“Yet I must frankly confess that the freedom which I here inhale in fresh Alpine draughts is intensely pleasing to me.  What is the ordinary care about the so-called future of citizen life compared with the feeling that we are not tyrannized over in our noblest aims?  How few men care more for themselves than for their stomachs?  Now I have made my choice, and am spared the trouble of choosing; so I feel free in my innermost soul, and can despise what torments me from without; no one can withdraw himself from the evil influences of the civilized barbarism of our time, but all can so manage that they do not rule over our better self.”

We may as well note one point at once.  When Thoreau, Carlyle and Brahms went into their respective wildernesses, they maintained themselves, as they thought merely proper.  In this respect Wagner’s views did not coincide with theirs.  He exclaims scornfully, “How few men care more for themselves than for their stomachs!” What he meant was that he should care for himself while his friends cared for his stomach.  As he cared a very great deal for his stomach, his demands upon his friends were exorbitant and continuous.  True, he offered the fruits of his brain to the world at large, but all save the faithful liked not the security.  The creator of Lohengrin and Tannhaeuser was quite justified in believing that he ought to be supported, and it may be that the respect we pay to the artists who starve it out is only a complacent way of saying how pleased we are that no one asks us to put our hands in our pockets.  Nevertheless—!

We must remember, however, that he had no money and no prospects, and carried the burden of gigantic unfinished, un-begun projects; his worldly situation was even more desperate than it had been in 1839.  The voyage from Pillau was a voyage into the unknown, undertaken in the hope of securing something tangible—­a performance of Rienzi and fame and money; the voyage on which he had set out was into an even stranger unknown, a voyage into the world of ideas, without any prospects whatever in the worldly sense.  He was groping his way confusedly towards something greater than he had hitherto accomplished; but he knew neither what subject to select nor how to treat it.  Nature had laid this burden upon him:  he took it up only because he must; and, luckily for us, the giver of the burden had granted him the arrogance, the courage, the imperviousness to the estimation in which he might be held by others—­if the reader likes it better, the sheer cheek—­to find the means of living while he carried the burden to the appointed place and so achieved his end.  When John the Baptist went into the wilderness he found camel’s hair to clothe himself and wild honey to feed himself.  Even these primitive luxuries are not to be had for looking in modern Europe, and Wagner asked his friends to supply a substitute for them.