to accept the situation; and,
apparently in desperation, or because he found life intolerable with
two nagging females in the house where he dwelt, quietly went in 1824
and married Sophie, a sister of his friend Amadeus Wendt.
Thenceforward he lived in peace at a house called "The Hut," visiting
his two nagging ladies every day, however. One was his sister,
Friederike, the other Jeannette Thomae. He was a studious, retiring
man, and in the course of time produced some books that are worthless,
or all but worthless, now. Of course the Bayreuth worshippers and
idolizers of the Wagner family will have it that he, being one of the
family, was inevitably a man of superlative gifts; but as I have
already indicated, there is nothing to justify such an assumption. A
cultivated man of sound sense he must have been; and it is true he was
in some slight touch with a few of the stronger artistic and literary
spirits in that very dull and disheartening period; it is true that he
influenced, wholly for good, Richard a few years afterwards. When that
is said all is said.

Richard is said to have studied English, but how much he actually
learnt I never could ascertain. I have been told with solemn
mysteriousness at Bayreuth that, like the parrot, he could have
rattled off our tongue with tremendous volubility had he chosen; but
the fact that he never chose lends colour to the supposition that in
reality he had no choice. However, in the original or in translations
he read Shakespeare; and it may be presumed that he knew Goethe and
Schiller almost by heart. Naturally he determined to rival them. In
that heyday of the big Romantic movement he just as naturally
determined to rival or to beat them by piling terror on terror, horror
on horror. At that period the latest word in the theatre was melodrama
of the wildest sort, and a play which did not contain a few murders,
ghosts, enchanted woods and haunted castles had not the faintest
chance of success. According to Wagner's own account he made a
handsome bid for success; for nearly all the _dramatis-personae_ came
to an untimely end, and a spectre told one, not yet finished off, that
if he moved another step his nose would then and there crumble to
powder.

While this masterwork was in process of construction, circumstances so
altered that Frau Geyer thought it wisdom to quit Dresden and return
to Leipzig. Albert, Rosalie, Louise and Clara were in various towns
fulfilling engagements; sh