WAGNER DOCUMENTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1929, Page 9

WAGNER DOCUMENTS

STRANGE LONDON FIND. Documents said to be worth £300,000 which throw sensational light on the life and loves of Wagner, the great composer, have been discovered accidentally iin the vault of a London safe deposit, Isays the Sunday Express. This startling discovery was made by Air Philip Hurn, a young American author and playwright, whose ambition to write a play on Wagner brought him to England in search of material. The manuscripts have been lying in the vault for more than 30 years. There are secret love letters, original musical scores, portraits; and, in addition, the only existing copy of Wagner’s “Aly Life,’’ of which only 15 copies were printed between 1870 and 1874. Astonishing new facts of his passions and infidelities are provided by the letters. The most notable is the famous “lost” letter written to Alathilda Wesendouck, with whom Wagnei* was in love. It was intercepted by Wagner’s wife, Alinna, and it gave the death-blow to her marriage and helped to bring on heart disease'. The contents of that letter have never* been known —the inner truth of Wagner’s relations with Alathilda has always been a mystery. Even more astonishing is another letter, containing a comic account of the love affair Wagner had with Jessie Laussot. Wagner wrote it —and wrote it to his wife I

The history of the collection is curious. It was begun about the time of Wagner’s death in 1883 by a wealthy Englishwoman, who had determined to write an exhaustive biography that should become the standard work. She laboured for 16 years, slowly gathering her material— and then died, her work unfinished, leaving all het data shut away in jewel boxes in the safe deposit. Air Hurn will not at present divulge her name, but he states that she was the wife of a well-known man, who succeeded to a peerage after her death.