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It has nothing in common with the old style of lyric entertainment. As Hueffer says, in his recent Life of Wagner: "Here is heard for the first time the unimpaired language of dramatic passion intensified by an uninterrupted flow of expressive melody.
In spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated.
Hueffer, in his biographical sketch of Wagner, says that he hesitated between the historical and mythical principles as the subjects of his work, Frederick the First representing the former, and Siegfried, the hero of Teutonic mythology, the latter. Siegfried was finally selected.
Of primary value are Napoleon's "Correspondance," official edition, and the unofficial edited by Beauvais. Hueffer: Ungedruckte Briefe Napoleon's in the Archiv für Oest. Geschichte, Vol. XLIX. Of value are also the memoirs of Marmont, Masséna, and Desgenettes, of Landrieux in Revue du Cercle Militaire, 1887.
His music has made steady progress through the efforts of such advocates as Liszt, Von Bülow, and Richter in Germany, Pasdeloup in France, Hueffer in England, and Theodore Thomas in the United States. In 1870 he married Frau Cosima von Bülow, the daughter of Liszt, an event which provoked almost as much comment in social circles as his operas have in musical.
In his Memories and Impressions Ford Madox Hueffer relates that Madox Brown, going to a tea-party at the White House at Chelsea, was met in the hall by Mrs. Whistler, who begged him to go to the poulterer's and purchase a pound of butter. The bread was cut, but there was nothing in the house to put upon it. There was no money in the house, the poulterer had cut off his credit, and Mrs.
He is unquestionably a virtuoso: he uses his genius as an instrument upon which he loves to reveal his dexterity, even when he is shy of revealing his immortal soul. But he is not so inhuman in his art as some of his admirers have held him to be. Mr. Hueffer, I think, has described him as pitiless, and even cruel. But can one call Daisy Miller pitiless? Or What Maisie Knew?
Shorter American and English books on Wagner have been written by Kobbé, Krehbiel, Henderson, Hueffer, Newman, &c. Of French writers Lavignac, Jullien, Mendès, Servières, Schuré, may be mentioned. Of great value are Kufferath's monographs on the Wagner operas and Liszt's analyses.
There is many a man of undoubted courage whose nerve would fail to bear that strain. A day or two ago I was reading Romance, by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer. It is a glorious tale of piracy and adventure in the West Indies; but for the moment I wondered how it came about that Conrad, the master of psychology, should have helped to write such a book. And then I understood.
And yet, in the face of such a directory of desire, you'll find Von Seyfried and Haslinger venturing the statement, that "Beethoven was never married, and, what was more marvellous still, never had any love passages in his life," while Francis Hueffer can speak of "his grand, chaste way." On this latter point there is room for debate.
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