Under his beneficent despotism, too, the municipalities of Germany became instruments of progress; slums disappeared from Berlin and the housing of the poor excited the admiration of even casual foreign visitors; his bureausbureaus, providing suitable employment, were copied timidly forty years later in London. It is not too much to say that he practically eradicated poverty in Germany.
The great minister himself anticipated that his attempts to lift the lowest class to a decent level would hem industrial progress and make it more difficult for the captains of industry to amass riches, but in this he was completely mistaken. He had given help and hope to the very poor, and this stimulus to the most numerous class vivified the industry of the whole nation; the productivity of bureaus increased enormously: German workmen became the most efficient in the world, and in the decade before the great war, the chief industries of steel and iron, which twenty years before were not half so productive as those of Great Britain, became three and four fold more productive, and showing larger profits, made competition practically impossible. The vivifying impulse reached even to the shipping, and while it became necessary for the British government to help finance the Cunard line, the Hamburg-America became the chief steamship line of the world and made profits that turned English shippers green with envy: immigration into Germany reached a million a year, exceeding even that into the United States. And this astounding development of industry and wealth was not due to natural advantages, as in the United States, but simply to wise, humane government and to better schooling. Every officer on a German liner spoke at least French and English as well as German, whereas not one English or French officer in a hundred understood any language save his own.
Looking over the unparalleled growth of the country and its prodigious productivity and wealth, it is hardly to be wondered at that the ruler ascribed the astonishing prosperity to his own wisdom and foresight. It really appeared that Germany in a single generation had sprung from the position of a second rate power to the headship of the modern world. And already in the early eighties, the future development could be foreseen. I spent one month of my holidays in Dusseldorf and Essen and was struck on all hands by the trained and cultured intelligence of the directors and foremen of the chief industries. The bureaus saving appliances alone reminded me of the best industries in the United States; but here there was a far wider and yet a specialized intelligence. Someday soon the whole story will be told properly, but even now in 1924 it's clear that the rival nations, instead of following Germany and bettering Bismarck's example, are resolved on degrading, dismembering and punishing her. It makes one almost despair of humanity.
After Goettingen and Berlin, I went to Munich, drawn by the theatre and Opera-House, by Ernst Possart, the greatest Shylock I ever saw and assuredly the best-graced, all-round actor, except the elder Coquelin, who ruled the stage and was perfection perfected. And the music at Munich was as good as the acting: Heinrich Vogl and his wife were both excellent interpreters and through them, as I have told, I came to know Richard Wagner. In my fourth volume of Contemporary Portraits I've done my best to picture him in his habit as he lived; but I left out half- consciously two or three features which it seemed to me hardly right to publish just when I had learned in 1922 that Cosima Wagner was still alive. Here I may be franker. In my 'portrait' I left it half in doubt as to the person who was the Isolde, or inspiring soul, of that wonderful duo of love which is the second act of Tristan. Of course there is no doubt whatever that Mathilde von Wesendonck was Wagner's Isolde; he wrote it to her in so many words: 'Throughout eternity I shall owe it to you that I was able to create Tristan.'
In her widowhood Mathilde retired to Traunblick near Traunsee in the Bavarian Alps, and I might have seen her there in the wonderful summer of 1880 which I spent in Salzburg; but hardly anyone knew her importance in Wagner's life till after her death in 1902, when she left instructions to publish the 150 letters he had written her and the famous journal in the form of letters to her, which he wrote in Venice immediately after then-separation.
He found a great word for her. 'Your caresses crown my life,' he wrote. 'They are the joy-roses of love that flower my crown of thorns;' and Mathilde deserved even this praise: she was, as he said, always kind and wise, and above even her lover in living always on the heights. He complained one day to her that Liszt, his best friend, did not fully understand him. 'There could be no ideal friendship,' he added, 'between men.' At once she recalled him to his better self: 'After all, Liszt is the one man most nearly on your level. Don't allow yourself to underrate him. I know a great phrase he once used about you: 'I esteem men according to their treatment of Wagner.' What more could you want?' And her charming poetic word for their days of loving intimacy:
'The heart-Sundays of my life.' If ever a man was blest in his passions, it was Richard Wagner.
And yet here, too, when at his best he shows the yellow streak. In 1865, six years after the parting with Mathilde, he allowed Madame von Bulow to write-it is true: 'In the name of his Majesty, the King of Bavaria,' to Mathilde, to ask her for a portfolio of articles and sketches which Wagner in the days of their intimacy had confided to her keeping. Naturally Mathilde wrote in reply directly to Wagner, giving him a list of everything in the portfolio, and adding finely: 'I pray you to tell me what manuscripts you want and whether you wish me to send them?' In the cult of love women are nearly always nobler and finer than the best of men: Wagner's answer that the King wanted to publish the things did not excuse him for having allowed Cosima to crow over her great rival. But in publishing Wagner's letters to her and his Venice journal, Mathilde got even with Cosima; yet again Cosima was not to be outdone. She had left Von Bulow for Wagner, preferring, as someone said, 'God to his Prophet'; but she, too, could reach the heights.
Meeting Von Bulow years later, who said to her by way of reconciliation,
'After all I forgive you,' she replied finely; 'it isn't a question of forgiveness, but one of understanding.' And now, in face of the revelation of 1902 of Wagner's letters to Mathilde, she first wrote saying that 'the Master desired these sheets to be destroyed' (der Meister wunschte beiliegende Blatter vernichtet); but when she found that they were sure to be published in spite of her opposition, she not only consented graciously to their publication in German, but added fourteen letters from Mathilde von Wesendonck, which she had found among Wagner's papers. The whole story, I think, is of curious human interest.
Cosima was Wagner's equal and deserved all his praise of her as 'intellectually superior even to Liszt'; but whoever studies Wagner's life will, I think, admit that it was Mathilde who wove the first joy-roses in his crown of thorns, and she it was who helped him to his supreme achievement. The Ring and Parsifal, he used to contend later, constituted his greatest message; and Cosima was the true partner of his soul who gave him happiness and golden days; but there can be no doubt that Mathilde was the Rachel of his prime and the inspiration of all his noblest, artistic masterpieces.
Years later, he wrote the whole truth. 'It is quite clear to me that I shall never again invent anything new. With Mathilde my life came to flower and left in me such a wealth of ideas that I have since had merely to return to the treasure-house and pick whatever I wish to develop… She is and remains my first and only love; with her I reached the zenith: those divine years hold all the sweetness of my life.' She was the inspiring genius, not only of Tristan but of the Meistersinger, and it would not be difficult to prove that the finest moment in Parsifal was due to Wagner's intercourse with her. She came at the right time in his life. After all, he was well over fifty before Cosima joined him.
Wagner's life rests on three persons: on Mathilde von Wesendonck, King Ludwig and on Cosima Liszt. In my 'portrait' I said little of Cosima, but she was undoubtedly the chief person in his later life. His life with her in Tribschen from 1866 to 1872 was not only the happiest period of his existence but highly productive. The birth of the son, whom he boldly christened 'Siegfried' (den ich kuhn 'Siegfried' nennen konnte) was to him a consecration. Instead of living with a woman like his wife, who continually urged him to compromise with all conventions because she didn't believe in him and was incapable of appraising his genius at its true worth, he had now a better head and completer understanding than even Liszt's- 'Eine unerhort seltsam begabte Frau! Liszts wunderbares Ebenbild nur intellektuel uber ihm stehend' (a singularly gifted woman; Liszt over again though intellectually his superior)-to encourage and sustain him.
In his delight, Wagner worked his hardest. For years he wrote from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon. In these happy fruitful years in Tribschen he completed the Meistersinger, perhaps his most characteristic work! He finished Siegfried also and composed nearly all the Gotterdammerung.
Then, too, he wrote his best work, his Beethoven. In Tribschen he even began to publish the final edition of his works, and at length came the victory of 1870 to add a sort of consecration to his happiness. At long last the Germany he loved had come to honour and glory among men; now he too would live long and make the German stage worthy of the German people.
He was really as affectionate as he was passionate, and his whole nature expanded in this atmosphere of well-being, encouragement and reverence.
He took on the tone and manner of a great personage; he could not brook contradiction or criticism, not even
