New-York tribune., 1905-06-10

lam Ashton Ellis. svo. pp xii. Ss6 lmpofteo
hv Charles Scribner's Sons.
Prefxed TO this volume there is portrait oi
as heroine. painted in 1860 Mathilde Wesen-
doack was then in her thirty-secono yeai' any,
n we may Judge from Dorner's painting an az
..,,o ,-or,ne roatron with regular features, IN
,,,,d;rr q sensitive mouth and brow sussest
,,g tbouehtful disposition. When sae hrs'
mot Richard Wagner eight years before inns
no-trait was painted. she was not improoa0is
even more engaging in appearance AZ az
events it did not take him very long to discover
that he enjoyed being in her company ne Was
always on his own confession very sympathetic
in his attitude toward women. and In TINS case
1he fact that he had a wife did not prevent ms
falling in love. On the contrary, the vasarieS OF
lis Mirna. as he considered them, only threw
him back with redoubled force upon the Weseh-
do,iclxs society," with the result that Tristan
and Isolde" is to-day regarded as the outcome OF
their passion a monument TO more of those
rorances of which we have heard only TOO
much in the history of human genius KIND
of pendant TO Wagner's great composition is
embodied in the collection of letters which ne
1xrote to Frau Wesendonck, a collection which
Mr. Ellis. well known for his dealings with the
tioersnhy of his hero has translated and edited
with pious care
The book is worth having, but we wish that
Mr. Elliss pety had not gone so near to syco-
infancy. These letters are to be approached in
q critical spirit Are they the souvenirs OF a
vulgar intrigue or DO they commemorate q
friendship purely platonic and discreditable TO
neither of the individuals involved? Was Wag-
rer justified or not in his treatment Of his wife
during the period of his relations with Frau
wesendonck? Was the latter fitted TO be the
Eeeria of Of genius, or was she merely d
clever seutimentalist, who knew enough to listen
when Wagner had to talk his heart out or De
miserable? All these questions. and others no
less important, have to be answered; but the
reader who takes his from Mr.. Ellis Will
never get to the root of the matter. He seems
to have read Wagners letters TO Mathilde Wes-
endoncB on his knees. If we adopt his opinion
we viii grant that Wagner had a right to some
,xoman's sympathy he had a right to pure
air: that MathiIde was only fulfilling lofty
destiny in giving It to him; that Otto Wesen-
donck ought to have thanked his stars for the
privilege OF having a wife to throw in the COM
poser's path, and that Minna Wagner was an
odious person, whose resentment of her hus-
bands phiIandering contemplate, if not
criminal. It is true that Mr.. Ellis takes a line
laid down by the great man himself In long
letter TO his sister, written in 1858, Wagner ex-
plains the situation between himself, his wife
and Mathilde in sentences like these:
Since the very commencement of our acQuaint-
ance she IMathdel has felt the most unfagglns
her husband in the most courageous fashion what
ever might elevate my life For his part IN view view
natural that he should fall into increasing ieal-
oSsy but her b has nfomed about
her heart, she gradually attuned him even to the
its achievement possible to her could only be the
depth and IN he OF eh hsf gave her
TO shew herself to her husband as OF suSh @ ai
he needs must abstain from her and prove his his
love even T & Dg II becams matter Of
retaining the mother OF MS children ana Tor their f
superably-he accepted his re1unciant position
assume Minna TO be sensible enough to com
prehend that there strictly nothing here for
her to dea since an aanfe nd fSarefore hfh that for
bearance her best and most advisable re
she went across Behind my back and
dodbtess SIS without reslislng i herself 3ffrontsd
then had the dSeaey 6 and RaIbe eI been INVADED
e. eSse oSs OF ana giga& @% WaW and many thing
portunIty Of shelving herself more worthy to be
wife of mine than now when it involved the
preservation to me Of the highest and oeareSI: y
me: but she does not even understand what such
She really is unfortunate:. she would have
been happier with a lesser man
No doubt Richard and Minna Wagner were i'll
matched. But Mr.. Ellis whems the whole sub
ject in bathos by glowing Wagner and
Mathilde and pursuing Minna with relentless
scorn. How far he goes in his blackening of
the first Frau Wagner's character is shown by
his treatment of triiing but not negligible
incident In the ''yaledictory'' which he prints
at the back of the book he speaks of Minna's
,'Iaudanuming Mathilde's living present, fps
a doing TO death so plainly hinted page 273'
We turn to the page indicated and find Wagner
writing from Paris: AT the last there even
died the little dog that you once sent me from
your sickbed: mysteriously suddenly! It is
presumed he had been struck by cartwheel i'll
the street, injuring of the little pets inter
nal organs" What hint is there of poison here?
Mr.. Ellis tries TO justify his insinuaton in a foot
note, but the attempt is lame. After this We
may safely treat his campaign against Minna
with The contempt it deserves, and look simply
TO the documents in the case for the facts about
Wagner, his wife and Mathilde. He had made
bad marriage. that is beyond question. Minna
had faults quite apart from her ina bity to play
UP TO the level of her husbands genius-which
was not fault but misfortune. Mathilde
Wesendonck was not an inspired sibyl but she
was fair TO look upon, accomplished, and she
was in love with Wagner the musician much
as with Wagner the man. Was there in their in
tercourse any infraction of the moral law in its
most obvious aspect? So far as the testimony
OF this correspondence goes, there nothing
Of the sort But that. in sense, is beside the
point The main thing is that Wagner loved
another mans wife while his own wife was liv-
ing; that he fingered on IN her neighborhood
and accepted benefits from her husband where
any man with true feeling for the point of
honor would have irrevocably cut himself off
from everybody and every thing concerned in the
episode; and that even when Minna's explosion
made removal imperative, he continued to nour