The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎614r] (118/239)

RICHARD AND MINNA WAGNER.
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learns to rue the consequences. Which brings us to our principal
document : —
“ Biebrich (on Rhine),
“ March Mh , 1862.
“ My good Cornelius,
“ I am most unhappy, and dying to tell my woes to some
body ! But I can appeal to no feminine heart, as I should only
give it more regret for its own helplessness, than comfort to
myself. Indeed it is the hardest load to bear, to feel oneself so
solitary in all one’s grief and anguish, to have to make the best
of everything alone. Then it struck me as a dispensation of
Heaven, that I had found yourself! You’ll understand me; to
you I can commit a portion of my heartache.
“Dear friend, there’s no more doubt of it; it is impossible for
me to live with my wife any more ! You will scarcely credit all
I say in those few words. My heart is bleeding, and yet I re
cognise that I must fight down all soft-heartedness by force, since
firmness and frankness are the only rescue.
“ You know how I was longing for a regulated home again, and
how I fancied I could gain it only by reunion with my wife. Well,
while I was sadly trying to instal myself in winter quarters here
at Biebrich, my wife, appealed to by my want, suddenly makes up
her mind to follow in your footsteps, in a sense; instead of
answering me by letter, she appears in my chambers here herself,
just as I had finished my provisional shake-down. My heart went
out to her, and my great emotion and delight should easily have
shown her how things stand with me. I reproached her for not
having come with her parrot to stop, instead of merely running
over for a week to help me furnish ; and so we fell discussing a
definitive abode at Wiesbaden. She was looking hale and hearty ;
which assured me how she invariably recovers when alone, left
to her own likings as to company and mode of life, without inter
ference through me. At once I began devising all kinds of
common-sense arrangements and concessions to pave a lastingly
endurable companionship, despite the diametric opposition of our
tastes, our characters, and modes of viewing things. Certainly
the terrible fatality that we have no young folk to stand as link
between us, and, confined to our own company through my fond
ness for seclusion, we are necessarily exposed to constant friction
—all this was brought back to my feeling the very first day ; still,
my good will w T as such that I gladly resumed toward her that
peculiarly affected mode of speech one uses to a child, and listened
wdth apparent interest to things quite off my plane and often most
distasteful to me. That dread peculiar to a conscience which will
not palter with untruths I did my utmost to repress, and went to