What, in Wagner’s character at all times, inspires our admiration is his courage. “He never knew when he was beaten.” Weighed down with monetary difficulties,--though his poor means were made rich by the wealth of love and ready invention of Minna, whose patience and self-denial he was always ready to extol,--with a cloudy art horizon, he sought to approach the great public in a more direct manner than by stage representations, by publishing the three operas already composed. It was not a difficult matter; he was a local celebrity, and on the strength of his reputation he entered into an engagement with a Dresden firm, Messrs. Meser and Co. The large initial cost was borne by the firm, but the liability was Wagner’s. Messrs. Meser and Co. predicted a success, and risking nothing, or comparatively nothing, urged the issue of “Rienzi,” “Dutchman,” and “Tannhäuser.” The contract was signed, the works were produced, but alas, the forecast was pleasant to the ear but breaking in the hope. There was absolutely no sale, and claims were soon preferred on the luckless composer for the cost of production. Of course they could not be met. Wagner had no available funds, his income was insufficient for his daily needs, and so he borrowed, borrowed where he could, sufficient to temporarily appease the publishers. This debt, paid by instalments, hung over him as a black cloud for years, always breaking when he was least equal to meet it. How he has stormed at his folly, and regretted his heedlessness of the future, but the demand met, his tribulation was immediately forgotten. A brother of mine, passing through Dresden in 1847, wrote to me of his surprise at the state of Wagner’s finances, and of the sum that was necessary to keep him afloat, which under my direction was immediately supplied.
It was then that Wagner wrote to me: “Try and negotiate for the sale of my opera ‘Tannhäuser’ in London. If there be no possibility of concluding a bargain, and gaining a tangible remuneration for me, arrange that some firm shall take it so as to secure the English copyright.” I went off at once to my friend Frederick Beale, the head of the house Cramer, Beale and Co., now Cramer and Co. Though Frederick Beale was an enthusiast in art, with a sense beyond that of the ordinary speculator in other men’s talent, yet “he could not see his way to publishing ‘Tannhäuser.’” I knew Beale would have done much for me, our relations being of so intimate a character, but the times “were out of joint,” his geniality had just then led him to accept much that proved a financial loss to the firm, and so the work which, as time now shows, would have produced a future, was rejected, yes, rejected, though on behalf of Wagner I offered it _for nothing_. It is the old, old story; Carlyle offering his “Sartor Resartus” for nothing, Schubert his songs, etc., etc., and rejected as valueless by the purblind publisher. The publisher invariably is the man of his period; he is incapable of seeing beyond his age, and thrusts aside the genius who writes for futurity. “Wouldst thou plant for eternity?” asks Carlyle, “then plant into the deep, infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for a year and a day? then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding.”