My Life, vol 1 | Page 5

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