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 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.