Eisleben; and the widow had Clara, Ottilie, Richard and Cäcilie to
look after--quite enough, it is true, and calling for all the
resources of her housewifery to make ends meet; but, still, nothing
like the burden Geyer had taken up so courageously a few years before.
How much Rosalie and Albert could spare out of the small salaries paid
in those--and still paid in these--days by German theatres is a matter
entirely for conjecture: it cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the
main point is that it served. I deal with these details, because at
the first glance one is puzzled to know however the family managed to
pull through at all and avoid the workhouse.

At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where,
he himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to
persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one
Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he
had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he
was fond also of roaming the countryside. There was endless trouble in
discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a
time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in response
to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could and would
do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent home to
Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the Kreuzschule as
Richard Geyer. This, let me remark in passing, was and is common
enough when a widowed mother has married a second time. Several such
cases are within my own experience; and malicious snarls at Wagner's
double name, as though at some period he had gone under an alias, are
purely futile and worthy only of an advocate with a desperate case.

With this Wagner's period of infancy ends and he enters on that of
boyhood--his life begins. Henceforth we shall hear less of other