Ted Riccardi - Between the Thames and the Tiber

After this review of the situation, Holmes decided to put the matter out of mind until we had met Wagner and examined him. The train ride was uneventful. We were delayed by snow at the Simplon Pass for several hours, but the engineer easily made up some of the time once we had arrived in the Italian plain. After the stop in Milan, the train proceeded to Venice, where we descended at about nine in the morning. Our only travel companion had been a young Turkish diplomat, who was returning to Istanbul. We bade good-bye to him and alighted from the train.

I at first saw no one in the crowd whom I recognized, but as it thinned out, I saw the unmistakable figure of Frau Cosima Wagner, standing there with her children and a servant, waiting.

“Madame Wagner, I believe? I am John Watson, and this is my colleague, Anthony Hopkins.”

Frau Wagner greeted us in French, and with a smile, extended her hand and proceeded to introduce her children one by one who, each in turn, curtseyed and said in stilted English, “Welcome to Venice and to our house, Dr. John and Dr. Anthony.” To which the young boy, Siegfried, added: “My father could not come. He is composing his music.”

We walked quickly from the station to a waiting phaeton that brought us in minutes to the canal. There we boarded a gondola and began the ride to the great palazzo that served as the Wagner home. Holmes and I immediately abandoned all hope of seeing the Italian sun that day. It was as cold and damp as London, and the mist was impenetrable. We saw little at first, but when we reached the Grand Canal we perceived enough to understand why Venice was justly famous. There, arising like fantasies in the fog, were the bridges, the palazzi, and the churches, as if floating just above the water.

“If Wagner has lived in straitened circumstances in the past,” said Holmes in English, “his present life shows no sign of it.”

The Wagner quarters in the old Venetian palace were sumptuous. We entered a large ornate vestibule and from there the servants led us to our quarters. We rested for a short time, and then, late in the afternoon, summoned by our hosts, we descended the central staircase and entered the large drawing room where tea was served daily to guests and friends. As we entered, Richard Wagner himself sat at the far end of the room, a smile on his face as he talked to his children. As soon as they saw us, they rushed towards us and pulled us to their father.

“Look, Papa, here are our new Englishmen, Herr Doktors John and Anthony.”

“Welcome to our home,” he said. “I trust you have found your quarters to your liking.”

“Indeed, they are splendid and we are most honored to be your guests.”

“Forgive me for not rising, but I have had painful spasms in my legs and elsewhere for the last half hour, and it is difficult for me to stand.”

It was in these very first few moments that Holmes and I independently concluded that Liszt’s intuition had to be taken with the greatest seriousness. Wagner was not in good health, and as we observed him carefully, it appeared quite likely that one of the great composers of the century may have indeed been deliberately poisoned, possibly over many years. It also appeared at first glance that the poison had done by this time a good deal of its work, that in all probability one of the poisons was arsenic, and that he did not have long to live. Even without examining him closely, we judged that there was much damage to the liver and other internal organs, damage that was probably irreversible, and that the only hope was if we could find the source of the poison immediately.

As the evening wore on, I kept on observing him. He was a very short man with a head too large for his body. This disproportion gave him a dwarf-like appearance at times. His hair was thin, his eyes sunken, his skin jaundiced and grey, and his abdomen horribly swollen. He breathed with difficulty, and often closed his eyes and abandoned the conversation.

That evening the many guests eventually left and only Holmes and I and a family friend, one Paul Joukovsky, a painter, remained. Despite the late hour, Wagner’s mood suddenly improved. He rose slowly, and with surprising vigour, walked over to Holmes and, taking his arm for support, led him to the room where the family dined in private.

As they walked, the composer said, in heavily accented French, “I know you and Anthony are here to help us practise our English, but I understand that you are also a physician. I need your medical advice as well, for as you can see, I am very ill, far more ill than I want Cosima to know.”

Holmes told him quietly that we were available to him at any time.

As we entered the dining hall, a servant announced the arrival of Monsieur Liszt, who entered almost immediately. Wagner greeted him with affection but motioned Holmes and me to sit to his left, Joukovsky to his right, and Cosima and the children at the other end. Liszt sat with his daughter. The conversation flowed without cease, and while all tried to speak in English, it was not long before everyone was speaking German, the only language that everyone at the table, including Holmes, shared.

I took careful note of Wagner’s hair, which appeared to be extremely dry and brittle. His skin was grey, his eyes dilated, and there was a thin black line that ran around his lips.

Holmes noticed that Wagner had worn white gloves until they had arrived at table, and when he removed them Holmes noted that his hands were covered with red patches. His fingernails were broken, and the skin on his fingers appeared rough, to have been scrubbed hard, as if he had tried to wash some stains away vigorously.

“How long have you mixed your own ink?” asked Holmes.

“How on earth did you know that?” replied Wagner in surprise.

“No matter. As a doctor, I must pay attention to details.”

“Yes, I have always done so. It has been one of my peculiar habits, Dr. Watson. I rule my own paper and write the first drafts of my compositions myself. It is only when they are completed to my satisfaction that I send them to a copyist who prepares the version for printing. The ink is wonderful. It has a sweet taste at first, but then it leaves me with the taste of sour milk in my mouth.”

At the end of the meal, we returned to the drawing room, where Liszt sat at the great Erard and played almost without stop for two hours. He began with the Chopin Fantaisie-Polonaise , following it with several etudes by the same composer.

Then, at Cosima’s request, Liszt played his own transcriptions of Wagner’s operas, those of Tristan und Isolde and Tannhäuser . He followed this with some of his arrangements of the songs of Schubert and Schumann. The last, a song called Widmung , or Dedication, left Wagner and his wife in tears.

Then, again at Cosima’s request, Herr Wagner stood up and announced that, if Herr Liszt were willing to accompany him, he would sing parts of his last opera, Parsifal . Liszt agreed without hesitation, and so they began.

I sat across the room staring at these three people—Wagner, Liszt, and Madame Wagner, transfixed by the music. Later that evening Holmes told me that it was then that he knew that the violin would forever remain nothing more than an avocation, for the realisation came that he could never venture into the celestial realms of music that we were fortunate to enter that night. Liszt, whom I had heard in performance in London, outdid himself by the sheer beauty of his playing. And despite his infirmities, Wagner sang beautifully and strongly. Who, after all, could have sung Parsifal more convincingly than he?

When it was over, there was a silence, then quiet words of praise from Cosima, Joukovsky, and the two doctors. Herr Wagner announced that he was exhausted and wished to retire. He left on Cosima’s arm, and after a few moments we all went to our rooms.