We can visualise him in these early years as a creature of the strangest contradictions—charming enough with those he liked, supercilious and insulting to people he disliked, and always liable to some fit of the nerves that would make him unaccountably irritable, perverse, tactless, and ready to wound even friends; generous with his help where his sympathies were engaged, and with a fine code of honour for many of the relationships of life, but a sad lack of delicacy and even of honour with regard to money matters. The full extent of his borrowings and his debts, even at this early period of his life, will never be known; but one feels a sort of terror at the hints as to the total of them that are given here and there in Mein Leben and his letters. It is easier to explain than to justify his conduct in this regard. He was never too well paid, and he had an ineradicable artistic inclination towards certain of the good things of life that only money can buy. His incurable optimism, too, was always painting the future the rosiest of rose-pinks. One can understand his habit of borrowing, and even sympathise with him to some extent; what one finds it harder to explain or to condone is his evident callousness towards his creditors, especially his tradesmen, some of whom had to wait ten years or more for their money, and then only obtained it with much difficulty.

A man who, for all his fine qualities, had two or three grave defects of character of this kind, was likely to make as many enemies as friends—perhaps more. The worshipping official type of biographer paints for us a sort of ineffable angel of a Wagner, always in the right, always misunderstood and traduced. The untruthfulness of the portrait is evident to the most casual readers of the letters and the autobiography. Wagner\'s now notorious laxity of principle with respect to money matters must have been common knowledge in the small provincial towns in which he lived, and must have done a good deal to make him distrusted and disliked. In addition, his frequent irascibility and rudeness must have made many enemies for him. In Mein Leben—more candid and more critical in this respect than his incense-bearers—he makes several confessions on this score. His outbursts can no doubt be mostly explained by the irritability of his temperament and its swift transitions of mood, by his frequently bad health, or by the action of wine. But it is one thing to make allowances for a man\'s failings of temper or manners half a century or so after the event; it is another to make allowances at the time. We smile now at the stories that are told of Beethoven\'s grossness and ill-breeding; but had we experienced the effect of these at first-hand we should certainly have voted him an impossible person to live with. Wagner was undoubtedly very trying to live with at times. In Mein Leben he occasionally gives us a glimpse of himself in his least likeable moods. In 1834 he visits Prague, where he meets again some people whose acquaintance he had made on a previous visit there—the daughters of the recently deceased Count Pachta. With one or both of these girls the ever-amorous young man had apparently been in love. "My behaviour," he says, "was wild and arrogant; in this way the bitter feelings with which I had formerly taken leave of this circle now found expression in a capricious passion for revenge." He does nothing but indulge in the maddest pranks. "They could not understand this astounding change in me; there was no longer in me any of the old love of intimacy, the mania for instructing, the zeal for converting,[51] that they had previously found so annoying. But at the same time no one could get a sensible word out of me, and the ladies, who were now disposed to discuss many things seriously, got no answer from me but the wildest buffoonery."[52]

Every now and then, in his account of the misunderstandings with Minna, he confesses to the coarseness of his language when he was angry, the "raging vehemence" of his insults, the "unrestrained violence" of his speech and behaviour. Nietzsche has given us a hint of what Wagner could be in a mood of this kind.[53] In Dresden especially, in the years of his conductorship (1842-49), he appears to have made many enemies, particularly among the critics. These gentlemen were, of course, generally wrong as against Wagner in matters of art. But though musical critics are frequently stupid, they are not, as a rule, all stupid in the same way. It is possible, as many of the modern Wagnerians have shown, to be as stupid in approbation of Wagner as anyone could be in disapprobation of him. So that when we find the critics—in Dresden, for example—so uniformly opposed to Wagner, it is a fair supposition that there was more behind their words than mere disapproval of his art or his theories. They apparently pursued him with unusual rancor. Even in the absence of evidence, we should be entitled to assume that when a man becomes the object of such general and unrelenting hostility in his own town, it implies some defects in his own character as well as in those of his assailants. Evidence is not lacking that this was so. Wagner, we all know, loved most those who agreed with him, and had no use at all for men of opposite ways of thinking.[54] His constant craving for love in life had its counterpart in his desire to be approved and believed in as an artist. In Mein Leben he is always praising someone or other for his devotion to him, and speaking coolly or angrily of others for their indifference to his concerns. Alwine Frommann is "faithfully devoted" to him; he speaks of Bülow\'s "warm and heart-felt devotion"; the Laussots, the Ritters, Uhlig, and others are all lauded for their "devotion," their "fidelity." He speaks well of Meyerbeer so long as he believes his interests are being furthered by him, and turns on him and makes sundry unproved and unprovable charges against him when he thinks his aid is withdrawn. One does not censure him for this: rational criticism aims less at giving or withholding marks for conduct than at understanding the complexities of human nature. One merely notes the idiosyncrasy, not unsympathetically, and tries to see how it worked in the actualities of life. A nature of this kind was constitutionally incapable of taking criticism philosophically; the critic\'s sin would not be against the artist so much as against the art. And granting that many of his critics were not very intelligent men, it is clear that part at least of their enmity towards him was the result of his own tactless attitude towards them. "Though I was anxious to be obliging with everyone, yet I always felt an unconquerable aversion to showing special consideration towards any man because he was a critic. In the course of time I carried this to the point of almost studied rudeness, as a consequence of which I was my whole life long the victim of unheard-of persecution from the press."[55] It seems probable that his studiously unconciliatory manners brought him more ill-will than was ever necessary.

That the mere lack of intelligence of some of these critics was not the reason for his rudeness to them is shown by the warmth of his welcome to critics no more intelligent who happened to be with him instead of against him. A certain Gaillard, of Berlin, happened to have written an "entirely favorable" criticism of the Flying Dutchman. "Although," he na?vely says, "I had already of necessity accustomed myself to be indifferent as to the attitude of the critics, this particular article impressed me greatly, and I invited the unknown writer to Dresden to hear the first performance of Tannh?user." The young man comes to Dresden, and Wagner is distressed to find that he is threatened with consumption. "I saw from his knowledge and capabilities that he would never attain to any great influence; but his sincerity of soul and the receptivity of his intelligence filled me with genuine regard for the poor man." He dies in a few years, "having never swerved from his fidelity to and thoughtfulness for me, even in the most trying circumstances."[56] In other words, he was that very common product, an enthusiastic admirer possessed of only limited intelligence; but his "fidelity" was sufficient to make Wagner tolerate and even like him. It looks as if the "systematic rudeness" was not for "the critics," but only for the critics who disagreed with Wagner.

How badly he could behave when irritated by the press was shown by his incessant insinuations against the honesty of the London critics during and after his conducting of the Philharmonic Concerts in 1855. There is no proof forthcoming of their being bribed to oppose him. Mr. Ashton Ellis, who has gone thoroughly into the newspaper history of that period, and who will not be suspected of any desire to smooth matters over for Wagner\'s antagonists, gives it as his opinion that "James Davison bears the character of an unimpeachably honest \'gentleman.\'" But Wagner could never imagine any other motive for opposing him except (1) that the opponent was paid to do so, or (2) that he was either a Jew or under the orders of the Jews.[57] In a letter to Otto Wesendonck of 5th April he vents his rancour against Davison and Chorley, and recklessly charges them with being corrupt: "they are paid to keep me down, and thus they earn their daily bread."[58] He throws out a hint to the same effect in Mein Leben.