Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14 | Page 7

into trouble, and his financial straits became such that, relying on his future ability to meet his obligations, he resolved to leave that part of the world altogether and seek his fortune in Paris. He knew that the Prussian Meyerbeer had won fame and fortune there,--why should not he have the same good luck? He had unbounded confidence in his own ability, and what increased his hopes of a Parisian success, was that he had already completed two acts of a grand historic opera, "Rienzi," based on Bulwer's novel, and written in the sensational and spectacular style of Meyerbeer. He supposed that all he had to do was to go to Paris, finish this opera, get it accepted through the influence of his countryman and colleague, Meyerbeer, and--wake up some morning famous and wealthy. He was not the first man who built castles in Spain.
To-day a trip from Riga to Paris is a very simple affair. You get into a train, and in about twenty-four hours are at your goal. In 1839 there were no such conveniences. Wagner had to go to the Prussian seaport of Pillau, and there board a sailing vessel which took him to London in three weeks and a half. His journey, however, was a much more romantic affair than a railway trip would have been. In the first place, it was a real flight--from his creditors whom he had to evade. Next he had to dodge the Russian sentries, whose boxes were placed on the boundary line only a thousand yards apart. A friend discovered a way of accomplishing this feat, and Wagner presently found himself on the ship, with his wife and his enormous Newfoundland dog. In his trunk he had what he hoped would help him to begin a brilliant career in Paris: one opera completed,--"The Novice of Palermo;" two acts of another,--"Rienzi;" and in his head he had the plot and some of the musical themes for a third,--"The Flying Dutchman."
The sea voyage came just in time to give him local color for this weird nautical opera. Three times the vessel was tossed by violent storms, and once the captain was obliged to seek safety in a Norwegian harbor. The sailors told Wagner their version of the "Flying Dutchman" legend, and altogether these adventures were the very thing he wanted at the time, and aided him in making his opera realistic, both in its text and its music, which imitates the howling of the storm winds and "smells of the salt breezes."
So for once our young musician had a streak of luck. But it did not last long. He found Paris a very large city, and with very little use for him. He made the most diverse efforts to support himself, nearly always without success. Once it seemed as if his hopes were to be fulfilled. The Th��atre de la Renaissance accepted his "Novice of Palermo;" but at the last moment there was the usual bankruptcy of the management,--the fourth that affected him! Then he wrote a Parisian Vaudeville, but it had to be given up because the actors declared it could not be executed. The Grand Opera, on which he had fixed his eye, was absolutely out of the question. He was brought to such straits that he offered to sing in the chorus of a small Boulevard theatre, but was rejected. His wife pawned her jewels; on several occasions it is said that she even went into the street to beg a few pennies for their supper. It was doubtless during these years of starvation that Wagner acquired those gastric troubles which in later years often prevented him from working more than an hour or two a day.
A few German friends occasionally gave a little pecuniary aid, but the only regular source of income was musical hackwork for the publisher Schlesinger, who gladly availed himself of Wagner's skill in having him make vocal scores of operas, or arrange popular melodies for the piano and other instruments. Wagner also wrote stories and essays for musical periodicals, for which he received fair remuneration; but his attempt to compose romances and become a parlor favorite failed. Nobody wanted his songs, and he finally offered them to the editor of a periodical in Germany for two dollars and a half to four dollars apiece. This may seem ludicrously pathetic; but then had not poor Schubert, a little more than a decade before this, sold much better songs for twenty cents each!
Meyerbeer no doubt aided Wagner, but considering his very great influence in Paris, he achieved surprisingly little for him. The score of "Rienzi" had been completed in 1840, and in the spring of the next year, Wagner went to Meudon, near Paris, and there composed the music of "The Flying Dutchman," in seven weeks,