as quietly put
on the shelf. This experience falls to the lot of every writer of
operas and is so commonplace an incident that I should do no more than
barely mention it did not many followers of Wagner see in it the
beginning of that "persecution by the Jews" of which we heard so much
a few years ago. It appears to me nothing of the kind. The Jews did
not at that date particularly single out Wagner for attack: merely
they defended their vested interests exactly as the musical profession
in England defended and still defends its vested interests. It should
be remembered that he had quite as many friends as enemies amongst the
Hebrews; and I never could understand how, to mention only two, two
great conductors and intimates of Wagner, Mottl and Levi, could
tolerate all the nonsense talked on the subject at Bayreuth. When
Brendel published the notorious _Judaism in Music_ it is true many
Jewish journalists began to libel Wagner: it is true also that some
Jewish professors in the Leipzig conservatoire petitioned that Brendel
should be dismissed; but these were the shabby acts of individuals,
and far too many shabby acts were perpetrated by Richard's partisans
for it to be desirable for _them_ to raise the cry of persecution.
Perforce I must say a few words more on this disagreeable topic when I
come to deal with the Meyerbeer-Rienzi episode; but I promise the
reader to cut it as short as may be. Once for all, despite all
protestations, despite Wagner's honest belief to the contrary, I
dismiss the Jewish conspiracy theory as rubbish.

Richard's health was in no way injured by the breakdown of the
negotiations. His letters of the period are as buoyant as could be
wished. He had other schemes. At the Freemasons' concerts his _Die
Feen_ overture made a hit. He heard Schroeder-Devrient in Bellini's
_Montechi e Capuleti_, and found to his astonishment that a great
singer could create great artistic effects in music of no very high
value. He had many friends, and amongst them Schumann and Heinrich
Laube--the latter a free-thinking journalist whose utterances so
scared the government-by-police, as tending to make people think for
themselves instead of peacefully submitting to be governed, that he
was put in prison. He was editor of a paper called the _Zeitung fuer
die Elegante Welt_--- a curious title for a journal which frequently
praised the democratic Richard. In the summer of 1834 he went for
another holiday, this time to Tep