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.
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.
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