might avert

the calamity of a second poet in the family, in the person of the son,

that I owed the specially friendly relations that obtained between

herself and me. All her suggestions succeeded in doing, however, was to

stimulate me, even more than my own favourable opinion of his talent

could, to confirm my friend in his desire to be a poet, and thus to

support him in his rebellious attitude towards his family.

He was not displeased at this. As he was also studying music and

composed quite nicely, I succeeded in being on terms of the greatest

intimacy with him. The fact that he had spent the very year in which I

had sunk into the lowest depths of undergraduate madness, studying at

Heidelberg and not at Leipzig, had kept him unsullied by any share in

my strange excesses, and when we now met again at Leipzig, in the

spring of 1834, the only thing that we still had in common was the

aesthetic aspiration of our lives, which we now strove by way of

experiment to divert into the direction of the enjoyment of life.

Gladly would we have flung ourselves into lively adventures if only the

conditions of our environment and of the whole middle-class world in

which we lived had in any way admitted of such things. Despite all the

promptings of our instincts, however, we got no further than planning

this excursion to Bohemia. At all events, it was something that we made

the journey not by the post, but in our own carriage, and our genuine

pleasure continued to lie in the fact that at Teplitz, for instance, we

daily took long drives in a fine carriage. When in the evening we had

supped off trout at the Wilhelmsburg, drunk good Czernosek wine with

Bilin water, and duly excited ourselves over Hoffmann, Beethoven,

Shakespeare, Heinse’s Ardinghello, and other matters, and then, with

our limbs comfortably outstretched in our elegant carriage, drove back

in the summer twilight to the ‘King of Prussia,’ where we occupied the

large balcony-room on the first floor, we felt that we had spent the

day like young gods, and for sheer exuberance could think of nothing

better to do than to indulge in the most frightful quarrels which,

especially when the windows were open, would collect numbers of alarmed

listeners in the square before the inn.

One fine morning I stole away from my friend in order to take my

breakfast alone at the ‘Schlackenburg,’ and also to seize an

opportunity of jotting down the plan of a new operatic composition in

my note-book. With this end in view, I had mastered the subject of

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which, in accordance with my present

mood, I soon transformed pretty freely into a libretto entitled

Liebesverbot. Young Europe and Ardinghello, and the strange frame of

mind into which I had fallen with regard to classical operatic music,

furnished me with the keynote of my conception, which was directed more

particularly against puritanical hypocrisy, and which thus tended

boldly to exalt ‘unrestrained sensuality.’ I took care to understand

the grave Shakespearean theme only in this sense. I could see only the

gloomy strait-laced viceroy, his heart aflame with the most passionate

love for the beautiful novice, who, while she beseeches him to pardon

her brother condemned to death for illicit love, at the same time

kindles the most dangerous fire in the stubborn Puritan’s breast by

infecting him with the lovely warmth of her human emotion.

The fact that these powerful features are so richly developed in

Shakespeare’s creation only in order that, in the end, they may be

weighed all the more gravely in the scales of justice, was no concern

of mine: all I cared about was to expose the sinfulness of hypocrisy

and the unnaturalness of such cruel moral censure. Thus I completely

dropped Measure for Measure, and made the hypocrite be brought to

justice only by the avenging power of love. I transferred the theme

from the fabulous city of Vienna to the capital of sunny Sicily, in

which a German viceroy, indignant at the inconceivably loose morals of

the people, attempts to introduce a puritanical reform, and comes

miserably to grief over it. Die Stumme von Portici probably contributed

to some extent to this theme, as did also certain memories of Die

Sizilianische Vesper. When I remember that at last even the gentle

Sicilian Bellini constituted a factor in this composition, I cannot, to

be sure, help smiling at the strange medley in which the most

extraordinary misunderstandings here took shape.

This remained for the present a mere draft. Studies from life destined

for my work were first to be carried out on this delightful excursion

to Bohemia. I led my friend in triumph to Prague, in the hope of

securing the same impressions for him which had stirred me so

profoundly when I was there. We met my fair friends in the city itself;

for, owing to the death of old Count Pachta, material changes had taken

place in the family, and the surviving daughters no longer went to

Pravonin. My behaviour was full of arrogance, and by means of it I

doubtless wished to vent a certain capricious lust of revenge for the

feelings of bitterness with which I had taken leave of this circle some

years previously. My friend was well received. The changed family

circumstances forced the charming girls ever more and more imperatively

to come to some decision as to their future, and a wealthy bourgeois,

though not exactly in trade himself, but in possession of ample means,

seemed to the anxious mother, at all events, a good adviser. Without

either showing or feeling any malice in the matter, I expressed my

pleasure at the sight of the strange confusion caused by Theodor’s

introduction into the family by the merriest and wildest jests: for my

only intercourse with the ladies consisted purely of jokes and friendly

chaff. They could not understand how it was that I had altered so

strangely. There was no longer any of that love of wrangling, that rage

for instructing, and that zeal in converting in me which formerly they

had found so irritating. But at the same time not a sensible word could

I be made to utter, and they who were now wanting to talk over many

things seriously could get nothing out of me save the wildest

tomfoolery. As on this occasion, in my character of an uncaged bird, I

boldly allowed myself many a liberty against which they felt themselves

powerless, my exuberant spirits were excited all the more when my

friend, who was led away by my example, tried to imitate me—a thing

they took in very bad part from him.

Only once was there any attempt at seriousness between us: I was

sitting at the piano, and was listening to my companion, who was

telling the ladies that in a conversation at the hotel I had found

occasion to express myself most warmly to some one who appeared to be

surprised on hearing of the domestic and industrious qualities of my

lady friends. I was deeply moved when, as the outcome of my companion’s

remarks, I gathered what unpleasant experiences the poor things had

already been through: for what seemed to me a very natural action on my

part, appeared to fill them with unexpected pleasure. Jenny, for

instance, came up to me and hugged me with great warmth. By general

consent I was now granted the right of behaving with almost studied

rudeness, and I replied even to Jenny’s warm outburst only with my

usual banter.

In our hotel, the ‘Black Horse,’ which was so famous in those days, I

found the playground in which I was able to carry the mischievous

spirit not exhausted at the Pachta’s house to the point of

recklessness. Out of the most accidental material in table and

travelling guests we succeeded in gathering a company around us which

allowed us, until far into the night, to lead it into the most

inconceivable follies. To all this I was incited more particularly by

the personality of a very timid and undersized business man from

Frankfort on the Oder, who longed to seem of a daring disposition; and

his presence stimulated me, if only owing to the remarkable chance it

gave me of coming into contact with some one who was at home in

Frankfort ‘on the Oder.’ Any one who knows how things then stood in

Austria can form some idea of my recklessness when I say that I once

went so far as to cause our symposium in the public room to bellow the

Marseillaise out loud into the night. Therefore, when after this heroic

exploit was over, and while I was undressing, I clambered on the outer

ledges of the windows from one room to the other on the second floor, I

naturally horrified those who did not know of the love of acrobatic

feats which I had cultivated in my earliest boyhood.

Even if I had exposed myself without fear to such dangers, I was soon

sobered down next morning by a summons from the police. When, in

addition to this, I recalled the singing of the Marseillaise, I was

filled with the gravest fears. After having been detained at the

station a long time, owing to a strange misunderstanding, the upshot of

it was that the inspector who was told off to examine me found that

there was not sufficient time left for a serious hearing, and, to my

great relief, I was allowed to go after replying to a few harmless

questions concerning the intended length of my stay. Nevertheless, we

thought it advisable not to yield to the temptation of playing any more

pranks beneath the spread wings of the double eagle.

By means of a circuitous route into which we were led by our insatiable

longing for adventures—adventures which, as a matter of fact, occurred

only in our imagination, and which to all intents and purposes were but

modest diversions on the road—we at length got back to Leipzig. And

with this return home the really cheerful period of my life as a youth

definitely closed. If, up to that time, I had not been free from

serious errors and moments of passion, it was only now that care cast

its first shadow across my path.

My family had anxiously awaited my return in order to inform me that

the post of conductor had been offered to me by the Magdeburg Theatre

Company. This company during the current summer month was performing at

a watering place called Lauchstadt. The manager could not get on with

an incompetent conductor that had been sent to him, and in his

extremity had applied to Leipzig in the hope of getting a substitute

forthwith. Stegmayer, the conductor, who had no inclination to practise

my score Feen during the hot summer weather, as he had promised to do,

promptly recommended me for the post, and in that way really managed to

shake off a very troublesome tormentor. For although, on the one hand,

I really desired to be able to abandon myself freely and without

restraint to the torrent of adventures that constitute the artist’s

life, yet a longing for independence, which could be won only by my

earning my own living, had been greatly strengthened in me by the state

of my affairs. Albeit, I had the feeling that a solid basis for the

gratification of this desire was not to be laid in Lauchstadt; nor did

I find it easy to assist the plot concocted against the production of

my Feen. I therefore determined to make a preliminary visit to the

place just to see how things stood.

This little watering-place had, in the days of Goethe and Schiller,

acquired a very wide reputation, its wooden theatre had been built

according to the design of the former, and the first performance of the

Braut von Messina had been given there. But although I repeated all

this to myself, the place made me feel rather doubtful. I asked for the

house of the director of the theatre. He proved to be out, but a small

dirty boy, his son, was told to take me to the theatre to find ‘Papa.’

Papa, however, met us on the way. He was an elderly man; he wore a

dressing-gown, and on his head a cap. His delight at greeting me was

interrupted by complaints about a serious indisposition, for which his

son was to fetch him a cordial from a shop close by. Before despatching

the boy on this errand he pressed a real silver penny into his hand

with a certain ostentation which was obviously for my benefit. This

person was Heinrich Bethmann, surviving husband of the famous actress

of that name, who, having lived in the heyday of the German stage, had

won the favour of the King of Prussia; and won it so lastingly, that

long after her death it had continued to be extended to her spouse. He

always drew a nice pension from the Prussian court, and permanently

enjoyed its support without ever being able to forfeit its protection

by his irregular and dissipated ways.

At the time of which I am speaking he had sunk to his lowest, owing to

continued theatre management. His speech and manners revealed the

sugary refinement of a bygone day, while all that he did and everything

about him testified to the most shameful neglect. He took me back to

his house, where he presented me to his second wife, who, crippled in

one foot, lay on an extraordinary couch while an elderly bass,

concerning whose excessive devotion Bethmann had already complained to

me quite openly, smoked his pipe beside her. From there the director

took me to his stage manager, who lived in the same house.

With the latter, who was just engaged in a consultation about the

repertory with the theatre attendant, a toothless old skeleton, he left

me to settle the necessary arrangements. As soon as Bethmann had gone,

Schmale, the stage manager, shrugged his shoulders and smiled, assuring

me that that was just the way of the director, to put everything on his

back and trouble himself about nothing. There he had been sitting for

over an hour, discussing with Kroge what should be put on next Sunday:

it was all very well his starting Don Juan, but how could he get a

rehearsal carried out, when the Merseburg town bandsmen, who formed the

orchestra, would not come over on Saturday to rehearse?

All the time Schmale kept reaching out through the open window to a

cherry tree from which he picked and persistently ate the fruit,

ejecting the stones with a disagreeable noise. Now it was this last

circumstance in particular which decided me; for, strange to say, I

have an innate aversion from fruit. I informed the stage manager that

he need not trouble at all about Don Juan for Sunday, since for my

part, if they had reckoned on my making my first appearance at this

performance, I must anyhow disappoint the director, as I had no choice

but to return at once to Leipzig, where I had to put my affairs in

order. This polite manner of tendering my absolute refusal to accept

the appointment—a conclusion I had quickly arrived at in my own

mind—forced me to practise some dissimulation, and made it necessary

for me to appear as if I really had some other purpose in coming to

Lauchstadt. This pretence in itself was quite unnecessary, seeing that

I was quite determined never to return there again.

People offered to help me in finding a lodging, and a young actor whom

I had chanced to know at Wurzburg undertook to be my guide in the

matter. While he was taking me to the best lodging he knew, he told me

that presently he would do me the kindness of making me the housemate

of the prettiest and nicest girl to be found in the place at the time.

She was the junior lead of the company, Mademoiselle Minna Planer, of

whom doubtless I had already heard.

As luck would have it, the promised damsel met us at the door of the

house in question. Her appearance and bearing formed the most striking

contrast possible to all the unpleasant impressions of the theatre

which it had been my lot to receive on this fateful morning. Looking

very charming and fresh, the young actress’s general manner and

movements were full of a certain majesty and grave assurance which lent

an agreeable and captivating air of dignity to her otherwise pleasant

expression. Her scrupulously clean and tidy dress completed the

startling effect of the unexpected encounter. After I had been

introduced to her in the hall as the new conductor, and after she had

done regarding with astonishment the stranger who seemed so young for

such a title, she recommended me kindly to the landlady of the house,

and begged that I might be well looked after; whereupon she walked

proudly and serenely across the street to her rehearsal.

I engaged a room on the spot, agreed to Don Juan for Sunday, regretted

greatly that I had not brought my luggage with me from Leipzig, and

hastened to return thither as quickly as possible in order to get back

to Lauchstadt all the sooner. The die was cast. The serious side of

life at once confronted me in the form of significant experiences. At

Leipzig I had to take a furtive leave of Laube. At the instance of

Prussia he had been warned off Saxon soil, and he half guessed at the

meaning which was to be attached to this move. The time of undisguised

reaction against the Liberal movement of the early ‘thirties had set

in: the fact that Laube was concerned in no sort of political work, but

had devoted himself merely to literary activity, always aiming simply

at aesthetic objects, made the action of the police quite

incomprehensible to us for the time being. The disgusting ambiguity

with which the Leipzig authorities answered all his questions as to the

cause of his expulsion soon gave him the strongest suspicions as to

what their intentions towards him actually were.

Leipzig, as the scene of his literary labours, being inestimably

precious, it mattered greatly to him to keep within reach of it. My

friend Apel owned a fine estate on Prussian soil, within but a few

hours’ distance of Leipzig, and we conceived the wish of seeing Laube

hospitably harboured there. My friend, who without infringing the legal

stipulations was in a position to give the persecuted man a place of

refuge, immediately assented, and with great readiness, to our desire,

but confessed to us next day, after having communicated with his

family, that he thought he might incur some unpleasantnesses if he

entertained Laube. At this the latter smiled, and in a manner I shall

never forget, though I have noticed in the course of my life that the

expression which I then saw in his face was one which has often flitted

over my own features. He took his leave, and in a short time we heard

that he had been arrested, owing to having undertaken fresh proceedings

against former members of the Burschenschaft (Students’ League), and

had been lodged in the municipal prison at Berlin. I had thus had two

experiences which weighed me down like lead, so I packed my scanty

portmanteau, took leave of my mother and sister, and, with a stout

heart, started on my career as a conductor.

In order to be able to look upon the little room under Minna’s lodging

as my new home, I was forced also to make the best of Bethmann’s

theatrical enterprise. As a matter of fact, a performance of Don Juan

was given at once, for the director, who prided himself on being a

connoisseur of things artistic, suggested that opera to me as one with

which it would be wise for an aspiring young artist, of a good family,

to make his debut. Despite the fact that, apart from some of my own

instrumental compositions, I had never yet conducted, and least of all

in opera, the rehearsal and the performance went off fairly well. Only

once or twice did discrepancies appear in the recitative of Donna Anna;

yet this did not involve me in any kind of hostility, and when I took

my place unabashed and calm for the production of Lumpaci Vagabundus,

which I had practised very thoroughly, the people generally seemed to

have gained full confidence in the theatre’s new acquisition.

The fact that I submitted without bitterness and even with some

cheerfulness to this unworthy use of my musical talent, was due less to

my taste being at this period, as I called it, in its salad days, than

to my intercourse with Minna Planer, who was employed in that magic

trifle as the Amorous Fairy. Indeed, in the midst of this dust-cloud of

frivolity and vulgarity, she always seemed very much like a fairy, the

reasons of whose descent into this giddy whirl, which of a truth seemed

neither to carry her away nor even to affect her, remained an absolute

mystery. For while I could discover nothing in the opera singers save

the familiar stage caricatures and grimaces, this fair actress differed

wholly from those about her in her unaffected soberness and dainty

modesty, as also in the absence of all theatrical pretence and

stiltedness. There was only one young man whom I could place beside

Minna on the ground of qualities like those I recognised in her. This

fellow was Friedrich Schmitt, who had only just adopted the stage as a

career in the hope of making a ‘hit’ in opera, to which, as the

possessor of an excellent tenor voice, he felt himself called. He too

differed from the rest of the company, especially in the earnestness

which he brought to bear upon his studies and his work in general: the

soulful manly pitch of his chest voice, his clear, noble enunciation

and intelligent rendering of his words, have always remained as

standards in my memory. Owing to the fact that he was wholly devoid of

theatrical talent, and acted clumsily and awkwardly, a check was soon

put to his progress, but he always remained dear to me as a clever and

original man of trustworthy and upright character—my only associate.

But my dealings with my kind housemate soon became a cherished habit,

while she returned the ingenuously impetuous advances of the conductor

of one-and-twenty with a certain tolerant astonishment which, remote as

it was from all coquetry and ulterior motives, soon made familiar and

friendly intercourse possible with her. When, one evening, I returned

late to my ground-floor room, by climbing through the window, for I had

no latch-key, the noise of my entry brought Minna to her window just

over mine. Standing on my window ledge I begged her to allow me to bid

her good-night once more. She had not the slightest objection to this,

but declared it must be done from the window, as she always had her

door locked by the people of the house, and nobody could get in that

way. She kindly facilitated the handshake by leaning far out of her

window, so that I could take her hand as I stood on my ledge. When

later on I had an attack of erysipelas, from which I often suffered,

and with my face all swollen and frightfully distorted concealed myself

from the world in my gloomy room, Minna visited me repeatedly, nursed

me, and assured me that my distorted features did not matter in the

least. On recovering, I paid her a visit and complained of a rash that

had remained round my mouth, and which seemed so unpleasant that I

apologised for showing it to her. This also she made light of. Then I

inferred she would not give me a kiss, whereupon she at once gave me

practical proof that she did not shrink from that either.

This was all done with a friendly serenity and composure that had

something almost motherly about it, and it was free from all suggestion

of frivolity or of heartlessness. In a few weeks the company had to

leave Lauchstadt to proceed to Rudolstadt and fulfil a special

engagement there. I was particularly anxious to make this journey,

which in those days was an arduous undertaking, in Minna’s company, and

if only I had succeeded in getting my well-earned salary duly paid by

Bethmann, nothing would have hindered the fulfilment of my wish. But in

this matter I encountered exceptional difficulties, which in the course

of eventful years grew in chronic fashion into the strangest of

ailments. Even at Lauchstadt I had discovered that there was only one

man who drew his salary in full, namely the bass Kneisel, whom I had

seen smoking his pipe beside the couch of the director’s lame wife. I

was assured that if I cared greatly about getting some of my wages from

time to time, I could obtain this favour only by paying court to Mme.

Bethmann. This time I preferred once more to appeal to my family for

help, and therefore travelled to Rudolstadt through Leipzig, where, to

the sad astonishment of my mother, I had to replenish my coffer with

the necessary supplies. On the way to Leipzig I had travelled with Apel

through his estate, he having fetched me from Lauchstadt for the

purpose. His arrival was fixed in my memory by a noisy banquet which my

wealthy friend gave at the hotel in my honour. It was on this occasion

that I and one of the other guests succeeded in completely destroying a

huge, massively built Dutch-tile stove, such as we had in our room at

the inn. Next morning none of us could understand how it had happened.

It was on this journey to Rudolstadt that I first passed through

Weimar, where on a rainy day I strolled with curiosity, but without

emotion, towards Goethe’s house. I had pictured something rather

different, and thought I should experience livelier impressions from

the active theatre life of Rudolstadt, to which I felt strongly

attracted. In spite of the fact that I was not to be conductor myself,

this post having been entrusted to the leader of the royal orchestra,

who had been specially engaged for our performances, yet I was so fully

occupied with rehearsals for the many operas and musical comedies

required to regale the frivolous public of the principality that I

found no leisure for excursions into the charming regions of this

little land. In addition to these severe and ill-paid labours, two

passions held me chained during the six weeks of my stay in Rudolstadt.

These were, first, a longing to write the libretto of Liebesverbot; and

secondly, my growing attachment to Minna. It is true, I sketched out a

musical composition about this time, a symphony in E major, whose first

movement (3/4 time) I completed as a separate piece. As regards style

and design, this work was suggested by Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth

Symphonies, and, so far as I can remember, I should have had no need to

be ashamed of it, had I been able to complete it, or keep the part I

had actually finished. But I had already begun at this time to form the

opinion that, to produce anything fresh and truly noteworthy in the

realm of symphony, and according to Beethoven’s methods, was an

impossibility. Whereas opera, to which I felt inwardly drawn, though I

had no real example I wished to copy, presented itself to my mind in

varied and alluring shapes as a most fascinating form of art. Thus,

amid manifold and passionate agitations, and in the few leisure hours

which were left to me, I completed the greater part of my operatic

poem, taking infinitely more pains, both as regards words and

versification, than with the text of my earlier Feen. Moreover, I found

myself possessed of incomparably greater assurance in the arrangement

and partial invention of situations than when writing that earlier

work.

On the other hand, I now began for the first time to experience the

cares and worries of a lover’s jealousy. A change, to me inexplicable,

manifested itself in Minna’s hitherto unaffected and gentle manner

towards me. It appears that my artless solicitations for her favour, by

which at that time I meant nothing serious, and in which a man of the

world would merely have seen the exuberance of a youthful and easily

satisfied infatuation, had given rise to certain remarks and comments

upon the popular actress. I was astonished to learn, first from her

reserved manner, and later from her own lips, that she felt compelled

to inquire into the seriousness of my intentions, and to consider their

consequences. She was at that time, as I had already discovered, on

very intimate terms with a young nobleman, whose acquaintance I first

made in Lauchstadt, where he used to visit her. I had already realised

on that occasion that he was unfeignedly and cordially attached to her;

in fact, in the circle of her friends she was regarded as engaged to

Herr von O., although it was obvious that marriage was out of the

question, as the young lover was quite without means, and owing to the

high standing of his family it was essential that he should sacrifice

himself to a marriage of convenience, both on account of his social

position and of the career which he would have to adopt. During this

stay at Rudolstadt Minna appears to have gathered certain information

on this point which troubled and depressed her, thus rendering her more

inclined to treat my impetuous attempts at courtship with cool reserve.

After mature deliberation I recognised that, in any case, Young Europe,

Ardinghello, and Liebesverbot could not be produced at Rudolstadt; but

it was a very different matter for the Fee Amorosa, with its merry

theatrical mood, and an Ehrlicher Burger Kind to seek a decent

livelihood. Therefore, greatly discouraged, I proceeded to accentuate

the more extravagant situations of my Liebesverbot by rioting with a

few comrades in the sausage-scented atmosphere of the Rudolstadt

Vogelwiese. At this time my troubles again brought me more or less into

contact with the vice of gambling, although on this occasion it only

cast temporary fetters about me in the very harmless form of the dice

and roulette-tables out on the open market-place.

We were looking forward to the time when we should leave Rudolstadt for

the half-yearly winter season at the capital, Magdeburg, mainly because

I should there resume my place at the head of the orchestra, and might

in any case count on a better reward for my musical efforts. But before

returning to Magdeburg I had to endure a trying interval at Bernburg,

where Bethmann, the director, in addition to his other undertakings,

had also promised sundry theatrical performances. During our brief stay

in the town I had to arrange for the presentation, with a mere fraction

of the company, of several operas, which were again to be conducted by

the royal conductor of the place. But in addition to these professional

labours, I had to endure such a meagre, ill-provided and grievously

farcical existence as was enough to disgust me, if not for ever, at any

rate for the time being, with the wretched profession of a theatrical

conductor. Yet I survived even this, and Magdeburg was destined to lead

me eventually to the real glory of my adopted profession.

The sensation of sitting in command at the very conductor’s desk from

which, not many years before, the great master Kuhnlein had so moved

the perplexed young enthusiast by the weighty wisdom of his musical

directorship, was not without its charm for me, and, indeed, I very

quickly succeeded in obtaining perfect confidence in conducting an

orchestra. I was soon a persona grata with the excellent musicians of

the orchestra. Their splendid combination in spirited overtures, which,

especially towards the finale, I generally took at an unheard-of speed,

often earned for us all the intoxicating applause of the public. The

achievements of my fiery and often exuberant zeal won me recognition

from the singers, and were greeted by the audience with rapturous

appreciation. As in Magdeburg, at least in those days, the art of

theatrical criticism was but slightly developed, this universal

satisfaction was a great encouragement, and at the end of the first

three months of my Magdeburg conductorship I felt sustained by the

flattering and comforting assurance that I was one of the bigwigs of

opera. Under these circumstances, Schmale, the stage manager, who has

been my good friend ever since, proposed a special gala performance for

New Year’s Day, which he felt sure would be a triumph. I was to compose

the necessary music. This was very speedily done; a rousing overture,

several melodramas and choruses were all greeted with enthusiasm, and

brought us such ample applause that we repeated the performance with

great success, although such repetitions after the actual gala day were

quite contrary to usage.

With the new year (1835) there came a decisive turning-point in my

life. After the rupture between Minna and myself at Rudolstadt, we had

been to some extent lost to one another; but our friendship was resumed

on our meeting again in Magdeburg; this time, however, it remained cool

and purposely indifferent. When she first appeared in the town, a year

before, her beauty had attracted considerable notice, and I now learned

that she was the object of great attention from several young noblemen,

and had shown herself not unmoved by the compliment implied by their

visits. Although her reputation, thanks to her absolute discretion and

self-respect, remained beyond reproach, my objection to her receiving

such attentions grew very strong, owing possibly, in some degree, to

the memory of the sorrows I had endured in Pachta’s house in Prague.

Although Minna assured me that the conduct of these gentlemen was much

more discreet and decent than that of theatre-goers of the bourgeois

class, and especially than that of certain young musical conductors,

she never succeeded in soothing the bitterness and insistence with

which I protested against her acceptance of such attentions. So we

spent three unhappy months in ever-increasing estrangement, and at the

same time, in half-frantic despair, I pretended to be fond of the most

undesirable associates, and acted in every way with such blatant levity

that Minna, as she told me afterwards, was filled with the deepest

anxiety and solicitude concerning me. Moreover, as the ladies of the

opera company were not slow to pay court to their youthful conductor,

and especially as one young woman, whose reputation was not spotless,

openly set her cap at me, this anxiety of Minna’s seems at last to have

culminated in a definite decision. I hit upon the idea of treating the

elite of our opera company to oysters and punch in my own room on New

Year’s Eve. The married couples were invited, and then came the

question whether Fraulein Planer would consent to take part in such a

festivity. She accepted quite ingenuously, and presented herself, as

neatly and becomingly dressed as ever, in my bachelor apartments, where

things soon grew pretty lively. I had already warned my landlord that

we were not likely to be very quiet, and reassured him as to any

possible damage to his furniture. What the champagne failed to

accomplish, the punch eventually succeeded in doing; all the restraints

of petty conventionality, which the company usually endeavoured to

observe, were cast aside, giving place to an unreserved demeanour all

round, to which no one objected. And then it was that Minna’s queenly

dignity distinguished her from all her companions. She never lost her

self-respect; and whilst no one ventured to take the slightest liberty

with her, every one very clearly recognised the simple candour with

which she responded to my kindly and solicitous attentions. They could

not fail to see that the link existing between us was not to be

compared to any ordinary liaison, and we had the satisfaction of seeing

the flighty young lady who had so openly angled for me fall into a fit

over the discovery.

From that time onward I remained permanently on the best of terms with

Minna. I do not believe that she ever felt any sort of passion or

genuine love for me, or, indeed, that she was capable of such a thing,

and I can therefore only describe her feeling for me as one of

heartfelt goodwill, and the sincerest desire for my success and

prosperity, inspired as she was with the kindest sympathy, and genuine

delight at, and admiration for, my talents. All this at last became

part of her nature. She obviously had a very favourable opinion of my

abilities, though she was surprised at the rapidity of my success. My

eccentric nature, which she knew so well how to humour pleasantly by

her gentleness, stimulated her to the continual exercise of the power,

so flattering to her own vanity, and without ever betraying any desire

or ardour herself, she never met my impetuous advances with coldness.

At the Magdeburg theatre I had already made the acquaintance of a very

interesting woman called Mme. Haas. She was an actress, no longer in

her first youth, and played so-called ‘chaperone’s parts.’ This lady

won my sympathy by telling me she had been friendly ever since her

youth with Laube, in whose destiny she continued to take a heartfelt

and cordial interest. She was clever, but far from happy, and an

unprepossessing exterior, which with the lapse of years grew more

uninviting, did not tend to make her any happier. She lived in meagre

circumstances, with one child, and appeared to remember her better days

with a bitter grief. My first visit to her was paid merely to inquire

after Laube’s fate, but I soon became a frequent and familiar caller.

As she and Minna speedily became fast friends, we three often spent

pleasant evenings talking together. But when, later on, a certain

jealousy manifested itself on the part of the elder woman towards the

younger, our confidential relations were more or less disturbed, for it

particularly grieved me to hear Minna’s talents and mental gifts

criticised by the other. One evening I had promised Minna to have tea

with her and Mme. Haas, but I had thoughtlessly promised to go to a

whist party first. This engagement I purposely prolonged, much as it

wearied me, in the deliberate hope that her companion—who had already

grown irksome to me—might have left before my arrival. The only way in

which I could do this was by drinking hard, so that I had the very

unusual experience of rising from a sober whist party in a completely

fuddled condition, into which I had imperceptibly fallen, and in which

I refused to believe. This incredulity deluded me into keeping my

engagement for tea, although it was so late. To my intense disgust the

elder woman was still there when I arrived, and her presence at once

had the effect of rousing my tipsiness to a violent outbreak; for she

seemed astonished at my rowdy and unseemly behaviour, and made several

remarks upon it intended for jokes, whereupon I scoffed at her in the

coarsest manner, so that she immediately left the house in high

dudgeon. I had still sense enough to be conscious of Minna’s astonished

laughter at my outrageous conduct. As soon as she realised, however,

that my condition was such as to render my removal impossible without

great commotion, she rapidly formed a resolution which must indeed have

cost her an effort, though it was carried out with the utmost calmness

and good-humour. She did all she could for me, and procured me the

necessary relief, and when I sank into a heavy slumber, unhesitatingly

resigned her own bed to my use. There I slept until awakened by the

wonderful grey of dawn. On recognising where I was, I at once realised

and grew ever more convinced of the fact that this morning’s sunrise

marked the starting-point of an infinitely momentous period of my life.

The demon of care had at last entered into my existence.

Without any light-hearted jests, without gaiety or joking of any

description, we breakfasted quietly and decorously together, and at an

hour when, in view of the compromising circumstances of the previous

evening, we could set out without attracting undue notice, I set off

with Minna for a long walk beyond the city gates. Then we parted, and

from that day forward freely and openly gratified our desires as an

acknowledged pair of lovers.

The peculiar direction which my musical activities had gradually taken

continued to receive ever fresh impetus, not only from the successes,

but also from the disasters which about this time befell my efforts. I

produced the overture to my Feen with very satisfactory results at a

concert given by the Logengesellschaft, and thereby earned considerable

applause. On the other hand, news came from Leipzig confirming the

shabby action of the directors of the theatre in that place with regard

to the promised presentation of this opera. But, happily for me, I had

begun the music for my Liebesverbot, an occupation which so absorbed my

thoughts that I lost all interest in the earlier work, and abstained

with proud indifference from all further effort to secure its

performance in Leipzig. The success of its overture alone amply repaid

me for the composition of my first opera.

Meanwhile, in spite of numerous other distractions, I found time,

during the brief six months of this theatrical season in Magdeburg, to

complete a large portion of my new opera, besides doing other work. I

ventured to introduce two duets from it at a concert given in the

theatre, and their reception encouraged me to proceed hopefully with

the rest of the opera.

During the second half of this season my friend Apel came to sun

himself enthusiastically in the splendour of my musical directorship.

He had written a drama, Columbus, which I recommended to our management

for production. This was a peculiarly easy favour to win, as Apel

volunteered to have a new scene, representing the Alhambra, painted at

his own expense. Besides this, he proposed to effect many welcome

improvements in the condition of the actors taking part in his play;

for, owing to the continued preference displayed by the directress for

Kneisel, the bass, they had all suffered very much from uncertainty

about their wages. The piece itself appeared to me to contain much that

was good. It described the difficulties and struggles of the great

navigator before he set sail on his first voyage of discovery. The

drama ended with the momentous departure of his ships from the harbour

of Palos, an episode whose results are known to all the world. At my

desire Apel submitted his play to my uncle Adolph, and even in his

critical opinion it was remarkable for its lively and characteristic

popular scenes. On the other hand, a love romance, which he had woven

into the plot, struck me as unnecessary and dull. In addition to a

brief chorus for some Moors who were expelled from Granada, to be sung

on their departure from the familiar home country, and a short

orchestral piece by way of conclusion, I also dashed off an overture

for my friend’s play. I sketched out the complete draft of this one

evening at Minna’s house, while Apel was left free to talk to her as

much and as loudly as he liked. The effect this composition was

calculated to produce rested on a fundamental idea which was quite

simple, yet startling in its development. Unfortunately I worked it out

rather hurriedly. In not very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra

was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it.

A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only

comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole

had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in

extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the swelling vibrations of the first

violins, which was intended to represent a Fata Morgana. I had secured

three pairs of trumpets in different keys, in order to produce this

exquisite, gradually dawning and seductive theme with the utmost

niceties of shade and variety of modulation. This was intended to

represent the land of desire towards which the hero’s eyes are turned,

and whose shores seem continually to rise before him only to sink

elusively beneath the waves, until at last they soar in very deed above

the western horizon, the crown of all his toil and search, and stand

clearly and unmistakably revealed to all the sailors, a vast continent

of the future. My six trumpets were now to combine in one key, in order

that the theme assigned to them might re-echo in glorious jubilation.

Familiar as I was with the excellence of the Prussian regimental

trumpeters, I could rely upon a startling effect, especially in this

concluding passage. My overture astonished every one, and was

tumultuously applauded. The play itself, however, was acted without

dignity. A conceited comedian, named Ludwig Meyer, completely ruined

the title part, for which he excused himself on the ground that, having

to act as stage manager also, he had been unable to commit his lines to

memory. Nevertheless, he managed to enrich his wardrobe with several

splendid costumes at Apel’s expense, wearing them, as Columbus, one

after the other. At all events, Apel had lived to see a play of his own

actually performed, and although this was never repeated, yet it

afforded me an opportunity of increasing my personal popularity with

the people of Magdeburg, as the overture was several times repeated at

concerts by special request.

But the chief event of this theatrical season occurred towards its

close. I induced Mme. Schroder-Devrient, who was staying in Leipzig, to

come to us for a few special performances, when, on two occasions, I

had the great satisfaction and stimulating experience of myself

conducting the operas in which she sang, and thus entering into

immediate artistic collaboration with her. She appeared as Desdemona

and Romeo. In the latter role particularly she surpassed herself, and

kindled a fresh flame in my breast. This visit brought us also into

closer personal contact. So kindly disposed and sympathetic did she

show herself towards me, that she even volunteered to lend me her

services at a concert which I proposed to give for my own benefit,

although this would necessitate her returning after a brief absence.

Under circumstances so auspicious I could only expect the best possible

results from my concert, and in my situation at that time its proceeds

were a matter of vital importance to me. My scanty salary from the

Magdeburg opera company had become altogether illusory, being paid only

in small and irregular instalments, so that I could see but one way of

meeting my daily expenses. These included frequent entertainment of a

large circle of friends, consisting of singers and players, and the

situation had become unpleasantly accentuated by no small number of

debts. True, I did not know their exact amount; but reckoned that I

could at least form an advantageous, if indefinite, estimate of the sum

to be realized by my concert, whereby the two unknown quantities might

balance each other. I therefore consoled my creditors with the tale of

these fabulous receipts, which were to pay them all in full the day

after the concert. I even went so far as to invite them to come and be

paid at the hotel to which I had moved at the close of the season.

And, indeed, there was nothing unreasonable in my counting on the

highest imaginable receipts, when supported by so great and popular a

singer, who, moreover, was returning to Magdeburg on purpose for the

event. I consequently acted with reckless prodigality as regards cost,

launching out into all manner of musical extravagance, such as engaging

an excellent and much larger orchestra, and arranging many rehearsals.

Unfortunately for me, however, nobody would believe that such a famous

actress, whose time was so precious, would really return again to

please a little Magdeburg conductor. My pompous announcement of her

appearance was almost universally regarded as a deceitful manœuvre, and

people took offence at the high prices charged for seats. The result

was that the hall was only very scantily filled, a fact which

particularly grieved me on account of my generous patroness. Her

promise I had never doubted. Punctually on the day appointed she

reappeared to support me, and now had the painful and unaccustomed

experience of performing before a small audience. Fortunately, she

treated the matter with great good-humour (which, I learned later, was

prompted by other motives, not personally concerning me). Among several

pieces she sang Beethoven’s Adelaïde most exquisitely, wherein, to my

own astonishment, I accompanied her on the piano. But, alas! another

and more unexpected mishap befell my concert, through our unfortunate

selection of pieces. Owing to the excessive reverberation of the saloon

in the Hotel ‘The City of London,’ the noise was unbearable. My

Columbus Overture, with its six trumpets, had early in the evening

filled the audience with terror; and now, at the end, came Beethoven’s

Schlacht bei Vittoria, for which, in enthusiastic expectation of

limitless receipts, I had provided every imaginable orchestral luxury.

The firing of cannon and musketry was organised with the utmost

elaboration, on both the French and English sides, by means of

specially constructed and costly apparatus; while trumpets and bugles

had been doubled and trebled. Then began a battle, such as has seldom

been more cruelly fought in a concert-room. The orchestra flung itself,

so to speak, upon the scanty audience with such an overwhelming

superiority of numbers that the latter speedily gave up all thought of

resistance and literally took to flight. Mme. Schroder-Devrient had

kindly taken a front seat, that she might hear the concert to an end.

Much as she may have been inured to terrors of this kind, this was more

than she could stand, even out of friendship for me. When, therefore,

the English made a fresh desperate assault upon the French position,

she took to flight, almost wringing her hands. Her action became the

signal for a panic-stricken stampede. Every one rushed out; and

Wellington’s victory was finally celebrated in a confidential outburst

between myself and the orchestra alone. Thus ended this wonderful

musical festival. Schroder-Devrient at once departed, deeply regretting

the ill-success of her well-meant effort, and kindly left me to my

fate. After seeking comfort in the arms of my sorrowing sweetheart, and

attempting to nerve myself for the morrow’s battle, which did not seem

likely to end in a victorious symphony, I returned next morning to the

hotel. I found I could only reach my rooms by running the gauntlet

between long rows of men and women in double file, who had all been

specially invited thither for the settlement of their respective

affairs. Reserving the right to select individuals from among my

visitors for separate interview, I first of all led in the second

trumpeter of the orchestra, whose duty it had been to look after the

cash and the music. From his account I learned that, owing to the high

fees which, in my generous enthusiasm, I had promised to the orchestra,

a few more shillings and sixpences would still have to come out of my

own pocket to meet these charges alone. When this was settled, the

position of affairs was plain. The next person I invited to come in was

Mme. Gottschalk, a trustworthy Jewess, with whom I wanted to come to

some arrangement respecting the present crisis. She perceived at once

that more than ordinary help was required in this case, but did not

doubt that I should be able to obtain it from my opulent connections in

Leipzig. She undertook, therefore, to appease the other creditors with

tranquillising assurances, and railed, or pretended to rail, against

their indecent conduct with great vigour. Thus at last we succeeded,

though not without some difficulty, in making the corridor outside my

door once more passable.

The theatrical season was now over, our company on the point of

dissolution, and I myself free from my appointment. But meanwhile the

unhappy director of our theatre had passed from a state of chronic to

one of acute bankruptcy. He paid with paper money, that is to say, with

whole sheets of box-tickets for performances which he guaranteed should

take place. By dint of great craft Minna managed to extract some profit

even from these singular treasury-bonds. She was living at this time

most frugally and economically. Moreover, as the dramatic company still

continued its efforts on behalf of its members—only the opera troupe

having been dissolved—she remained at the theatre. Thus, when I started

out on my compulsory return to Leipzig, she saw me off with hearty

good-wishes for our speedy reunion, promising to spend the next

holidays in visiting her parents in Dresden, on which occasion she

hoped also to look me up in Leipzig.

Thus it came about that early in May I once more went home to my own

folk, in order that after this abortive first attempt at civic

independence, I might finally lift the load of debt with which my

efforts in Magdeburg had burdened me. An intelligent brown poodle

faithfully accompanied me, and was entrusted to my family for food and

entertainment as the only visible property I had acquired.

Nevertheless, my mother and Rosalie succeeded in founding good hopes

for my future career upon the bare fact of my being able to conduct an

orchestra. To me, on the other hand, the thought of returning once more

to my former life with my family was very discomfiting. My relation to

Minna in particular spurred me on to resume my interrupted career as

speedily as possible. The great change which had come over me in this

respect was more apparent than ever when Minna spent a few days with me

in Leipzig on her way home. Her familiar and genial presence proclaimed

that my days of parental dependence were past and gone. We discussed

the renewal of my Magdeburg engagement, and I promised her an early

visit in Dresden. I obtained permission from my mother and sister to

invite her one evening to tea, and in this way I introduced her to my

family. Rosalie saw at once how matters stood with me, but made no

further use of the discovery than to tease me about being in love. To

her the affair did not appear dangerous; but to me things wore a very

different aspect, for this love-lorn attachment was entirely in keeping

with my independent spirit, and my ambition to win myself a place in

the world of art.

My distaste for Leipzig itself was furthermore strengthened by a change

which occurred there at this time in the realm of music. At the very

time that I, in Magdeburg, was attempting to make my reputation as a

musical conductor by thoughtless submission to the frivolous taste of

the day, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was conducting the Gewandhaus concerts,

and inaugurating a momentous epoch for himself and the musical taste of

Leipzig. His influence had put an end to the simple ingenuousness with

which the Leipzig public had hitherto judged the productions of its

sociable subscription concerts. Through the influence of my good old

friend Pohlenz, who was not yet altogether laid on the shelf, I managed

to produce my Columbus Overture at a benefit concert given by the

favourite young singer, Livia Gerhart. But, to my amazement, I found

that the taste of the musical public in Leipzig had been given a

different bent, which not even my rapturously applauded overture, with

its brilliant combination of six trumpets, could influence. This

experience deepened my dislike of everything approaching a classical

tone, in which sentiment I found myself in complete accord with honest

Pohlenz, who sighed good-naturedly over the downfall of the good old

times.

Arrangements for a musical festival at Dessau, under Friedrich

Schneider’s conductorship, offered me a welcome chance of quitting

Leipzig. For this journey, which could be performed on foot in seven

hours, I had to procure a passport for eight days. This document was

destined to play an important part in my life for many years to come;

for on several occasions and in various European countries it was the

only paper I possessed to prove my identity. In fact, owing to my

evasion of military duty in Saxony, I never again succeeded in

obtaining a regular pass until I was appointed musical conductor in

Dresden. I derived very little artistic pleasure or benefit of any kind

from this occasion; on the contrary, it gave a fresh impetus to my

hatred of the classical. I heard Beethoven’s Symphony in C minor

conducted by a man whose physiognomy, resembling that of a drunken

satyr, filled me with unconquerable disgust. In spite of an

interminable row of contrabassi, with which a conductor usually

coquettes at musical festivals, his performance was so expressionless

and inane that I turned away in disgust as from an alarming and

repulsive problem, and desisted from all attempts to explain the

impassable gulf which, as I again perceived, yawned between my own

vivid and imaginative conception of this work and the only living

presentations of it which I had ever heard. But for the present my

tormented spirits were cheered and calmed by hearing the classical

Schneider’s oratorio Absalom rendered as an absolute burlesque.

It was in Dessau that Minna had made her first debut on the stage, and

while there I heard her spoken of by frivolous young men in the tone

usual in such circles when discussing young and beautiful actresses. My

eagerness in contradicting this chatter and confounding the

scandalmongers revealed to me more clearly than ever the strength of

the passion which drew me to her.

I therefore returned to Leipzig without calling on my relatives, and

there procured means for an immediate journey to Dresden. On the way

(the journey was still performed by express coach) I met Minna,

accompanied by one of her sisters, already on the way back to

Magdeburg. Promptly procuring a posting ticket for the return journey

to Leipzig, I actually set off thither with my dear girl; but by the

time we reached the next station I had succeeded in persuading her to

turn back with me to Dresden. By this time the mail-coach was far ahead

of us, and we had to travel by special post-chaise. This lively

bustling to and fro seemed to astonish the two girls, and put them into

high spirits. The extravagance of my conduct had evidently roused them

to the expectation of adventures, and it now behoved me to fulfil this

expectation. Procuring from a Dresden acquaintance the necessary cash,

I conducted my two lady friends through the Saxon Alps, where we spent

several right merry days of innocent and youthful gaiety. Only once was

this disturbed by a passing fit of jealousy on my part, for which,

indeed, there was no occasion, but which fed itself in my heart on a

nervous apprehension of the future, and upon the experience I had

already gained of womenkind. Yet, despite this blot, our excursion

still lingers in my memory as the sweetest and almost sole remembrance

of unalloyed happiness in the whole of my life as a young man. One

evening in particular stands out in bright relief, during which we sat

together almost all night at the watering-place of Schandau in glorious

summer weather. Indeed, my subsequent long and anxious connection with

Minna, interwoven as it was with the most painful and bitter

vicissitudes, has often appeared to me as a persistently prolonged

expiation of the brief and harmless enjoyment of those few days.

After accompanying Minna to Leipzig, whence she continued her journey

to Magdeburg, I presented myself to my family, but told them nothing of

my Dresden excursion. I now braced my energies, as though under the

stern compulsion of a strange and deep sense of duty, to the task of

making such arrangements as would speedily restore me to my dear one’s

side. To this end a fresh engagement had to be negotiated with Director

Bethmann for the coming winter season. Unable to await the conclusion

of our contract in Leipzig, I availed myself of Laube’s presence at the

baths in Kosen, near Naumburg, to pay him a visit. Laube had only

recently been discharged from the Berlin municipal gaol, after a

tormenting inquisition of nearly a year’s duration. On giving his

parole not to leave the country until the verdict had been given, he

had been permitted to retire to Kosen, from which place he, one

evening, paid us a secret visit in Leipzig. I can still call his

woebegone appearance to mind. He seemed hopelessly resigned, though he

spoke cheerfully with regard to all his earlier dreams of better

things; and owing to my own worries at that time about the critical

state of my affairs, this impression still remains one of my saddest

and most painful recollections. While at Kosen I showed him a good many

of the verses for my Liebesverbot, and although he spoke coldly of my

presumption in wishing to write my own libretto, I was slightly

encouraged by his appreciation of my work.

Meanwhile I impatiently awaited letters from Magdeburg. Not that I had

any doubt as to the renewal of my engagement; on the contrary, I had

every reason to regard myself as a good acquisition for Bethmann; but I

felt as though nothing which tended to bring me nearer to Minna could

move fast enough. As soon as I received the necessary tidings, I

hurried away to make all needful arrangements on the spot for ensuring

a magnificent success in the coming Magdeburg operatic season.

Through the tireless munificence of the King of Prussia fresh and final

assistance had been granted to our perennially bankrupt theatrical

director. His Majesty had assigned a not inconsiderable sum to a

committee consisting of substantial Magdeburg citizens, as a subsidy to

be expended on the theatre under Bethmann’s management. What this

meant, and the respect with which I thereupon regarded the artistic

conditions of Magdeburg, may be best imagined if one remembers the

neglected and forlorn surroundings amid which such provincial theatres

usually drag out their lives. I offered at once to undertake a long

journey in search of good operatic singers. I said I would find the

means for this at my own risk, and the only guarantee I demanded from

the management for eventual reimbursement was that they should assign

me the proceeds of a future benefit performance. This offer was gladly

accepted, and in pompous tones the director furnished me with the

necessary powers, and moreover gave me his parting blessing. During

this brief interval I lived once more in intimate communion with

Minna—who now had her mother with her—and then took fresh leave of her

for my venturesome enterprise.

But when I got to Leipzig I found it by no means easy to procure the

funds, so confidently counted on when in Magdeburg, for the expenses of

my projected journey. The glamour of the royal protection of Prussia

for our theatrical undertaking, which I portrayed in the liveliest

colours to my good brother-in-law Brockhaus, quite failed to dazzle

him, and it was at the cost of great pains and humiliation that I

finally got my ship of discovery under weigh.

I was naturally drawn first of all to my old wonderland of Bohemia.

There I merely touched at Prague and, without visiting my lovely lady

friends, I hurried forward so that I might first sample the opera

company then playing for the season at Karlsbad. Impatient to discover

as many talents as I could as soon as possible, so as not to exhaust my

funds to no purpose, I attended a performance of La Dame Blanche,

sincerely hoping to find the whole performance first class. But not

until much later did I fully realise how wretched was the quality of

all these singers. I selected one of them, a bass named Graf, who was

singing Gaveston. When in due course he made his debut at Magdeburg, he

provoked so much well-founded dissatisfaction, that I could not find a

word to say in reply to the mockery which this acquisition brought upon

me.

But the small success with which the real object of my tour was

attended was counterbalanced by the pleasantness of the journey itself.

The trip through Eger, over the Fichtel mountains, and the entry into

Bayreuth, gloriously illuminated by the setting sun, have remained

happy memories to this day.

My next goal was Nuremberg, where my sister Clara and her husband were

acting, and from whom I might reckon on sound information as to the

object of my search. It was particularly nice to be hospitably received

in my sister’s house, where I hoped to revive my somewhat exhausted

means of travel. In this hope I reckoned chiefly upon the sale of a

snuff-box presented to me by a friend, which I had secret reasons to

suppose was made of platinum. To this I could add a gold signet-ring,

given me by my friend Apel for composing the overture to his Columbus.

The value of the snuff-box unfortunately proved to be entirely

imaginary; but by pawning these two jewels, the only ones I had left, I

hoped to provide myself with the bare necessaries for continuing my

journey to Frankfort. It was to this place and the Rhine district that

the information I had gathered led me to direct my steps. Before

leaving I persuaded my sister and brother-in-law to accept engagements

in Magdeburg; but I still lacked a first tenor and a soprano, whom

hitherto I had altogether failed to discover.

My stay in Nuremberg was most agreeably prolonged through a renewed

meeting with Schroder-Devrient, who just at that time was fulfilling a

short engagement in that town. Meeting her again was like seeing the

clouds disperse, which, since our last meeting, had darkened my

artistic horizon.

The Nuremberg operatic company had a very limited repertoire. Besides

Fidelio they could produce nothing save Die Schweizerfamilie, a fact

about which this great singer complained, as this was one of her first

parts sung in early youth, for which she was hardly any longer suited,

and which, in addition, she had played ad nauseam. I also looked

forward to the performance of Die Schweizerfamilie with misgivings, and

even with anxiety, for I feared lest this tame opera and the

old-fashioned sentimental part of Emmeline would weaken the great

impression the public, as well as myself, had formed up to that moment

of the work of this sublime artist. Imagine, therefore, how deeply

moved and astonished I was, on the evening of the performance, to find

that it was in this very part that I first realised the truly

transcendental genius of this extraordinary woman. That anything so

great as her interpretation of the character of the Swiss maiden could

not be handed down to posterity as a monument for all time can only be

looked upon as one of the most sublime sacrifices demanded by dramatic

art, and as one of its highest manifestations. When, therefore, such

phenomena appear, we cannot hold them in too great reverence, nor look

upon them as too sacred.

Apart from all these new experiences which were to become of so much

value to my whole life and to my artistic development, the impressions

I received at Nuremberg, though they were apparently trivial in their

origin, left such indelible traces on my mind, that they revived within

me later on, though in quite a different and novel form.

My brother-in-law, Wolfram, was a great favourite with the Nuremberg

theatrical world; he was witty and sociable, and as such made himself

much liked in theatrical circles. On this occasion I received

singularly delightful proofs of the spirit of extravagant gaiety

manifested on these evenings at the inn, in which I also took part. A

master carpenter, named Lauermann, a little thick-set man, no longer

young, of comical appearance and gifted only with the roughest dialect,

was pointed out to me in one of the inns visited by our friends as one

of those oddities who involuntarily contributed most to the amusement

of the local wags. Lauermann, it seems, imagined himself an excellent

singer, and as a result of this presumption, evinced interest only in

those in whom he thought he recognised a like talent. In spite of the

fact that, owing to this singular peculiarity, he became the butt of

constant jest and scornful mockery, he never failed to appear every

evening among his laughter-loving persecutors. So often had he been

laughed at and hurt by their scorn, that it became very difficult to

persuade him to give a display of his artistic skill, and this at last

could only be effected by artfully devised traps, so laid as to appeal

to his vanity. My arrival as an unknown stranger was utilised for a

manœuvre of this kind. How poor was the opinion they held of the

unfortunate mastersinger’s judgment was revealed when, to my great

amazement, my brother-in-law introduced me to him as the great Italian

singer, Lablache. To his credit I must confess that Lauermann surveyed

me for a long time with incredulous distrust, and commented with

cautious suspicion on my juvenile appearance, but especially on the

evidently tenor character of my voice. But the whole art of these

tavern associates and their principal enjoyment consisted in leading

this poor enthusiast to believe the incredible, a task on which they

spared neither time nor pains.

My brother-in-law succeeded in making the carpenter believe that I,

while receiving fabulous sums for my performances, wished by a singular

act of dissimulation, and by visiting public inns, to withdraw from the

general public; and that, moreover, when it came to a meeting between

‘Lauermann’ and ‘Lablache,’ the only real interest could be to hear

Lauermann and not Lablache, seeing that the former had nothing to learn

from the latter, but only Lablache from him. So singular was the

conflict between incredulity, on the one hand, and keenly excited

vanity on the other, that finally the poor carpenter became really

attractive to me. I began to play the role assigned me with all the

skill I could command, and after a couple of hours, which were relieved

by the strangest antics, we at last gained our end. The wondrous

mortal, whose flashing eyes had long been fixed on me in the greatest

excitement, worked his muscles in the peculiarly fantastic fashion

which we are accustomed to associate with a music-making automaton, the

mechanism of which has been duly wound up: his lips quivered, his teeth

gnashed, his eyes rolled convulsively, until finally there broke forth,

in a hoarse oily voice, an uncommonly trivial street-ballad. Its

delivery, accompanied by a regular movement of his outstretched thumbs

behind the ears, and during which his fat face glowed the brightest

red, was unhappily greeted with a wild burst of laughter from all

present, which excited the unlucky master to the most furious wrath.

With studied cruelty this wrath was greeted by those, who until then

had shamelessly flattered him, with the most extravagant mockery, until

the poor wretch at last absolutely foamed with rage.

As he was leaving the inn amid a hail of curses from his infamous

friends, an impulse of genuine pity prompted me to follow him, that I

might beg his forgiveness and seek in some way to pacify him, a task

all the more difficult since he was especially bitter against me as the

latest of his enemies, and the one who had so deeply deceived his eager

hope of hearing the genuine Lablache. Nevertheless, I succeeded in

stopping him on the threshold; and now the riotous company silently

entered into an extraordinary conspiracy to induce Lauermann to sing

again that very evening. How they managed this I can as little remember

as I can call to mind the effect of the spirituous liquors I imbibed.

In any case, I suspect that drink must eventually have been the means

of subduing Lauermann, just as it also rendered my own recollections of

the wonderful events of that prolonged evening at the inn extremely

vague. After Lauermann had for the second time suffered the same

mockery, the whole company felt itself bound to accompany the unhappy

man to his home. They carried him thither in a wheelbarrow, which they

found outside the house, and in this he arrived, in triumph, at his own

door, in one of those marvellous narrow alleys peculiar to the old

city. Frau Lauermann, who was aroused from slumber to receive her

husband, enabled us, by her torrent of curses, to form some idea of the

nature of their marital and domestic relations. Mockery of her

husband’s vocal talents was with her also a familiar theme; but to this

she now added the most dreadful reproaches for the worthless scamps

who, by encouraging him in this delusion, kept him from profitably

following his trade, and even led him to such scenes as the present

one. Thereupon the pride of the suffering mastersinger reasserted

itself; for while his wife painfully assisted him to mount the stairs,

he harshly denied her right to sit in judgment upon his vocal gifts,

and sternly ordered her to be silent. But even now this wonderful

night-adventure was by no means over. The entire swarm moved once more

in the direction of the inn. Before the house, however, we found a

number of fellows congregated, among them several workmen, against

whom, owing to police regulations as to closing hours, the doors were

shut. But the regular guests of the house, who were of our party, and

who were on terms of old friendship with the host, thought that it was

nevertheless permissible and possible to demand entrance. The host was

troubled at having to bar his door against friends, whose voices he

recognised; yet it was necessary to prevent the new arrivals from

forcing a way in with them. Out of this situation a mighty confusion

arose, which, what with shouting and clamour and an inexplicable growth

in the number of the disputants, soon assumed a truly demoniacal

character. It seemed to me as though in a few moments the whole town

would break into a tumult, and I thought I should once more have to

witness a revolution, the real origin of which no man could comprehend.

Then suddenly I heard some one fall, and, as though by magic, the whole

mass scattered in every direction. One of the regular guests, who was

familiar with an ancient Nuremberg boxing trick, desiring to put an end

to the interminable riot and to cut his way home through the crowd,

gave one of the noisiest shouters a blow with his fist between the

eyes, laying him senseless on the ground, though without seriously

injuring him. And this it was that so speedily broke up the whole

throng. Within little more than a minute of the most violent uproar of

hundreds of human voices, my brother-in-law and I were able to stroll

arm-in-arm through the moonlit streets, quietly jesting and laughing,

on our way home; and then it was that, to my amazement and relief, he

informed me that he was accustomed to this sort of life every evening.

At last, however, it became necessary seriously to attend to the

purpose of my journey. Only in passing did I touch at Wurzburg for a

day. I remember nothing of the meeting with my relations and

acquaintance beyond the melancholy visit to Friederike Galvani already

mentioned. On reaching Frankfort I was obliged to seek at once the

shelter of a decent hotel, in order to await there the result of my

solicitations for subsidies from the directorate of the Magdeburg

theatre. My hopes of securing the real stars of our operatic

undertaking were formed with a view to a season at Wiesbaden, where, I

was told, a good operatic company was on the point of dissolution. I

found it extremely difficult to arrange the short journey thither; yet

I managed to be present at a rehearsal of Robert der Teufel, in which

the tenor Freimuller distinguished himself. I interviewed him at once,

and found him willing to entertain my proposals for Magdeburg. We

concluded the necessary agreement, and I then returned with all speed

to my headquarters, the Weidenbusch Hotel in Frankfort. There I had to

spend another anxious week, during which I waited in vain for the

necessary travelling expenses to arrive from Magdeburg. To kill time I

had recourse, among other things, to a large red pocket-book which I

carried about with me in my portmanteau, and in which I entered, with

exact details of dates, etc., notes for my future biography—the

selfsame book which now lies before me to freshen my memory, and which

I have ever since added to at various periods of my life, without

leaving any gaps. Through the neglect of the Magdeburg managers my

situation, which was already serious, became literally desperate, when

I made an acquisition in Frankfort which gave me almost more pleasure

than I was able to bear. I had been present at a production of the

Zauberflote under the direction of Guhr, then wonderfully renowned as

‘a conductor of genius,’ and was agreeably surprised at the truly

excellent quality of the company. It was, of course, useless to think

of luring one of the leading stars into my net; on the other hand, I

saw clearly enough that the youthful Fraulein Limbach, who sang the

‘first boy’s’ part, possessed a desirable talent. She accepted my offer

of an engagement, and, indeed, seemed so anxious to be rid of her

Frankfort engagement that she resolved to escape from it

surreptitiously. She revealed her plans to me, and begged me to assist

her in carrying them out; for, inasmuch as the directors might get wind

of the affair, there was no time to lose. At all events, the young lady

assumed that I had abundant credit, supplied for my official business

journey by the Magdeburg theatre committee, whose praises I had so

diligently sung. But already I had been compelled to pledge my scanty

travelling gear in order to provide for my own departure. To this point

I had persuaded the host, but now found him by no means inclined to

advance me the additional funds needed for carrying off a young singer.

To cloak the bad behaviour of my directors I was compelled to invent

some tale of misfortune, and to leave the astonished and indignant

young lady behind. Heartily ashamed of this adventure, I travelled

through rain and storm via Leipzig, where I picked up my brown poodle,

and reaching Magdeburg, there resumed my work as musical director on

the 1st of September.

The result of my business labours gave me but little joy. The director,

it is true, proved triumphantly that he had sent five whole golden

louis to my address in Frankfort, and that my tenor and the youthful

lady-singer had also been provided with proper contracts, but not with

the fares and advances demanded. Neither of them came; only the basso

Graf arrived with pedantic punctuality from Karlsbad, and immediately

provoked the chaff of our theatrical wags. He sang at a rehearsal of

the Schweizerfamilie with such a schoolmasterly drone that I completely

lost my composure. The arrival of my excellent brother-in-law Wolfram

with my sister Clara was of more advantage for musical comedy than for

grand opera, and caused me considerable trouble into the bargain; for,

being honest folk and used to decent living, they speedily perceived

that, in spite of royal protection, the condition of the theatre was

but very insecure, as was natural under so unscrupulous a management as

that of Bethmann, and recognised with alarm that they had seriously

compromised their family position. My courage had already begun to sink

when a happy chance brought us a young woman, Mme. Pollert (nee

Zeibig), who was passing through Magdeburg with her husband, an actor,

in order to fulfil a special engagement in that town; she was gifted

with a beautiful voice, was a talented singer, and well suited for the

chief roles. Necessity had at last driven the directors to action, and

at the eleventh hour they sent for the tenor Freimuller. But I was

particularly gratified when the love which had arisen between him and

young Limbach in Frankfort enabled the enterprising tenor to carry away

this singer, to whom I had behaved so miserably. Both arrived radiant

with joy. Along with them we engaged Mme. Pollert, who, in spite of her

pretentiousness, met with favour from the public. A well-trained and

musically competent baritone, Herr Krug, afterwards the conductor of a

choir in Karlsruhe, had also been discovered, so that all at once I

stood at the head of a really good operatic company, among which the

basso Graf could be fitted in only with great difficulty, by being kept

as much as possible in the background. We succeeded quickly with a

series of operatic performances which were by no means ordinary, and

our repertory included everything of this nature that had ever been

written for the theatre. I was particularly pleased with the

presentation of Spohr’s Jessonda, which was truly not without

sublimity, and raised us high in the esteem of all cultured lovers of

music. I was untiring in my endeavours to discover some means of

elevating our performances above the usual level of excellence

compatible with the meagre resources of provincial theatres. I

persistently fell foul of the director Bethmann by strengthening my

orchestra, which he had to pay; but, on the other hand, I won his

complete goodwill by strengthening the chorus and the theatre music,

which cost him nothing, and which lent such splendour to our

presentations that subscriptions and audiences increased enormously.

For instance, I secured the regimental band, and also the military

singers, who in the Prussian army are admirably organised, and who

assisted in our performances in return for free passes to the gallery

granted to their relatives. Thus I managed to furnish with the utmost

completeness the specially strong orchestral accompaniment demanded by

the score of Bellini’s Norma, and was able to dispose of a body of male

voices for the impressive unison portion of the male chorus in the

introduction of that work such as even the greatest theatres could

rarely command. In later years I was able to assure Auber, whom I often

met over an ice in Tortoni’s cafe in Paris, that in his Lestocq I had

been able to render the part of the mutinous soldiery, when seduced

into conspiracy, with an absolutely full number of voices, a fact for

which he thanked me with astonishment and delight.

Amid such circumstances of encouragement the composition of my

Liebesverbot made rapid strides towards completion. I intended the

presentation of this piece for the benefit performance which had been

promised me as a means of defraying my expenses, and I worked hard in

the hope of improving my reputation, and at the same time of

accomplishing something by no means less desirable, and that was the

betterment of my financial position. Even the few hours which I could

snatch from business to spend at Minna’s side were devoted with

unexampled zeal to the completion of my score. My diligence moved even

Minna’s mother, who looked with some uneasiness upon our love affair.

She had remained over the summer on a visit to her daughter, and

managed the house for her. Owing to her interference a new and urgent

anxiety had entered into our relations, which pressed for serious

settlement. It was natural that we should begin to think of what it was

all going to lead to. I must confess that the idea of marriage,

especially in view of my youth, filled me with dismay, and without

indeed reflecting on the matter, or seriously weighing its pros and

cons, a naive and instinctive feeling prevented me even from

considering the possibility of a step which would have such serious

consequences upon my whole life. Moreover, our modest circumstances

were in so alarming and uncertain a state that even Minna declared that

she was more anxious to see these improved than to get me to marry her.

But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, for

trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magdeburg theatre.

There she had met with a rival in her own speciality, and as this

woman’s husband became chief stage manager, and consequently had

supreme power, she grew to be a source of great danger. Seeing,

therefore, that at this very moment Minna received advantageous offers

from the managers of the Konigstadt theatre in Berlin, then doing a

splendid business, she seized the opportunity to break off her

connection with the Magdeburg theatre, and thus plunged me, whom she

did not appear to consider in the matter, into the depths of despair. I

could not hinder Minna from going to Berlin to fulfil a special

engagement there, although this was not in accordance with her

agreement, and so she departed, leaving me behind, overcome with grief

and doubt as to the meaning of her conduct. At last, mad with passion,

I wrote to her urging her to return, and the better to move her and not

to separate her fate from my own, I proposed to her in a strictly

formal manner, and hinted at the hope of early marriage. About the same

time my brother-in-law, Wolfram, having quarrelled with the director

Bethmann and cancelled his contract with him, also went to the

Konigstadt theatre to fulfil a special engagement. My good sister

Clara, who had remained behind for a while amid the somewhat unpleasant

conditions of Magdeburg, soon perceived the anxious and troubled temper

in which her otherwise cheerful brother was rapidly consuming himself.

One day she thought it advisable to show me a letter from her husband,

with news from Berlin, and especially concerning Minna, in which he

earnestly deplored my passion for this girl, who was acting quite

unworthily of me. As she lodged at his hotel, he was able to observe

that not only the company she kept, but also her own conduct, were

perfectly scandalous. The extraordinary impression which this dreadful

communication made upon me decided me to abandon the reserve I had

hitherto shown towards my relatives with regard to my love affairs. I

wrote to my brother-in-law in Berlin, telling him how matters stood

with me, and that my plans greatly depended on Minna, and further, how

extremely important it was for me to learn from him the indubitable

truth concerning her of whom he had sent so evil an account. From my

brother-in-law, usually so dry and given to joking, I received a reply

which filled my heart to overflowing again. He confessed that he had

accused Minna too hastily, and regretted that he had allowed idle

chatter to influence him in founding a charge, which, on investigation,

had proved to be altogether groundless and unjust; he declared,

moreover, that on nearer acquaintance and conversation with her he had

been so fully convinced of the genuineness and uprightness of her

character, that he hoped with all his heart that I might see my way to

marry her. And now a storm raged in my heart. I implored Minna to

return at once, and was glad to learn that, for her part, she was not

inclined to renew her engagement at the Berlin theatre, as she had now

acquired a more intimate knowledge of the life there, and found it too

frivolous. All that remained, then, was for me to facilitate the

resumption of her Magdeburg engagement. To this end, therefore, at a

meeting of the theatre committee, I attacked the director and his

detested stage manager with such energy, and defended Minna against the

wrong done her by them both with such passion and fervour, that the

other members, astonished at the frank confession of my affection,

yielded to my wishes without any further ado. And now I set off by

extra post in the depth of night and in dreadful winter weather to meet

my returning sweetheart. I greeted her with tears of deepest joy, and

led her back in triumph to her cosy Magdeburg home, already become so

dear to me.

Meanwhile, as our two lives, thus severed for a while, were being drawn

more and more closely together, I finished the score of my Liebesverbot

about New Year 1836. For the development of my future plans I depended

not a little upon the success of this work; and Minna herself seemed

not disinclined to yield to my hopes in this respect. We had reason to

be concerned as to how matters would pan out for us at the beginning of

the spring, for this season is always a bad one in which to start such

precarious theatrical enterprises. In spite of royal support and the

participation of the theatre committee in the general management of the

theatre, our worthy director’s state of perennial bankruptcy suffered

no alteration, and it seemed as if his theatrical undertaking could not

possibly last much longer in any form. Nevertheless, with the help of

the really first-rate company of singers at my disposal, the production

of my opera was to mark a complete change in my unsatisfactory

circumstances. With the view of recovering the travelling expenses I

had incurred during the previous summer, I was entitled to a benefit

performance. I naturally fixed this for the presentation of my own

work, and did my utmost so that this favour granted me by the directors

should prove as inexpensive to them as possible. As they would

nevertheless be compelled to incur some expense in the production of

the new opera, I agreed that the proceeds of the first presentation

should be left to them, while I should claim only those of the second.

I did not consider it altogether unsatisfactory that the time for the

rehearsals was postponed until the very end of the season, for it was

reasonable to suppose that our company, which was often greeted with

unusual applause, would receive special attention and favour from the

public during its concluding performances. Unfortunately, however,

contrary to our expectations, we never reached the proper close of this

season, which had been fixed for the end of April; for already in

March, owing to irregularity in the payment of salaries, the most

popular members of the company, having found better employment

elsewhere, tendered their resignations to the management, and the

director, who was unable to raise the necessary cash, was compelled to

bow to the inevitable. Now, indeed, my spirits sank, for it seemed more

than doubtful whether my Liebesverbot would ever be produced at all. I

owed it entirely to the warm affection felt for me personally by all

members of the opera company, that the singers consented not only to

remain until the end of March, but also to undertake the toil of

studying and rehearsing my opera, a task which, considering the very

limited time, promised to be extremely arduous. In the event of our

having to give two representations, the time at our disposal was so

very short that, for all the rehearsals, we had but ten days before us.

And since we were concerned not with a light comedy or farce, but with

a grand opera, and one which, in spite of the trifling character of its

music, contained numerous and powerful concerted passages, the

undertaking might have been regarded almost as foolhardy. Nevertheless,

I built my hopes upon the extraordinary exertions which the singers so

willingly made in order to please me; for they studied continuously,

morning, noon, and night. But seeing that, in spite of all this, it was

quite impossible to attain to perfection, especially in the matter of

words, in the case of every one of these harassed performers, I

reckoned further on my own acquired skill as conductor to achieve the

final miracle of success. The peculiar ability I possessed of helping

the singers and of making them, in spite of much uncertainty, seem to

flow smoothly onwards, was clearly demonstrated in our orchestral

rehearsals, in which, by dint of constant prompting, loud singing with

the performers and vigorous directions as to necessary action, I got

the whole thing to run so easily that it seemed quite possible that the

performance might be a reasonable success after all. Unfortunately, we

did not consider that in front of the public all these drastic methods

of moving the dramatic and musical machinery would be restricted to the

movements of my baton and to my facial expression. As a matter of fact

the singers, and especially the men, were so extraordinarily uncertain

that from beginning to end their embarrassment crippled the

effectiveness of every one of their parts. Freimuller, the tenor, whose

memory was most defective, sought to patch up the lively and emotional

character of his badly learned rule of the madcap Luzio by means of

routine work learned in Fra Diavolo and Zampa, and especially by the

aid of an enormously thick, brightly coloured and fluttering plume of

feathers. Consequently, as the directors failed to have the book of

words printed in time, it was impossible to blame the public for being

in doubt as to the main outlines of the story, seeing that they had

only the sung words to guide them. With the exception of a few portions

played by the lady singers, which were favourably received, the whole

performance, which I had made to depend largely upon bold, energetic

action and speech, remained but a musical shadow-play, to which the

orchestra contributed its own inexplicable effusions, sometimes with

exaggerated noise. As characteristic of the treatment of my

tone-colour, I may mention that the band-master of a Prussian military

band, who, by the bye, had been well pleased with the performance, felt

it incumbent upon him to give me some well-meant hints for my future

guidance, as to the manipulation of the Turkish drum. Before I relate

the further history of this wonderful work of my youth, I will pause a

moment briefly to describe its character, and especially its poetical

elements.

Shakespeare’s play, which I kept throughout in mind as the foundation

of my story, was worked out in the following manner:—

An unnamed king of Sicily leaves his country, as I suggest, for a

journey to Naples, and hands over to the Regent appointed—whom I simply

call Friedrich, with the view of making him appear as German as

possible—full authority to exercise all the royal power in order to

effect a complete reform in the social habits of his capital, which had

provoked the indignation of the Council. At the opening of the play we

see the servants of the public authority busily employed either in

shutting up or in pulling down the houses of popular amusement in a

suburb of Palermo, and in carrying off the inmates, including hosts and

servants, as prisoners. The populace oppose this first step, and much

scuffling ensues. In the thickest of the throng the chief of the

sbirri, Brighella (basso-buffo), after a preliminary roll of drums for

silence, reads out the Regent’s proclamation, according to which the

acts just performed are declared to be directed towards establishing a

higher moral tone in the manners and customs of the people. A general

outburst of scorn and a mocking chorus meets this announcement. Luzio,

a young nobleman and juvenile scape-grace (tenor), seems inclined to

thrust himself forward as leader of the mob, and at once finds an

occasion for playing a more active part in the cause of the oppressed

people on discovering his friend Claudio (also a tenor) being led away

to prison. From him he learns that, in pursuance of some musty old law

unearthed by Friedrich, he is to suffer the penalty of death for a

certain love escapade in which he is involved. His sweetheart, union

with whom had been prevented by the enmity of their parents, has borne

him a child. Friedrich’s puritanical zeal joins cause with the parents’

hatred; he fears the worst, and sees no way of escape save through

mercy, provided his sister Isabella may be able, by her entreaties, to

melt the Regent’s hard heart. Claudio implores his friend at once to

seek out Isabella in the convent of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, which

she has recently entered as novice. There, between the quiet walls of

the convent, we first meet this sister, in confidential intercourse

with her friend Marianne, also a novice. Marianne reveals to her

friend, from whom she has long been parted, the unhappy fate which has

brought her to the place. Under vows of eternal fidelity she had been

persuaded to a secret liaison with a man of high rank. But finally,

when in extreme need she found herself not only forsaken, but

threatened by her betrayer, she discovered him to be the mightiest man

in the state, none other than the King’s Regent himself. Isabella’s

indignation finds vent in impassioned words, and is only pacified by

her determination to forsake a world in which so vile a crime can go

unpunished.—When now Luzio brings her tidings of her own brother’s

fate, her disgust at her brother’s misconduct is turned at once to

scorn for the villainy of the hypocritical Regent, who presumes so

cruelly to punish the comparatively venial offence of her brother,

which, at least, was not stained by treachery. Her violent outburst

imprudently reveals her to Luzio in a seductive aspect; smitten with

sudden love, he urges her to quit the convent for ever and to accept

his hand. She contrives to check his boldness, but resolves at once to

avail herself of his escort to the Regent’s court of justice.—Here the

trial scene is prepared, and I introduce it by a burlesque hearing of

several persons charged by the sbirro captain with offences against

morality. The earnestness of the situation becomes more marked when the

gloomy form of Friedrich strides through the inrushing and unruly

crowd, commanding silence, and he himself undertakes the hearing of

Claudio’s case in the sternest manner possible. The implacable judge is

already on the point of pronouncing sentence when Isabella enters, and

requests, before them all, a private interview with the Regent. In this

interview she behaves with noble moderation towards the dreaded, yet

despised man before her, and appeals at first only to his mildness and

mercy. His interruptions merely serve to stimulate her ardour: she

speaks of her brother’s offence in melting accents, and implores

forgiveness for so human and by no means unpardonable a crime. Seeing

the effect of her moving appeal, she continues with increasing ardour

to plead with the judge’s hard and unresponsive heart, which can

certainly not have remained untouched by sentiments such as those which

had actuated her brother, and she calls upon his memory of these to

support her desperate plea for pity. At last the ice of his heart is

broken. Friedrich, deeply stirred by Isabella’s beauty, can no longer

contain himself, and promises to grant her petition at the price of her

own love. Scarcely has she become aware of the unexpected effect of her

words when, filled with indignation at such incredible villainy, she

cries to the people through doors and windows to come in, that she may

unmask the hypocrite before the world. The crowd is already rushing

tumultuously into the hall of judgment, when, by a few significant

hints, Friedrich, with frantic energy, succeeds in making Isabella

realise the impossibility of her plan. He would simply deny her charge,

boldly pretend that his offer was merely made to test her, and would

doubtless be readily believed so soon as it became only a question of

rebutting a charge of lightly making love to her. Isabella, ashamed and

confounded, recognises the madness of her first step, and gnashes her

teeth in silent despair. While then Friedrich once more announces his

stern resolve to the people, and pronounces sentence on the prisoner,

it suddenly occurs to Isabella, spurred by the painful recollection of

Marianne’s fate, that what she has failed to procure by open means she

might possibly obtain by craft. This thought suffices to dispel her

sorrow, and to fill her with utmost gaiety. Turning to her sorrowing

brother, her agitated friends, and the perplexed crowd, she assures

them all that she is ready to provide them with the most amusing of

adventures. She declares that the carnival festivities, which the

Regent has just strictly forbidden, are to be celebrated this year with

unusual licence; for this dreaded ruler only pretends to be so cruel,

in order the more pleasantly to astonish them by himself taking a merry