Wagner's first wife was a beautiful and talented actress and singer, by name Wilhelmina Planer, whom he married at Riga in 1834. She was a faithful helpmate for years, sacrificing to him her own career, but did not comprehend his genius, and as years went by they drifted apart. The composer's professional intercourse with Hans von Buelow led to an intimacy with the latter's wife, Cosima von Buelow, who was an illegitimate daughter of Liszt by the Countess d'Agoult. In 1861 Richard and Wilhelmina Wagner separated, and in 1866 she died. Four years later, Cosima, then divorced from Von Buelow, was married to Wagner, whom she both worshipped and well understood. Their union was a very happy one, blest with one son named Siegfried, and Madame Wagner long survived her illustrious husband, and laboured indefatigably to carry on his work and increase his fame. Wagner owed much to Cosima, born Liszt, and still more to her father, who was a never-failing friend. In a work published in 1851, Wagner says: "I was thoroughly disheartened from undertaking any artistic scheme. Only recently I had proofs of the impossibility of making my art intelligible to the public, and all this deterred me from beginning new dramatic works. Indeed, I thought that everything was at an end with artistic creativeness. From this state of mental dejection I was raised by a friend. By most evident and undeniable proofs, he made me feel that I was not deserted, but, on the contrary, understood deeply by those even who were otherwise most distant from me; in this way he gave me back my full artistic confidence. "This wonderful friend, Franz Liszt has been to me. I must enter a little more deeply into the character of this friendship, which to many has seemed paradoxical; indeed, I have been compelled to appear repellent and hostile on so many sides, that I almost feel the want of disclosing all that relates to this sympathetic intercourse.