Cosima Wagner - Schooling and Adolescence

Schooling and Adolescence

Cosima and Blandine remained with Anna Liszt until 1850, joined eventually by Daniel. Cosima's biographer George Marek describes Anna as "a simple, uneducated, unworldly but warmhearted woman ... for the first time experienced what it was to be touched by love". Of the sisters, Blandine was evidently the prettier; Cosima, with her long nose and wide mouth was described as an "ugly duckling". Although Liszt's relations with his children were formal and distant, he provided for them liberally, and ensured that they were well educated. Both girls were sent to Madame Bernard's, an exclusive boarding school, while Daniel was prepared for the prestigious Lycée Bonaparte.

In 1847 Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, the estranged wife of a Russian prince. By the autumn of 1848 she and Liszt had become lovers, and their relationship lasted for the remainder of his life. She quickly assumed responsibility for the management of every aspect of Liszt's life, which extended to the upbringing of his daughters. Early in 1850 Liszt had been disturbed to learn that Blandine and Cosima were seeing their mother again; his response, guided by the princess, was to remove them from their school and place them into the full-time care of Carolyne's old governess, the 72-year-old Madame Patersi de Fossombroni. Liszt's instructions were clear—Madame Patersi was to control every aspect of the girls' lives: "She alone is to decide what is to be permitted them and what forbidden".

Blandine and Cosima were subjected to the Patersi curriculum for four years. Cosima's biographer Olive Hilmes likens the regime to that used for breaking in horses, though Marek describes it as exacting but ultimately beneficial to Cosima: "Above all, Patersi taught her how a 'noble lady' must behave, how to alight from a carriage, how to enter a drawing room, how to greet a duchess as against a commoner ... and how not to betray herself when she was hurt". On 10 October 1853 Liszt arrived at the Patersi apartment, his first visit to his daughters since 1845. With him were two fellow-composers: Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner. Carolyne's daughter Marie, who was present, described Cosima's appearance as "in the worst phase of adolescence, tall and angular, sallow ... the image of her father. Only her long golden hair, of unusual sheen, was beautiful". After a family meal, Wagner read to the group from his text for the final act of what was to become Götterdämmerung. Cosima seems to have made little impression on him; in his memoirs he merely recorded that both girls were very shy.