en 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 performanc