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