The Contributors' Club

PARIS has been persistently inhospitable towards Wagner the artist, and yet, during more than half his life, Paris appeared to him as the Mecca of art. His first visit to Paris was made in 1841. Wagner was then twenty-eight years of age : he had written two operas, — the Three Fairies, and the Novice of Palermo, or the Defense of Love, taken from Measure for Measure ; he had married his first wife, a Magdeburg actress, Wilhelmina Planer ; he had been successively bandmaster in the theatres of Magdeburg, Koenigsberg, Dresden, and Riga; but hitherto fortune had not smiled upon the young musician. Paris! Why not try Paris ? Every year, how many young musicians come to Paris, in the hazardous quest of glory and wealth, and how very few achieve either!

Accompanied by his wife and a big dog, Wagner arrived at Boulogne from Riga, by way of London, in the beginning of 1841. At Boulogne he had the good fortune to meet Meyerbeer, his compatriot, who gave him letters of introduction to Leon Pillet, the manager of the Opéra ; Anténor Joly, the manager of the Renaissance theatre; and Schlesinger, the music publisher. Wagner had played to Meyerbeer the first two acts of Rienzi, a new opera which he had begun to write; he had developed to the famous composer his own ideas and projects with juvenile and communicative enthusiasm. Meyerbeer had listened with interest, and so Wagner arrived at Paris full of faith and hope. Meyerbeer had indeed told him that he would probably meet with great difficulties ; he had even significantly asked him if he had means to enable him to live and wait for ten years ; but Wagner was confident in his future, and probably attached more importance to Meyerbeer’s letters of recommendation than Meyerbeer himself did. Thanks to these letters, Wagner found himself well received, it is true ; but, in spite of his German density, he soon came to comprehend the superficiality of French politeness, — thanks to many mouths of cruel experience, during which he and his wife and his dog lived in a single miserably furnished room in the old Rue de la Tonnellerie. And the daily bread ? It was earned with pain by reading proofs for Brandus, by arranging scores for the piano and for the flute and cornet-à-piston, by writing frenetic galops. The current piano scores of La Favorite, of the Reine de Chypre, of the Guitarrero, are by Wagner ; by him, too, is the music of Heine’s Two Grenadiers. Wagner also wrote at this time some romances to the words of Ronsard’s Mignonne and Victor Hugo’s Dors mon Enfant, and he was even reduced to writing the music for the couplets of Dumanoir’s vaudeville La Descente de la Courtille, most of which the leader of the orchestra of the Variétés declared to be inexecutable. One of the songs of this vaudeville, Allons àa la Courtille, had, it appears, its hour of celebrity. We may imagine what a humiliation it must have been for Wagner to have recourse to such means of bread-winning, which barely left him time at night to work at his Rienzi and his Phantom Ship. At this time Wagner began his career as a writer, and contributed several articles to Schlesinger’s Gazette Musicale, in which He constantly speaks of the superiority of the French over the German school. His opinions on this point were destined to change radically. Meanwhile, times became so hard that Wagner resorted to a strange means of raising the wind. He hired some rooms, and, after living in them a week or two, he sublet them, hired others, and sublet them, and so on. Finally, his creditors became so ferocious that he had to take refuge at an inn in the wood of Meudon, where he began to write his Tannhaüser. To add to the gloom of the situation, Rienzi was refused at the Opéra, and the manager of the Renaissance, who had accepted it, failed before the rehearsals had begun. But a singer of talent and heart, Madame SchroederDevrient, touched by Wagner’s incessant misfortunes, undertook to get the work played at Dresden. She attained her object: the opera was a great success, and Wagner was immediately appointed Capellmeister to the King of Saxony, This was in 1842. Dawn had at length broken.

During this first visit, Wagner succeeded in getting only one of his pieces played, the overture of Christopher Columbus ; and that, too, in an obscure concert given by the Gazette Musicale to its subscribers. The Opéra also paid him five hundred francs for his libretto of the Phantom Ship, but refused his music. M. Dietsch wrote some music for this libretto, which was produced unsuccessfully at the Opéra in 1842, but without Wagner’s name. Wagner returned to Paris for a few days in 1848. The musician, although Capellmeister of the king, had declared himself an ardent revolutionary ; he had fought behind the barricades of Dresden, and had been obliged to fly. Finally, he settled at Zurich, where he published his pamphlet on Art and Revolution, in which he distinctly took up a position as the reformer of the modern lyric stage. Ten years later, in 1859, Wagner was living in grand style in an elegant villa in the Rue Newton, at Paris. At his Wednesday receptions we find Berlioz, Emile Perrin, Emile Ollivier, Carvalho, etc. There is a Wagnerian cénacle, with Champfleury, Baudelaire, and Courbet at the head. Wagner is even powerfully protected at court by the Austrian ambassadress, Madame de Metternich. What a difference between 1841 and 1859! The fact is that in the mean time Wagner had grown famous. Lohengrin and Tannhaüser had been performed all over Germany ; the music of Wagner had been presented by himself and by the critics as essentially revolutionary ; Liszt had become the Calvin of the reform of which Wagner was the Luther ; the music of the future had provoked fierce debates. Tannhauser, too, had been played before the two emperors, on the occasion of their interview at Stuttgart in 1857 ; and the French journalists, the historiographers of the imperial journey, had spoken in detail of the great German musical reform. Some fragments of Wagner had even been played at concerts in Paris, before the master’s arrival in 1859.

The incidents of Wagner’s attempt to conquer the Parisians during his second residence in Paris are curiously illustrative of the national character. He gave a concert at the Theatre des Italiens on January 25, 1860. The programme comprised fragments from the Phantom Ship, Tannhaüser, Tristan and Isault. and Lohengrin. The concert ended in almost a riot, and the press was

nearly unanimous in condemning the music of Wagner. On March 13, 1861, Tannhaüser was performed at the Grand Opéra by Mesdames Tedesco, Marie Sass, and Reboux, and Messieurs Morelii and Niemann. It was hissed and whistled down, and was withdrawn after the third night. The piece had not been heard, but the press nevertheless declared with unanimity that a trial had been given, and that now “ the music of the future was dead and buried.” What is the explanation of this senseless opposition ? As regards the representation of Tannhaüser, there is a secret history, of which something will be said shortly. But the opposition to the concert in 1860, — what was the cause of that? We might ask, in the same way, What was the cause of the hostility to the Romanticists of 1830? In all countries, innovators of genius encounter at first an instinctive hatred on the part of the public, a certain ordinary and fatal resistance. In France they encounter more than this. The French temperament— so smart, so mobile, so predisposed to mockery and ridicule — lacks, precisely on account of these characteristics, one quality which is indispensable for the comprehension of masterpieces: I mean artlessness, simplicity, or what the French call naïveté. The French have a tendency to discover the ridiculous side of grandeur of sentiments, of sublimity, of noble or terrible passions. The French temperament naturally sees the great figures of mythology through the spectacles of Offenbach. What pleases the French particularly is agreeable, witty, and slightly sentimental art, fine observation, and ingenious satire. And so no nation equals them in comic opera, vaudeville, and comedy of manners. For them art is, above all things, an amusement, a distraction, and not a study. They are readily bored by anything serious, and when by chance they do admit a masterpiece on one of their stages it is only by way of a curiosity. You do not find Calderon, Goethe, or Shakespeare played on the Parisian stage. Even Victor Hugo, a native genius, has been unable to overcome the antipathy of his countrymen for serious works. Why should we expect the seductions of music to accomplish this miracle ? Wagner, too, had against him his nationality and the zeal of his apostles ; and so the French wits did not spare the music of the future and its Teuton Messiah, who laid himself open to the shafts of satire by his excessive vanity and pretensions. At the concert the public howled, and almost came to blows with the few who ventured to protest. In the press tho critics were all against the intruder. Even Hector Berlioz wrote, in the Journal des Débats, that he could not agree with those who declare “ that the ear ought to become accustomed to everything, — to series of diminished sevenths ascending and descending, to triple dissonances without preparation or resolution, to atrocious modulations.” The Italian Fiorentino, the shining critical light of the Constitutionnel, fell foul of the composer’s personal appearance. “ M. Wagner,” he wrote, “ looks like a notary in the execution of his functions. His physiognomy is intelligent, his air stiff and starchy. He has a fine, noble, and high forehead ; the lower part of the face is crushed and vulgar. One might imagine that two fairies had presided over his birth : the one angry, the other kind and affectionate. The fairy of harmony caressed and beautified the brow, from which so many bold conceptions and strong thoughts were to issue; the fairy of melody, foreseeing the harm this child was destined to do her, sat on his face and flattened his nose.” The next day Fiorentino’s mot went the round of Paris, and Wagner was judged!

The failure of this concert was, however, only negative; it attracted everybody’s attention to Wagner, and he was veritably the lion of the season. Wagner had, too, the good or the ill fortune to be protected by Madame de Metternich, who was then all-powerful at the Tuileries ; aud it was through her influence that Tannhaiiser was performed at the Grand Opera in 1861, “by order of the emperor.” The anecdotic history of the time says that this imperial order was not issued out of pure love of art, or even out of simple curiosity. The story runs that they were playing a game of forfeits, one night, at tho Tuileries ; the emperor lost, and Madame do Metternich decided that the penalty should be the production of Tannhaiiser. Wagner’s other lady protectress, the Countess von Schelnitz, was less fortunate in her instances with the Emperor of Germany to obtain for Wagner the title of general director of German music, as the final and official consecration of his career. The emperor recognized the genius of Wagner tho musician, but ho never forgot that Wagner the revolutionary of 1848 had fired upon his soldiers from behind the barricades of Dresden.

However, Tannhaüser was performed in the presence of the emperor and of all the celebrities of Paris. It was hissed, as we have already seen. In her anger, Madame de Metternich flung an ultra-Parisian epithet in the face of the audience, and broke her fan — a lovely fan, painted by Watteau — on the edge of her box. In Jules Janiu’s article on the performance, the phrase “ O le bel éventail brisé! ” returned like a eulogic refrain. For Janin the failure of Tannhaüser was unimportant; the evil was not irreparable ; but that fan that Watteau had painted, — who could replace it? “ O le bel éventail brisé ! ”

The enigma of the scandal of the fall of Tannhaiiser has several solutions. First of all, Tannhaüser had the disadvantage of being a serious work, requiring continuous attention on the part of the auditors. Then there was a political solution. The empire was becoming unpopular ; the spirit of opposition was beginning to take a definite form, and the malcontents, the jealous, and the gapers and badauds thought they were manifesting their independence by barking in unison against the favorite of the Tuileries, the German composer, who got his works played “ by imperial order.” Furthermore, a recent decree had restored certain liberties of speech and of the press, and the long-restrained torrent dashed upon the first victim that presented itself. This victim, this scapegoat, happened to be Wagner. Add to these circumstances the fact that the piece was badly put upon the stage, poorly interpreted, and wretchedly played by an orchestra whom Wagner’s natural irritability had ill disposed during the rehearsals. Then, again, there was the question of the ballet, — a question which was hotly discussed for months before the opera was produced. “An opera without a ballet? What did that mean ? ” asked the gentlemen of the Jockey Club, the pillars of the Opera. “ Take care ! ” said the minister to Wagner ; and Wagner made concessions after the first night, only to find himself furiously blamed for having abandoned his principles. And the strident symphony continued, and the latch-keys of the Jockey Club triumphed. These gentlemen were in the right. If they had not protested, Tannhaiiser would have been imposed upon them for at least a month, and their amiable friends of the corps du ballet would have languished for want of occupation. Wagner’s music was evidently noise and verbiage ; the gentlemen of the Jockey Club required melody and legs. So Tannhaüser was withdrawn, and there remained in souvenir thereof a verb of the first conjugation, tannhaüser, the meaning of which was, during the brief period of its vogue, to bore with useless talk and fuss without arriving at any practical conclusion.

Wagner received, in compensation for this painful scandal, the news that his exile was at an end. He returned to Germany, and achieved those triumphs that are familiar to all. The French Wagnerians held together bravely, with M. Pardeloup at their head. From time to time M. Pardeloup would introduce a fragment of Lohengrin into the programme of his popular concerts at the Cirque d’Hiver, and the public would hiss and howl instinctively. In 1868 M. Pardeloup, being then lessee of the Théatre Lyrique, completed his ruin by mounting Wagner’s Rienzi, which failed most completely. Just after the war Wagner grossly offended the Parisians by writing a ridiculous and stupid “ comedy in the antique manner,” in which he scoffed at the sufferings of the Parisians during the siege. This insult the Parisians have never forgotten. Finally, in 1881, the Parisians, for some inexplicable reason, or rather, perhaps, caprice, consented to make a distinction between Wagner the man and Wagner the musician. The Wagner concerts at the Château d’Eau theatre had great success. Wagnerism became a fashionable musical tenet, and that year every Parisian who respected himself was bound to have heard the first act of Lohengrin and Quès aco ? the delicious Parisiennerie sung by Madame Judic in Lili, at the Variétés.

At the present moment Paris counts a goodly number of Wagnerians, mitigated Wagnerians, who endure fragments, but who certainly would not endure Wagner on the French stage. Indeed, the feeling against Wagner is still so strong that many years must elapse before any attempt can be made in that direction, — a fact which was sufficiently proved two years ago, when M. Angelo Neumann announced his intention of playing Lohengrin at the Théâtre du Nations. The simple announcement raised such a tempest in the press that M. Neumann very prudently vanished into the background, and abandoned a considerable sum of money, which he had paid as a deposit for the theatre.

In conclusion, it may be interesting to see what was Wagner’s own feeling about his reception in France. An eminent French critic, M. Fourcaud, has recorded the master’s own words in an account of an interview he had with him at Bayreuth, at the time of the Parsifal performances.

“ Pardeloup,” said Wagner, “ does all he can to acclimatize me in France, and I am very grateful to him. But I shall never be understood in concerts. I am a theatrical man, and I need not only actors, but also scenery and complicated mise-en-scène. In a dramatic work, everything holds together, and the conditions of its execution cannot be changed with impunity. For that matter, I shall never be played commonly in France. My music is too German. I try to be of my country as profoundly as I can. It is dangerous to sing me without my verses : they are the indispensable complement of my melodic declamations. ... I know that I am not played, for certain sad and paltry reasons. . . . But let us say no more about that affair. It is a thing of the past. People think I guard rancor. Rancor ? And why ? Because Tannhaüser was hissed ? But was Tannhaiiser heard, even ? No, the moment for sincere music has not yet come. As for the press, I have not had to complain so much as people think. I did not pay visits to the journalists, as Meyerbeer did ; but Baudelaire, Champfleury, and Sehurté, nevertheless, wrote the finest things that have been written about me. You see I have no reason to be as dissatisfied as I am said to be; and I am not dissatisfied, either.”

— One evening, not long ago, I was sitting before the library fire in a certain house in Boston, and some one went to the piano and began to play a piece of music which was entirely unfamiliar to me. I quickly went off into a delightful unconsciousness of outward things, and instead of following the notes, and being aware of the mechanical part of the harmony, I found myself remembering the days I had spent in Norway some time before. I looked up again at the seven mountains that tower above the old city of Bergen. I saw the shining waters of the fiord, and the quaint prows, and heavy square sails of the Norland ships coming solemnly up the long harbor, as if they were manned by crews of Norsemen, who had been bewitched and delayed by some enchantment, and had reached their port many centuries too late. I saw the old wooden houses of the town, and the clean-swept paving-stones of the wide torvets, or public squares; and I heard the strangesounding chatter at the fish-market, where the buyers stood on shore and bargained for the fish that were eagerly held up in the crowded boats of the sellers. And I looked in at the windows of the fur shops and silver shops, as I went along the narrow streets. I could see the dried-up old men and women, who sat in the streets to sell their strange fruits and wooden shoes, and the bright colors and curious white caps of the peasant women’s costumes. Then I remembered one cloudy morning, when, through the quickly falling, warm summer showers, I drove to a black little lake lying between two high mountains, which made for it most bleak and barren shores. A lonely sea-bird fluttered to and fro, as if it were under some spell, and were imprisoned there for its sins. The water seemed like that in some subterranean cavern which had been suddenly unroofed and opened to the dim light of that dark day. It was like a vision of a lake in Hades.

As we drove down the steep roads back to the city, the sun blazed out suddenly and the trees glistened, and the rosy-faced children called to each other, and ran about clacking their wooden shoes on the pavement and looking at us curiously. “ Now we will have just time to go to see the Griegs,” said my friend ; “ they are not far away ; ” and presently we stopped before a high wooden house, and were again lucky enough to have a sight of the charming face of the Norwegian composer. It was a great satisfaction and pleasure (having scarcely done more than look at him before) to see him quietly in his own house ; to see his own old-fashioned piano, and to hear him talk in delightful fragments of English ; to watch his delicate pale face and slender figure become alert and quick with enthusiasm, and his eyes flash with fun. One could only regret that so fine a genius as Edward Grieg’s had not a stronger body for its servant. His wife, a most accomplished and interesting woman, with her bright, sweet face, and curly hair, that waved about as she moved, and curved back from her forehead thick and soft, like a bird’s winter feathers, seemed as merry and busy as possible. They had lately come from Germany, and now were going down to the Hardangerfiord for some holidays; and Mrs. Grieg (or Fru Grieg, as one would say in Norway) told us that she had been packing and unpacking their traveling boxes all the morning, making ready for a start. “Were we going to leave Norway without seeing the Hardanger? That was a great pity ! Why could we not come with them? It could not always rain; it would be bright weather soon ; it was pleasant in the Hardanger even if it did rain.” . . . The composer’s wife is a rare musician, also ; we were told that there is nothing more charming than to hear her sing to her husband’s playing. But for us this pleasure was put off until we should see them again, which, unfortunately, never happened. My own interest in them was entirely personal; for, not being possessed of any right to be called musical. I had little knowledge of either the great man or his works. I had been very glad to go and see Grieg with my friend, who was an old friend of his, and who parted from him sorrowfully because he looked so far from strong, and as if some gentler climate than Norway’s ought to be giving him its protection. He and his wife stood together in the doorway to watch us go away, and I shall long remember their faces, spirited and delicate, and full of the signs of rare power and promise. They seemed very merry with each other, and glad to be together, these dear people. I hope some other day I shall hear them play and sing.

These were some of the things I dreamed about as the music went on; I even said to myself that it was a great pity I did not know by heart a great deal of Grieg’s music, for I was sure that I would like it.

Then the sound of the piano ceased, and everybody stirred a little in the usual fashion, and said, “ Oh, lovely ! ” And one listener asked, “ What is that? It is something new.” To which the fair musician answered, “ It is something I have just been learning of Grieg’s.”

— Having occasion, lately, to look into a volume of essays which I had not opened since student days, and which had then been a source of high inspiration, I found myself curiously moved. As I turned the leaves, T was conscious that they still retained a divine warmth and glow. Something of the ability claimed by the trance-reader seemed mine. I needed not to follow the print; electric memory served me instead of literal sight. I had forgotten neither page nor place on the page occupied by those maxims and “ jewels five-wordslong,” which I had been wont to transfer to my note-book ; coining, and adding thereto, other maxims and jewels, whose stolen sheen I could not then detect. For me, now, the margins of that friendly text are significantly illuminated, stamped with the bright vagaries and ambitious heraldic devices of fire-new youthful imagination. I perceive that, although our souls may have grown cold through long hardening and prosaic years, a cited or remembered sentence from some inspired writ of our early acceptation restores, for the time, the same clear-sighted, imponderous frame that was ours at the first reading. Talk of personal magnetism! The magnetism impersonal of some books is quite as remarkable. We are taken captive and carried whither they will, into strange, outlying regions of which our mental topography hitherto has taken no account. Æneas, enveloped in a kindly mist, breathed from Paphos, and so withdrawn from the sight and power of his enemies, was not luckier than are we, when some mighty vanisher, dwelling between covers, reaches forth, conceals, and spirits us away, just as the superior numbers of the worldly, the trivial, and the commonplace are like to prove too much for our valor and resistance. Some books meet us at the drift period of our history, and reorganize and solidify our distracted and floating elements; others dislodge our false foundations, leaving us to ascertain for ourselves on what plan it were best to rebuild. Tyndall, with his treasured, stall-worn copy of Emerson, dating a new starting-point from the moment of purchase, strikes us as a notable illustration of the reproductive virtue to be found in certain books. But what shall be said of the following case ? My friend tells me he is thinking of dropping the company of a particular author, inasmuch as the latter is always markedly rebuking him, always whipping the world over his shoulders! “ Stand and receive,” would seem to be the best counsel in this instance. We can afford to endure uncomplainingly whatever chastisement our keen understanders see fit to administer. If it hurts, there is proof that we are not incorrigible. The choice observation, the apt characterization, the right-naming faculty, when we come upon them in a book, pique and quicken such as we possess of the same power. Our imagination begins to show unwonted mettle, and is impatient at having any Pegasus ahead of it on the road. How can we rest unaffected by that which, in a quicker and finer spirit, excites awe, transport, sacred delight ? In some way we must manage to put ourselves into the state in which these high effects are receivable and communicable.

There are the books which, from the earliest times, have served as touchstones for testing intellectual and spiritual quality. One, a considerable epic poem, carried by Alexander in a choice casket through all his Asiatic campaigns, has come safely down to us, despite the wear and tear of ages. Its casket, the perpetual suffrage of youth and poetry, has preserved it. Said disillusioned Middle Age to Boyhood, come exultant from the battles of the Iliad and the marvelous voyages of the Odyssey, “ You act as though you thought Master Homer had never been read until you took him in hand, and as though he is beholden to you for recognition ! " Perhaps the satiric commentator spoke wiser than he knew. Who does not remember what a night’s reading of Chapman’s Homer did for a young English poet, the ancient vintage working upon his fancy, and causing it to throw off, by next morning, the sonnet for which alone he deserved to wake and find himself famous !

A few books out of all the centuries may be likened to vast Atlantic continents, presenting a diverse coast of discovery to each adventurer from beyond the seas. Each, on landing, plants a standard, and claims a new world for that Castile and Leon from which he happens to have sailed. The mainlands which many unlike crafts visit are usually those of the richest and most varied endowment. The “ poet’s poet,” surely Spenser; the poet’s encyclopædist, Burton, with his huge Anatomy; the poet’s ancient historian, Herodotus ; the poet’s story-teller, Boccaccio; the poet’s mediæval chronicler, Froissart; and others, lesser and greater, are entitled to all the complimentary additions we can give them, for the munificent invitation they hold out to “ free plunder.” They say, in effect, “ Come, take from me what you will; it shall not be charged against you.” Montaigne everywhere boasts of his profitable borrowings from the ancient philosophers, He even enters upon a defense of Seneca and Plutarch, on the ground that it becomes him to stand up for their honor, since his own works are “ entirely built up” of what he has taken

from them. The books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been found (by Thoreau) to suggest “ a certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a humus for new literature to spring in.” Who can say that any book of enduring memory has yet been explored to its very centre ; that it has not warming and illuminating resources, packed away in its understrata for the use of future discoverers ? On the bulletin-board of the ages is a standing advertisement calling for inspired readers. Occasionally, a situation is filled, whereat the unquiet names of some inspired writer is soothed and placated.