opular king, one of a line noted
for mental and moral deficiency; and, without consulting any of the
powers that had ruled for a long time in Bavaria, in his mad
enthusiasm he set about "reforming" everything. Apparently he wanted
within twenty-four hours to set up a Saxon Utopia in the midst of a
people who hated the Saxons. He wanted to establish a new opera-house,
where perfect artists were to give perfect performances for audiences
that did not pretend to be perfect. As such performances could not
possibly pay, the audiences, besides putting down the price of
admittance, had, as taxpayers, to make good the deficits. King Ludwig
was supposed to do it; but where on earth was Ludwig's money to come
from if not out of the taxpayers' pockets? Then there was to be
founded a genuine school of music--an excellent scheme, but one,
again, which could not possibly be profitable, or for some time earn
enough to cover its expenses. Who was to pay?--of course King Ludwig:
that is, the taxpayers. And Wagner was not only known (with absolute
certainty) to wish to divert from the pockets of "placemen" funds they
had learnt to consider their perquisites, with a view of turning
Munich into a musical paradise on earth: it seemed to many that he was
gaining such an ascendancy over the feeble mind and will of the king
that shortly he would be dictator of the country. That view was not
well-founded: Wagner, dreamer though he was, had a strong practical
vein in his character: if he saw that one of his dreams could be
realised he realised it at the first opportunity; if he saw it could
not be realised he explained it in an article and left others to make
the first effort at realisation. The man who created Bayreuth was not
the man to imagine altogether vainly that he could, per favour of a
king, whom he must have known to be utterly weak, turn some millions
of citizens and villagers into an Utopian nation of art-lovers and so
on. But hatred surrounded him everywhere; the machinery of the state
came early to a standstill, and, finally, the king had to ask him to
withdraw for a longer or shorter while.

This is the plain truth of an affair concerning which there has been
an immense amount of lying on both sides. The scandals about the
personal relations of the king and Wagner I leave to the vampires; as
for the gentry who will have it that Wagner was "persecuted" out of
Munich by Jews, Christians, journalists and bank-managers, I leave
them