Note 106 — Chapter I · THE MAN

The Laussot story as told in Mein Leben is another instance of the damage Wagner has done his own case by voluntarily going into the witness box to give evidence on his own behalf. The older biographers apparently know nothing of the Laussot affair. There is not a word of it even in the latest Glasenapp biography, though it is hard to believe that Glasenapp had never heard of it. (His work as a whole, with its copiousness and its general accuracy as to facts, suggests access to Mein Leben before publication of the latter.) Reading his account of the Paris-Zürich excursion of 1850, indeed, in the light of our present knowledge, it is hard to resist the conclusion that he knows more than he is telling.

It is interesting to recall the fact that Ferdinand Praeger, whose Wagner as I Knew Him is anathema to the Wagnerians—and to some extent rightly so—has a story that is evidently a muddled version of the Laussot affair. "At Bordeaux," says Praeger, "an episode occurred similar to one which happened later at Zürich [Frau Wesendonck?], about which the press of the day made a good deal of unnecessary commotion and ungenerous comment. I mention the incident to show the man as he was. The opposition have not spared his failings, and over the Zürich incident were hypercritically censorious. The Bordeaux story I am alluding to is, that the wife of a friend, Mrs. H——, having followed Wagner to the south, called on him at his hotel, and throwing herself at his feet, passionately told of her affection. Wagner's action in the matter was to telegraph to the husband to come and take his wife home. On telling me the story, Wagner jocosely remarked that poor Beethoven, so full of love, never had his affection returned, and lived and died, so it is said, a hermit" (p. 196).

There is plainly an enormous admixture of fiction here; but equally plainly the basis of the story is the Laussot episode. Had there really been an affair of the kind narrated by Praeger, in which Wagner had shone so brilliantly, we may be sure we should have been told all about it in Mein Leben. It looks as if Wagner had been indiscreetly confidential to Praeger, and had told the story with embellishments, or that Praeger had heard it from another source—perhaps someone in Minna's entourage—and the story had been decorated and transformed in its transit from one mouth to another. The novellettish touch about telegraphing for the husband, however, is more likely to have come from the Wagnerian side than from that of the "opposition." Whatever may be the explanation, however, the fact remains that Praeger, whom it has become the fashion to despise as a mere Munchausen, did actually know of a "Bordeaux episode" of some sort; and that though he had hold of the wrong end of the stick, that there was a stick of some sort has now been proved by Wagner himself.