Wagner's boyhood, the favour of kings or their mistresses--it is an
uncertain life, with engagements terminable, and very often
terminated, after a few years; and thus a hand-to-mouth way of
grubbing along is generated, and a vagrant spirit developed: and in
the majority, the huge majority, of cases lives spent in squalor, mean
squabblings, spells of mechanical work alternating with enforced
idleness, end in destitution and utter misery. Uncle Adolph was quite
right: he knew how close the ordinary actor and opera-singer was to
the _cabotin_. But Geyer, we must remember, was very far away indeed
from the _cabotin_. Good-natured and sociable as he seemed, he must
have held to his purpose with iron determination and stuck to his
work; and whatever Richard and his brothers and sisters may have seen
going on around them, we may be sure they saw none of it in their own
home.

When in 1817 Weber arrived at Dresden to set up a real German opera,
it seemed he must have landed in exactly the wrong place to carry out
his plans. Only by a series of miracles did they get partially carried
out; and here, as we know, he composed two works, _Der Freischütz_ and
_Euryanthe_, destined in after years to exert greater power over
Richard's genius than any other music save Beethoven's--a power not
inferior to that of Beethoven's music in some respects. Weber
inevitably became a friend of the Geyers, and before Richard was much
older he knew the great person to speak to and set him up in his heart
as a demi-god. But as yet Richard was only picking up a little
knowledge and trying, very faintly trying, to play the piano.

Meanwhile, Geyer's health was failing, though no one then foresaw what
was to come. He acted, he painted, he wrote plays, he saw to the
debuts of Albert and Rosalie; he tried a cure here and a cure there.