strong was his feeling that it contained disastrous news.  When at length he found courage to rip the envelope, the news was of the best.  If, by chance, either of these presentiments had proved true, who would have been satisfied with the explanation of mere coincidence?  The value, however, of Wagner’s presentiment lies in the fact that, in spite of his despairful misgivings, he persevered in his ideals, and, if there has been never so great a triumph granted a musician, it is perhaps largely because no other musician so relentlessly worshipped his artistic ideals or sacrificed to them with such Druidic ruthlessness.

Carl Maria von Weber paid great heed to his wife’s artistic advice, and called her his “gallery.”  But there are wives and wives, and however deeply our humanity may sympathise with poor Minna Planer, our love for evolution can only rejoice that she was not permitted to tie her husband down to the narrow-souled ideals of the good-hearted, stupid little housewife she was.  Wagner understood her far better than she understood him.  He sympathised with her even in her resistance to his career.  To the last it made him indignant to hear her spoken of slightingly.

Wagner’s appeals for money to his friends, who supported him in his moneyless art, are constantly mingled with tender allusions to Minna.  When he would borrow Liszt’s last penny, he usually wanted a large part of it for Minna.  I do not find him convicted of ever using rough language to her.  She was not so patient.  Wagner’s friend, Roeckel, wrote to Praeger in reference to the agony Wagner suffered from the gibes of criticism: 

“I keep it always from him; Minna is not capable of withholding either praise or blame from him, although I have tried hard to prove to her that it deeply affects her husband, whose health is none of the strongest.”

When he was implicated in the revolution of 1849, and was forced to flee for his life, he escaped in the disguise of a coachman, and finally, with Liszt’s ever-ready aid, reached Zurich.  As soon as he found himself there, he borrowed further money from Liszt, to send for Minna, who had remained behind and “suffered a thousand disagreeable things.”

Wagner had been supporting her parents, and he borrowed sixty-two thalers more to help them.  When Minna did not come immediately, Wagner wrote an anxious letter of inquiry to a friend.

Surely, there can be nothing tenderer than his allusion to her in another letter to Liszt: 

“As soon as I have my wife I shall go to work again joyfully.  Restore me to my art!  You shall see that I am attached to no home, but I cling to this poor, good, faithful woman, for whom I have provided little but grief, who is serious, solicitous, and without expectation, and who nevertheless feels eternally chained to this unruly devil that I am.  Restore her to me!  Thus will you do me all the good that you could ever wish me; and see, for this I shall be grateful to you! yes, grateful!...  See that she is made happy and can soon return to me! which, alas! in our sweet nineteenth-century language, means, send her as much money as you possibly can!  Yes, that is the kind of a man I am!  I can beg, I could steal, to make my wife happy, if only for a short time.  You dear, good Liszt! do see what you can do!  Help me!  Help me, dear Liszt!”