Scan 6
Musical Courier 1906-09-26: Vol 53 Iss 1383, 1906
18 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1owner of a much greater mentality than most of his biographers have even touched upon—he was prepared to meet the opportunity, whenever it came to him, as few men were, and he always did meet the opportunity. He met it with Liszt, with the Wesendoncks, with the King of Bavaria, with Cosima, with Fenstel, the Bayreuth banker—in fact, with every one. This alone makes him a great man, and if his biographers put in a disclaimer they will only prove that he was inherently dishonest as a man.
3He said to one of the living witnesses here: "I cannot live poor; I must have what I desire; I am willing to take money or borrow money to any extent, because I deal in futures. I know that my works will produce large revenues, and that enables me to live; no matter how I must secure the means now to live as I wish. The revenues will assuredly come, and, moreover, I must have comfort to do my work." I use the modern English phraseology equivalent to the German phrases he uttered. This was told to me in the simplest innocence by an old lady who knew Wagner intimately and whose family associated with him and his wife nearly daily here for years.
5It is a characteristic of genius that it can predict properly, and Wagner gave champagne (French champagne, as I learned) soupers here at the Escher dwelling when he did not know at the moment when the next franc would come in toward the rent, although he must have felt safe. But his prediction was verified. He knew that his futures were a magnificent investment, for he had the consciousness of his own powers, and he had the wisdom that knows its period. Richard Wagner's pulse test was infallible, and there never were any doubts in his mind that our age, when once it tasted his fruits, would devour them with unappeasable demand. The works of none before him in music and none since represent such a Golconda, and that very fact, that innate confidence in his analysis of our day and its appetites gave him the courage, supplied him with the insolence and provided the contempt with which he treated the usual amenities of life and rejected the ethical values created by a social compact he never recognized—never!
7The Wesendonck Opportunity.
9Minna Planer-Wagner was an ideal Hausfrau for her husband, and provided him with everything he could have had easily without having her to boot. Among other things, there is still here a pine table made at her request by a local house carpenter (which she covered with red velvet and embellished with a fringe of passementerie bought in a shop), and on this table, where stood the inkpot and his snuffbox, he composed the "Walküre," "Tristan and Isolde," and odds and ends—and I composed part of this letter on it, most sacrilegiously.
11The present owners ask 8,000 francs for this table, and it is surprising that Wagner used it so long without becoming irritated, because it has no drawers; it is a simple, four-legged pine table, with the velvet outfit lovingly contributed by the devoted spouse as an evidence, possibly, of her earnest. "Why this fixed price?" I demurely demanded. "Well," said the proprietor, "we have held on to it years now, and it makes no difference if it is not purchased, because with each year it is bound to become more valuable." I eyed the man penetratingly, suspecting that he may have lived in America, the answer being so thoroughly fiscal. He showed me letters from Daniella Bülow and Eva Wagner, discussing the table, but protesting their inability to purchase it at that price, and it was really pathetic to find Bülow's daughter making inquiries regarding Wagner's table. Is it naïveté or is it a deadening of the moral fibre that gives out such manifestations? Mind you, I had their letters in my hand, and you can read them, too, if you will proceed to do as I did, namely, systematically pursue the hunt. There is no secrecy about it; it is all prepared for investigation except for the discipled biographers, who are not after the truth, but only seek such evidence as will endorse their deification.
13The Escher house was restricted in its capacity; of course great work was done there; no doubt about that; overwhelming work that would make mankind paralytic in its amazement. A man of Wagner's stripe, genial when he wished to be so; witty, classical, literary and poetic (I, of course, do not propose to insult his intelligence by claiming that his archaic stanzas are poetry; I mean poetic in nature and temperament); a man of the world, buoyant with episode, refreshing in his originality, universal in his encyclopaedic facility, and a productive artist, simply swayed his whole environment with the effervescence of his spirit, and when others here met him, leaving aside entirely the influence of his artistic work, they were overwhelmed by the magnetism of his personality. The unlimited resources of his mind simply paralyzed every one who came into contact with him in this provincial state, and a woman of the Wesendonck kind absolutely lost her self-command; she became his toy, and not the toy of a lover, but the toy of a psychologist who read her by anticipation before she could utter a reply to his electric inquisition.
15You must come here to get this Zürich story. It cannot be secured in archives or through the reading of correspondence. You must follow Benjamin d'Israeli's suggestion, who advised that one should be on the spot to learn. Who were these Wesendoncks, with their large estate out in the Enge, miles of land and buildings on it rented and bringing a self-sustaining income, leaving aside the large profits from active business? The books do not tell us much from which to gather anything. Both she and he came from Bonn, on the Rhine, that old Beethoven Bonn, she being a daughter of the Rhine shipping master, Luckemeyer, already rich from Rhine gold when the girl was born, and he, as the name indicates, an heir of the old Frisian blood, cold and with hardly a red corpuscle in it. There is nothing more socially abstract than these Teutonic burgher aristocrats with a family tree closing with branches of Latin endings. It is told here how Wesendonck made his fortune in America, but America is a mere symbol among these people, a huge theory and without any fixed factors in it, and hence much told about Wesendonck and his dealings with the Indianer is apocryphal. But the visible facts are tenable. There is the great villa, high up on the crest of the Enge, and the smaller villas, with their renting capacity and income, and there was the Asyl too.
17In the German edition of the Wagner-Wesendonck correspondence (Berlin) there is an illustration of the Villa with the Asyl down on the side of the hill, but this little building was razed years ago, and its past location will soon become questionable. After Wagner's admission into the circle of the Wesendoncks, Frau Wesendonck (why call her Frau? She was no Frau, she was Madame), Madame Wesendonck had him and Minna transplanted from the distant Escher house into the Asyl, which was properly furnished for all practical purposes, and, leaving aside a room where the tutor of the Wesendonck children gave them their lessons, was occupied by the Wagners, Minna doing the cooking and laundry work and settling down to the routine life of a faithful Frau (you observe why it would not be consistent to call Madame Wesendonck a Frau), and giving her husband the chance finally to carry out his high purpose of creating
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