Note 57 — Chapter I · THE MAN

Mr. Ashton Ellis (Life of Wagner, v. 126 ff.) has pointed out how many difficulties might have been avoided had Wagner taken the advice of some of his friends and called upon Davison, the critic of the Times. Wagner would have cleared Davison's mind of many misconceptions that had become current as to the aims of "Wagnerism" and his own attitude towards the older composers and Mendelssohn. Wagner's temper and his dislike of critics made him refuse. He refers to them en masse, in a letter to Otto Wesendonck, as "blackguards," and again (to Liszt) as "this blackguard crew of journalists." Mr. Henry Davison, in his biography of his father, the former musical critic of the Times, gives a reasonable enough explanation of the antipathy of the London press to Wagner in 1855. Berlioz was giving concerts in London at the same time. His music was as strange to English ears as Wagner's; but he was much more gently handled by the press. "The explanation," says Mr. Davison, "is not very difficult.... Berlioz had not written books in advertisement of his theories and himself. He had not attacked cherished composers—far otherwise. He had not studiously held aloof from the critics; on the contrary, he had courted and conciliated them. In fine, with all the peculiarities of an irritable, extraordinary, and self-conscious mind, Berlioz was polished, courteous and fascinating. Wagner was somewhat pedantic, harsh and uncouth" (Henry Davison, From Mendelssohn to Wagner, p. 180).