Richard, when he was some years older, said bluntly he cared little for his family; and some of the Wagner-mad Bayreuth host point out that the family did little for him and did not understand him. One might ask why they should be expected to do much: they had plenty to do in looking after themselves. But no questions and no appeals to sweet reasonableness are needed, for the very patent fact is that his family helped him to the uttermost limit of their means. Geyer first, his widowed mother afterwards, then Rosalie and his brother Albert, without a doubt Louise--all did their best to make his young existence comfortable and happy. He got a much better education than in that epoch fell to the lot of the average student belonging to a family of such straitened means; when he wanted lessons in music he got them, and if the family did not pay for them I don't know who did. He was fed, clothed and apparently provided with pocket-money to hold his own with his fellow-students until at the age of twenty he began to earn a little money for himself; and it was Albert who gave him his first appointment. Long after then he drained their resources and the resources of the families into which his sisters had married. Wagner, as I have observed, was a spoiled boy and was made utterly selfish; and as years went on and he came to think music the salvation of Germany, and himself the salvation of music, by a simple logical process he arrived at a conclusion which justified his selfishness--namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his quality; but it is pitiable to find writers--Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis, Chamberlain and Wolzogen--sunk so low in abject flunkeyism as to glorify the defect as the quality. In 1829 a court theatre, as has been said, was opened. Rosalie came as a leading lady, and one Heinrich Dorn came as musical director. Dorn was nine years older than Richard at a time of life when nine years make an immense difference; but the elder, certainly through the influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre--to his own confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a _Paukenschlag_, every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful. That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot guess. Still, Dorn did not give him up, and performed other and, let us hope, less ludicrous efforts. Presently I shall devote a page or two to the compositions prior to his first professional engagement; but first let me set down a few of the needful facts of his outer life.