e 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
members of his family--though they will by no means drop out of the
story completely, or all but completely, as they did when he came to
his marrying days.

CHAPTER II

EARLY BOYHOOD

I

So far all we can learn about Wagner that is worth knowing amounts to
this: he was born into and passed his first years in the precincts of
Bohemia, where the Bohemian atmosphere was tempered with officialism,
court-etiquette, and the influence of a methodical and resolutely
conscientious stepfather. When Richard became a man and wrote on the
theatre and theatrical life he showed an intimate knowledge of all
details hardly possible to one who had not gone through this early
experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman
learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of
course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the
spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a
flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he
can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work
comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations
at the instance of those who have been through the proper early
training. No one had anything to teach Richard in these respects: he
knew by what seems an infallible instinct, but which was mainly the
result of all he had seen since his babyhood, precisely what was
effective and what ineffective on the stage, what was possible and
what impossible. He made no mistakes; even the "impossibilities" of
the _Ring_ proved feasibilities and are now accomplished nightly
without trouble in every opera-house of Europe.

This training--for it was a training, perhaps the very best for the
career before him--now went on as in Geyer's time. He still dwelt in
Bohemia, but as the influence of his stepfather had been salutary, so
now to an extent came in the influence of school. Hitherto we have had
rather to consider his family than him; but now the little
individuality begins to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly,
from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an
overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also
leading a li