When the public remained indifferent to one of his works and critics reviled it, Wagner’s usual method of reply was to produce something still more advanced.  Thus, when “Tannhaeuser” proved caviar to the public, and seemed to affect the critics like a red rag waved before a bull, he promptly sat down and wrote and composed “Lohengrin.”  But how should he, an exile, secure its production?  There it lay a mute score.  As he turned its pages, the notes looked out at him appealingly for a hearing.  It was like a homesick child asking for its own.  What did Wagner do?  He wrote a few lines to Liszt.  The answer was not long in coming.  Liszt was already making the necessary arrangements to accede to Wagner’s request and produce “Lohengrin” in Weimar, where he was musical director.  Liszt’s name gave great eclat to the undertaking; and through the acclaim which, with the aid of his pupils and admirers, he understood so well how to create, it attracted widespread attention, musicians from far and near in Germany coming to hear it.  Of course, opinions on the work were divided, but the band of Wagner enthusiasts received accessions, and the interest in the production had been too intense not to leave an impression.  The performance was, in fact, epoch-making.  It raised a “Wagner question” which would not down; which kept at least his earlier works before the public; and which made him, even while still a fugitive from Germany, and an exile, a prominent figure in the musical circles of the country that refused him the right to cross its borders.

All this was done by Liszt.  Next to Wagner’s own genius, which would eventually have fought its way into the open, the influence that first brought Wagner some degree of recognition was Franz Liszt.  His assistance to Wagner at this stage in that composer’s career cannot be overestimated.  He was his tonic in despair, his solace in his darkest hours.  Few men appear in a nobler role than Liszt in his correspondence with Wagner during this period.  Is it not marvellous that some twenty years later, at another crisis in Wagner’s life, another being came to his aid and became to him as a haven of rest; and that that being should have been none other than the daughter of his earlier benefactor, Franz Liszt?  Fate often is cruel and often unaccountable, but in this instance it seems to have acted the role of Cupid with an exquisite sense of what was appropriate, and to have set the crowning glory of a great woman’s love upon Wagner’s career.

When Liszt was producing “Lohengrin,” aiding Wagner pecuniarily, and cheering him in his exile, Cosima Liszt was a young girl in Paris, where she, her elder sister Blandine (afterward the wife of Emile Ollivier, who became the war minister of Napoleon the Third) and her brother Daniel lived with Liszt’s mother.  It was in Mme. Liszt’s house that Wagner first met her.  He had gone to Paris in hopes of furthering his cause there.