Richard Wagner | Page 6

by Geyer; still earlier Louise had also begun
acting child-parts. There must have been a good deal of family
discussion and commotion about these things. It had been the wish of

Friedrich Wagner that Rosalie should, or perhaps might, take to the
stage as a profession, but in no case until she had attained the age of
sixteen. Friedrich's brother Adolph, as I have said, set himself in deadly
opposition to anything of the sort happening. Letters and counter-letters
ensued; but the instinct of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently
strong, and perhaps the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day;
and one after another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to
water. Geyer kept his word to his dead friend, however; and Rosalie,
though she had been long preparing, made no public appearance until
she reached sixteen. A little longer and Clara took up the family
occupation. How all this affected the family generally, and especially
Richard, we shall see before long. In the meantime it may be mentioned
that Julius, the second son, nine years Richard's senior, was apprenticed
at Eisleben to Geyer's younger brother, a goldsmith: he alone was not
pulled stagewards.
III
Naturally enough there is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous
hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard did
not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise us.
Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music
was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while
they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded music
as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; but in this case the precocity
is quite unattested, and the stories of the six-year boy practising on a
dumb-spinet at midnight originated when the boy had become the most
celebrated musician in Europe. I wish here to make a few not wholly
irrelevant remarks. The tales of Handel's wondrous babyhood were
repeated, and repeated many times, by writers who did not know what a
dumb-spinet was and certainly made no inquiries regarding the source
of the tales. Both legend and dumb-spinet are swallowed cheerfully to
this day because so many authors accept them; and I would point out
that the first author, No. I, was simply copied recklessly by author No.
II, that author No. III, maybe a little less recklessly, copied No. II
because he was supported by No. I; and thus the game went on until the
simple minds of a generation think that what fifty writers have said

must be true. Ten thousand times more has been written about Wagner
than all that Handel provoked, and even less honest investigation has
been made--result, a gigantic series of tales, genuine or mythical, based
on what amounts to no authority whatever. Unless these are verifiable I
leave them to the care of others, and pass on. So with regard to
Wagner's childhood we know he showed himself no wonderful genius.
We do know that he lived amidst folk whose whole conversation must
have been of the theatre and drama, actors and actresses; that he was
petted and taken about by his stepfather, and as soon as he was old
enough, or sooner, went to the theatre while rehearsals were going on.
"The Cossack," as Geyer called him, grew up a lively, quick-witted
child, active and full of mischief, "leaving a trousers-seat per day on the
hedge" and sliding down banisters--much indeed like many other
children who afterwards for want of leisure neglected to compose a
Ring or a Tristan. The theatrical life, I feel sure, did not differ greatly
from the same life to-day. It is for the most part a sordid, petty
existence, one in which one's days, weeks, months and years are
frittered away; they pass and there is nothing tangible to show for them.
When performances are not over until late, no one rises early; then
come the rehearsals; then the evening performance again--and so home
and to bed. Long intervals of waiting between spells of monotonous
work can hardly be used for anything but gossiping at the stage-door or
idling in cafés. Save for those who have risen high in popular
favour--or, during Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their
mistresses--it is an uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and
very often terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way
of grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in
the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean
squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced
idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite
right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to the
cabotin. But Geyer, we must remember, was