as I have said, set himself in deadly opposition to anything of the
sort happening. Letters and counter-letters ensued; but the instinct
of the youngsters turned out to be sufficiently strong, and perhaps
the opposition of Geyer too feeble to carry the day; and one after
another the Wagners took to the boards as ducklings to water. 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.


III

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