My Life by Richard Wagner (ebook reader TXT) 📕

who was now solely concerned for my personal safety, called in a friend who had some experience of law, to consider what should be done to rescue me from the danger that threatened me. Von Watzdorf, the minister whom I had already visited, had been of opinion that I should, if required, submit quietly to being taken to Dresden, and that the journey would be made in a respectable private carriage. On the other hand, reports which had reached us of the brutal way in which the Prussian troops in Dresden had gone to work in applying the state of siege were of so alarming a nature that Liszt and his friends in council urged my speedy departure from Weimar, where it would be impossible to protect me. But I insisted on taking leave of my wife, whose anxiety was great, before leaving Germany, and begged to be allowed to stay a little longer at least in the neighbourhood of Weimar. This was taken into consideration, and Professor Siebert suggested my taking temporary shelter with a friendly steward at the village of Magdala, which was three hours distant. I drove there the following morning to introduce myself to this kind steward and protector as Professor Werder from Berlin, who, with a letter of recommendation from Professor Siebert, had come to turn his financial studies to practical account in helping to administer these estates. Here in rural seclusion I spent three days, entertainment of a peculiar nature being provided by the meeting of a popular assembly, which consisted of the remainder of the contingent of revolutionaries which had marched off towards Dresden and had now returned in disorder. I listened with curious feelings, amounting almost to contempt, to the speeches on this occasion, which were of every kind and description. On the second day of my stay my host's wife came back from Weimar (where it was market-day) full of a curious tale: the composer of an opera which was being performed there on that very day had been obliged to leave Weimar suddenly because the warrant for his arrest had arrived from Dresden. My host, who had been let into my secret by Professor Seibert, asked playfully what his name was. As his wife did not seem to know, he came to her assistance with the suggestion that perhaps it was Rockel whose name was familiar at Weimar.

'Yes,' she said, 'Rockel, that was his name, quite right.'

My host laughed loudly, and said that he would not be so stupid as to let them catch him, in spite of his opera.

At last, on 22nd May, my birthday, Minna actually arrived at Magdala. She had hastened to Weimar on receiving my letter, and had proceeded from there according to instructions, bent on persuading me at all costs to flee the country immediately and for good. No attempt to raise her to the level of my own mood was successful; she persisted in regarding me as an ill-advised, inconsiderate person who had plunged both himself and her into the most terrible situation. It had been arranged that I should meet her the next evening in the house of Professor Wolff at Jena to take a last farewell. She was to go by way of Weimar, while I took the footpath from Magdala. I started accordingly on my walk of about six hours, and came over the plateau into the little university town (which now received me hospitably for the first time) at sunset. I found my wife again at the house of Professor Wolff, who, thanks to Liszt, was already my friend, and with the addition of a certain Professor Widmann another conference was held on the subject of my further escape. A writ was actually out against me for being strongly suspected of participation in the Dresden rising, and I could not under any circumstances depend on a safe refuge in any of the German federal states. Liszt insisted on my going to Paris, where I could find a new field for my work, while Widmann advised me not to go by the direct route through Frankfort and Baden, as the rising was still in full swing there, and the police would certainly exercise praiseworthy vigilance over incoming travellers with suspicious-looking passports. The way through Bavaria would be the safest, as all was quiet there again; I could then make for Switzerland, and the journey to Paris from there could be engineered without any danger. As I needed a passport for the journey, Professor Widmann offered me his own, which had been issued at Tubingen and had not been brought up to date. My wife was quite in despair, and the parting from her caused me real pain. I set off in the mail-coach and travelled, without further hindrance, through many towns (amongst them Rudolstadt, a place full of memories for me) to the Bavarian frontier. From there I continued my journey by mail-coach straight to Lindau. At the gates I, together with the other passengers, was asked for my passport. I passed the night in a state of strange, feverish excitement, which lasted until the departure of the steamer on Lake Constance early in the morning. My mind was full of the Swabian dialect, as spoken by Professor Widmann, with whose passport I was travelling. I pictured to myself my dealings with the Bavarian police should I have to converse with them in accordance with the above-mentioned irregularities in that document. A prey to feverish unrest, I spent the whole night trying to perfect myself in the Swabian dialect, but, as I was amused to find, without the smallest success. I had braced myself to meet the crucial moment early the next morning, when the policeman came into my room and, not knowing to whom the passports belonged, gave me three at random to choose from. With joy in my heart I seized my own, and dismissed the dreaded messenger in the most friendly way. Once on board the steamer I realised with true satisfaction that I had now stepped on to Swiss territory. It was a lovely spring morning; across the broad lake I could gaze at the Alpine landscape as it spread itself before my eyes. When I stepped on to Republican soil at Rorschach, I employed the first moments in writing a few lines home to tell of my safe arrival in Switzerland and my deliverance from all danger. The coach drive through the pleasant country of St. Gall to Zurich cheered me up wonderfully, and when I drove down from Oberstrass into Zurich that evening, the last day in May, at six o'clock, and saw for the first time the Glarner Alps that encircle the lake gleaming in the sunset, I at once resolved, though without being fully conscious of it, to avoid everything that could prevent my settling here.

I had been the more willing to accept my friends' suggestion to take the Swiss route to Paris, as I knew I should find an old acquaintance, Alexander Muller, at Zurich. I hoped with his help to obtain a passport to France, as I was anxious not to arrive there as a political refugee. I had been on very friendly terms with Muller once upon a time at Wurzburg. He had been settled at Zurich for a long time as a teacher of music; this I learned from a pupil of his, Wilhelm Baumgartner, who had called on me in Dresden some years back to bring me a greeting from this old friend. On that occasion I entrusted the pupil with a copy of the score of Tannhauser for his master, by way of remembrance, and this kind attention had not fallen on barren soil: Muller and Baumgartner, whom I visited forthwith, introduced me at once to Jacob Sulzer and Franz Hagenbuch, two cantonal secretaries who were the most likely, among all their good friends, to compass the immediate fulfilment of my desire. These two people, who had been joined by a few intimates, received me with such respectful curiosity and sympathy that I felt at home with them at once. The great assurance and moderation with which they commented on the persecutions which had overtaken me, as seen from their usual simple republican standpoint, opened to me a conception of civil life which seemed to lift me to an entirely new sphere. I felt so safe and protected here, whereas in my own country I had, without quite realising it, come to be considered a criminal owing to the peculiar connection between my disgust at the public attitude towards art and the general political disturbances. To prepossess the two secretaries entirely in my favour (one of them, Sulzer, had enjoyed an excellent classical education), my friends arranged a meeting one evening at which I was to read my poem on the Death of Siegfried. I am prepared to swear that I never had more attentive listeners, among men, than on that evening. The immediate effect of my success was the drawing up of a fully valid federal passport for the poor German under warrant of arrest, armed with which I started gaily on my journey to Paris after quite a short stay at Zurich. From Strassburg, where I was enthralled by the fascination of the world-famous minster, I travelled towards Paris by what was then the best means of locomotion, the so-called malle-poste. I remember a remarkable phenomenon in connection with this conveyance. Till then the noise of the cannonade and musketry in the fighting at Dresden had been persistently re-echoing in my ears, especially in a half-waking condition; now the humming of the wheels, as we rolled rapidly along the highroad, cast such a spell upon me that for the whole of the journey I seemed to hear the melody of Freude, schoner Gotterfunken [Footnote: See note on page 486.] from the Ninth Symphony being played, as it were, on deep bass instruments.

From the time of my entering Switzerland till my arrival in Paris my spirits, which had sunk into a dreamlike apathy, rose gradually to a level of freedom and comfort that I had never enjoyed before. I felt like a bird in the air whose destiny is not to founder in a morass; but soon after my arrival in Paris, in the first week of June, a very palpable reaction set in. I had had an introduction from Liszt to his former secretary Belloni, who felt it his duty, in loyalty to the instructions received, to put me into communication with a literary man, a certain Gustave Vaisse, with the object of being commissioned to write an opera libretto for production in Paris. I did not, however, make the personal acquaintance of Vaisse. The idea did not please me, and I found sufficient excuse for warding off the negotiations by saying I was afraid of the epidemic of cholera which was said to be raging in the city. I was staying in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette for the sake of being near Belloni. Through this street funeral processions, announced by the muffled drum boats of the National Guard, passed practically every hour. Though the heat was stifling, I was strictly forbidden to touch water, and was advised to exercise the greatest precaution with regard to diet in every respect. Besides this weight of uneasiness on my spirits, the whole outward aspect of Paris, as it then appeared, had the most depressing effect on me. The motto, liberte, egalite, fraternite was still to be seen on all the public buildings and other establishments, but, on the other hand, I was alarmed at seeing the first garcons caissiers making their way from the bank with their long money-sacks over their shoulders and their large portfolios in their hands. I had never met them so frequently as now, just when the old capitalist regime, after its triumphant struggle against the once dreaded socialist propaganda, was