《我的生平——第一卷》

Small social diversions break up the misery: on New Year’s Eve 1840, his friends throw him a surprise party, Lehrs bringing veal, Kietz rum and lemon, Pecht a goose, Anders two rare bottles of champagne, and they prepare supper together, drink punch, and Wagner gives a fiery speech from the table praising the South American Free States so wild the guests laugh and cry so much they have to stay the night. When the famous violinist Vieux-temps, Kietz’s old schoolfriend, visits, he plays for them the whole evening, and Kietz carries him on his shoulders back to his hotel. A careless mistake with their landlady ruins their last hope to escape the Rue du Helder flat: they give notice to vacate a day too late, and are liable for a full year’s rent, the sick, crippled agent refusing to release them. Easter comes, they cannot pay, so the concierge finds a family to take over their flat and furniture for a few months, covering the rent, and they move to a cheap summer apartment in Meudon on the avenue to Bellevue on April 29, with no idea how they will survive the summer.

The Meudon period offers a brief, precious respite: Brix stays with them because his work receipts are delayed, and Wagner throws himself into Rienzi and Gazette work. His long essay on Weber’s Freischutz, written to prepare for the first performance with Berlioz’s added recitatives, offends Berlioz and the production team for mocking Berlioz’s changes to the opera, but George Sand notices it, citing it in her introduction to a French provincial story as proof the French can understand Freischutz’s mystic elements. He also writes free articles for Dresden theatre secretary Hofrat Winkler’s Abendzeitung in exchange for news about Rienzi’s fate, stringing together gossip from Anders and Lehrs in Heine’s popular style, and sends Winkler the only existing print of his A Pilgrimage to Beethoven story for the paper. Europa editor Lewald commissions him to write humorous Paris impression pieces, paying his first ever composition fee, and Wagner writes Pariser Amusements and Pariser Fatalitäten, venting his contempt for Parisian life and joking about Hermann Pfau, a vagrant former Leipzig acquaintance he helps out with his La Favorita earnings.