ng." He
wrote the last of it first, and the first of it ("Das Rheingold")
last. This was because his central idea, as it developed, seemed to
need explanation, and successive operas upon the same dramatic and
mythological theme became necessary.

Wagner's mythology is not the mythology of the Eddas. It is distinctly
his own, he having adapted a great and rugged folklore to his dramatic
purposes, regardless of its original construction.

In the Ring, the Goddess Fricka is a disagreeable goddess of
domesticity, and the story is told of a first reading of the opera
series, which involved an anecdote of Fricka and his hostess:

He went to the house of a friend, Wille, to read the poem after it was
finished, and Madame Wille happened to be called from the room, while
he was reading, to look after her little sick child. When she
returned, Wagner had been so annoyed by the interruption that he
thereafter named Madame Wille, Fricka.

During a sleepless night in Italy he formed the plan for the music of
"Das Rheingold," but not wishing to write on Italian soil, he got up
and hastened to Zurich.

He would not come to America to give a series of concerts because he
"was not disposed to go about as a concert-pedlar, even for a fabulous
sum."

The irony of all the world is epitomized in a single incident that
occurred to Wagner in London. He was accused of a grave fault because
he conducted Beethoven's symphonies "from memory." Therefore he
announced he would thereafter conduct them from the score. He
reappeared with the score very much in evidence upon his rack, and won
British approval completely. Then he announced that he had conducted
from "Il Barbiere de Siviglia" with the Barber's score upside down!

He wrote to his friend Roekel: "If anything could increase my scorn of
the world, it would be my expedition to London."

Wagner was fiery and excessive in all his feelings and doings. He hurt
his friends without malice, and made them happy for love of doing so.
His home was broken up by his own unruly disposition; and when his
good, commonplace wife left him, it was said that he neglected to take
care of her, but this was not true. She, herself, denied it before she
died. His second marriage was a happy one--to the daughter of his
friend Liszt.

When his little son was born, he named him Siegfried, after his
favourite hero, and at the time of the christening he had a
magnificent little orchestra hidden away, conducted