And still he could not tear himself away from Paris. The city and people fascinated him then and at all times, and he returned, in the early part of 1850, to make another effort in the cause of art. Though his invectives were frequent and bitter, yet I have seen enough, and know enough, of the inner Wagner, to state positively that he highly esteemed the French intellect and judgment in matters of art. This is one of those curious paradoxes in Richard Wagner’s character. He could never refer to the French without some sarcastic allusion to their frivolity. At all times Wagner was “terribly in earnest,” and he almost took it as a personal insult to see the French full of sensuous enjoyment, and regarding art as a pleasant, agreeable relaxation, at the end of the day’s labour. And yet he strove to succeed there for all that; even in 1860, when he was again in Paris, his feelings were precisely the same. Writing on this point, some sixteen years later, he says: “I thought that it was there (_i.e._ Paris) only that I could find the atmosphere so necessary to the success of my art,[6] that element of which I so much stood in need.”
His success in 1849-50, however, was no more than it had been hitherto. His vanity was piqued at his reception. He visited old acquaintances, and was received with a patronizing friendship, as one who had come to Paris, an aspirant for fame. They would not see in him the “Tannhäuser” composer, the prophet who had come to baptize them with the pure, holy water of the true in art. His pride was wounded.
He was envious, too, of that smooth, highly polished gracefulness which the French possess in the small matters of every-day life, and which he was conscious he lacked. Though refined in intellect, courteous in bearing, carrying himself with majestic dignity when occasion demanded, yet Richard Wagner’s natural characteristic was a plainness and directness of speech, which often took the form of abruptness. “Amiability usually runs into insincerity,” says Mr. Froude, when describing Carlyle’s character in the “Reminiscences,” and Wagner was at all times sincere. Sensitive, too, as artists commonly are, he saw the Parisians resolving life and art into a pastime, and doing it with an elegant, natural gracefulness that was absent in his own serious utterances of the heart. Impatient of incapacity, blunt in speech, and vehement in declamation, even with bursts of occasional rudeness, he was angered and jealous, that a people--his intellectual inferior--should take life so easily.