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Updated: June 18, 2025
The daughter of Liszt, the bride of Von Bülow, being conducted on her honeymoon to the very lair of the great composer for whom she was, within a few years, to leave her husband! What wonderful musical links destiny wove in the life of this woman who herself was not a musician! Hans and Cosima arrived at Zurich early in September.
They are commonly distinctly mannish, and shave as well as shine. Think of George Sand, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth of England, Rosa Bonheur, Teresa Carreo or Cosima Wagner. The truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour.
All the singers and a few other guests had been seated, and Liszt, Frau Cosima and Siegfried Wagner were in their places when the door opened and in shot Wagner. It was as well calculated as the entrance of the star in a play. On his way to his seat he stopped and chatted a few moments with this one and that one.
If you knew Cosima, you would agree with me when I conclude that this young pair is wonderfully well mated. With all their great intelligence and real artistic sympathy, there is something so light and buoyant in the two young people that one was obliged to feel perfectly at home with them."
At Zurich Wagner was occupied with a multiplicity of other pamphlets, with conducting concerts, with his librettos, and so on. Hans von Bülow came to him as a pupil, and proved a devoted friend, afterwards letting him take his wife, Cosima, of whom he, Bülow, it is true, stood in no particular need. Wagner had sent the score of Lohengrin to Liszt, and it was produced at Weimar in 1850.
But I felt myself suddenly transported when I discovered Cosima sitting in a corner of the hall, in deep mourning and very pale, but smiling cheerfully at me. She had returned shortly before from Paris where her grandmother now lay hopelessly bedridden filled with grief at the inexplicably sudden death of her sister, and she now seemed, even to my eyes, to be leaving another world to approach me.
Instead of Wagner sitting at the head of the table and his wife at the foot, they sat together in the middle. It seemed impossible for him, though, to remain seated more than a few minutes at a time, and he was jumping up and down and running about the table all through the banquet. On the other side of Wagner sat Liszt; on the other side of Frau Cosima, Siegfried Wagner, then still a boy.
It is evident that two souls so sympathetic could not long remain in proximity without craving a closer union. "Coming events cast their shadows before," remarks one who often was present during the Biebrich visit of the Von Bülows to Wagner. How deeply Cosima sympathized with Wagner's aims even then is shown by another episode of this visit.
In these sketches the vocal part was always written out in full, while the orchestral part was roughly indicated in two or more additional staves. Frau Cosima has preserved most of these sketches, and they will doubtless some day be reproduced in fac-simile, like some of Beethoven's. Whenever Wagner was in the mood for composing he would say to Herr Seidl, "Bring me my sketches."
The assistance of Madame Dorval, added to the strength of the Comédie Française company, did not, however, save from failure Madame Sand's first drama, Cosima, produced, as will be remembered, in 1840. She allowed nearly a decade to elapse before again seriously competing for theatrical honors, by a second effort in a different style, and more satisfactory in its results.
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