Richard Wagner | Page 8

at any rate tasted none
of the bitterness of poverty. Glasenapp states that Geyer's "stock of
pictures" had gone up in value after his death; but as he just previously
tells us of Geyer's lack of time and of "would-be sitters" waiting their
turn, we cannot see how the stock can have been very large. Let us
hope, however, that it was, and that Geyer in his grave went on helping
those he loved. Julius was safely bestowed at Eisleben; and the widow

had Clara, Ottilie, Richard and Cäcilie to look after--quite enough, it is
true, and calling for all the resources of her housewifery to make ends
meet; but, still, nothing like the burden Geyer had taken up so
courageously a few years before. How much Rosalie and Albert could
spare out of the small salaries paid in those--and still paid in
these--days by German theatres is a matter entirely for conjecture: it
cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the main point is that it served.
I deal with these details, because at the first glance one is puzzled to
know however the family managed to pull through at all and avoid the
workhouse.
At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where, he
himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to
persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one
Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he
had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he
was fond also of roaming the countryside. There was endless trouble in
discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a
time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in
response to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could
and would do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent
home to Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the
Kreuzschule as Richard Geyer. This, let me remark in passing, was and
is common enough when a widowed mother has married a second time.
Several such cases are within my own experience; and malicious snarls
at Wagner's double name, as though at some period he had gone under
an alias, are purely futile and worthy only of an advocate with a
desperate case.
With this Wagner's period of infancy ends and he enters on that of
boyhood--his life begins. Henceforth we shall hear less of other
members of his family--though they will by no means drop out of the
story completely, or all but completely, as they did when he came to his
marrying days.
CHAPTER II

EARLY BOYHOOD
I
So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to
this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of
Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with
officialism, court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and
resolutely conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and
wrote on the theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate
knowledge of all details hardly possible to one who had not gone
through this early experience: scores of things that an ordinary
educated Englishman learns with considerable surprise were to him the
merest matters of course. When an English composer resolves to write
an opera, in the spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture
or a flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he
can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work
comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations at
the instance of those who have been through the proper early training.
No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he knew by
what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the result of all
he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was effective and what
ineffective on the stage, what was possible and what impossible. He
made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of the Ring proved
feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly without trouble in every
opera-house of Europe.
This training--for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the career
before him--now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in Bohemia,
but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so now to an
extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had rather to
consider his family than him; but now the little individuality begins to
emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly, from that circle. He
begins an independent existence, controlled in an overwhelming degree
by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also