could not open again.  Wagner, in his old age, had to commence once again giving concerts, in London amongst other places, to raise funds.  Ludwig had done much, and dared go no further.  A huge subscription was arranged, and a large amount of money had been collected, when help came from somewhere, whereupon the subscriptions were returned.  The detractors and slanderers who had shouted that all the money asked for in the name of Bayreuth was really destined to pay for Wagner’s and King Ludwig’s own private amusements received, if a vulgar phrase is allowable, a violent blow in their noisy mouths.  Wagner paid no further heed to them, but went on working out his plans.  The old dream referred to in his letters to Uhlig had been realised; he had his ideal theatre, he had given ideal performances, and he reckoned he had given the Germans an art.  And now let us see what that art was.

CHAPTER XIV

‘THE NIBELUNG’S RING’ AND ‘THE RHINEGOLD’

I

In the case of few artists is there an account of the creation of their works worth serious consideration.  In the colloquial as well as the true sense of the word they are apt to be imaginative, and such a story as Edgar Allen Poe’s of the composition of the Raven is not so much imaginative as imaginary.  The creative artist is usually the last man in the world to give a veracious history of the genesis of his creations, for the simple reason that he does not know, and, during the later process of trying to find out, for his own private satisfaction, he is given to invent theories—­or, let us say, hypotheses—­which eventually he may come to believe pure fact.  In music the act of creation is often done in a hypnotic state.  Goethe mentions that his earlier songs were written in a state of clairvoyance.  Many much more recent poets seem to have achieved their hugest popular successes whilst in a comatose state.  Some, who also managed to secure a success with the public, apparently conceived and executed their mighty works in a state of hallucination—­having somehow got the idea into their heads that they were poets.  Handel, Mozart and Beethoven are three musicians who are known—­if history may be at all believed—­to have composed in a hypnotic state:  Handel would sit for hours, unconscious of what went on around him; Mozart could not be trusted with a knife at dinner—­when he had a dinner; Beethoven would pour cold water over his hands until the tenants beneath raised violent objections.  No such tales are related of Bach, of Haydn, of Gluck, of Weber, nor of Wagner.  If ever a man knew precisely what he had been doing, even if he was not self-conscious at the moment of doing it, that man was Wagner.  He stands apart, therefore; apart from some of the greatest composers.  His case, I take it, is analogous to that of a man who cannot remember a friend’s address and thinks of it that night in a dream:  how he chances to dream he cannot tell, but he knows what he has dreamt, and when.