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Updated: June 7, 2025
I had previously informed Frau Wesendonck of my situation and the chief source of my trouble, though of course only as one writes to a sympathetic friend; she answered by sending me a small letter- weight of cast-iron which she had bought for me in Venice. It represented the lion of San Marco with his paw on the book, and was intended to admonish me to imitate this lion in all things.
Wesendonck had given me a letter of recommendation to them, so that I should at least have one 'house' to go to in London. I had to travel a full German mile to Camberwell in response to their invitations, only to discover that I had dropped into the very family whose house Mendelssohn had made his home when in London.
In his retreat in Switzerland, the composer longed for sympathetic, intellectual companionship, which, alas, Minna could not give him. He found it in the society of Marie Wesendonck, wife of the kind friend and music lover, who had aided him in many ways. This marked attention to another aroused Minna's jealousy and an open break was imminent. The storm, however, blew over for a time.
And now Minna, whose housewifely meekness had endured the Wesendonck tempest and all the other multitudes of trials Wagner went through, found herself unable to endure his fidelity to his artistic ideals. The quarrels grew fiercer and fiercer, until finally she left Wagner for ever, and went back to her people in Dresden, where she spent the rest of her life.
Inspired by his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner wrote the opera and succeeded in selling the score to Breitkopf & Hartel for the equivalent of $800. Then began the hunt for a theatre in which to give the first representation.
It is not merely passion, nor any conscious skill in the erotic art, important as these may be, that would serve to account for Goethe's relationship to Frau von Stein, or Wagner's to Mathilde Wesendonck, or that of Robert and Elizabeth Browning to each other.
Then he had gone to Venice to continue work on "Tristan," dreaming there in loneliness of his Isolde, the Wesendonck, whose husband has been well likened to King Mark. But Venice being within the sphere of Saxon influence, he was afraid to remain long, for fear of arrest. In 1860 he was granted a partial amnesty, and went to Frankfort to meet his wife, who had been taking treatment near Wiesbaden.
Wesendonck, who always went about armed with huge field-glasses, and was ever ready for sight-seeing, only once took me with him to see the Academy of Arts, a building which on my former visit to Venice I had only known from the outside.
From all sides the friends of my past life gathered together in Paris to be present at the apotheosis of the first performance. Among these were Otto Wesendonck, Ferdinand Prager, the unfortunate Kietz, for whom I had to pay the costs of his journey and of his stay in Paris; luckily M. Chandon from Epernay came, too, with a hamper of 'Fleur du Jardin, the finest of all his champagne brands.
My friend did not shrink from attributing some blame to the relationship between Frau Wesendonck and my wife, and declared that she felt it her mission to conciliate them. She approved my settling down at Penzing, and only hoped that I might not spoil its beneficial effect upon me by distant enterprises.
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