[2] See, for example, the reminiscences of Judith Gautier, Wagner at Home, English translation by Effie D. Massie.
[3] Mein Leben, pp. 829, 830.
[4] In 1835 he was travelling about in search of singers for the Magdeburg Opera. A temporary financial stringency—neither the first nor the last in his life!—forced him to remain a week at Frankfort. "To kill time," he says, "I had recourse, among other things, to a large red pocket-book which I carried about with me in my valise; I wrote down in this, with exact details of dates, some notes for my future biography." (He was twenty-two at the time, and almost unknown outside his own little provincial circle.) "It is the same book that is before me at this moment to refresh my memory, and which I have kept up without any breaks at various periods of my life." Mein Leben, p. 133.
[5] It would be unwise, for example, to believe without further evidence his story (Mein Leben, p. 743) that the Paris press during the Tannhäuser events of 1861 "was entirely in Meyerbeer's hands"; that (p. 723) Meyerbeer had some years before bribed Fétis père to write articles against Wagner; or (p. 708) that Berlioz was influenced against Wagner by his wife, who had received a present of a valuable bracelet from Meyerbeer. Everyone who has mixed much with musicians knows how prone many of them are to believe that their colleagues—and still more their critics—are always "intriguing against them."
[6] Mein Leben, p. 667.
[7] Mein Leben, pp. 795, 796.
[8] Mein Leben, p. 602. On another page (626) he speaks of the "young booby" as being "agreeable [anschmiegend] and intelligent," apparently because he shared Wagner's views upon Schopenhauer.
[9] Mein Leben, p. 627.
[10] He admits, on the same page of Mein Leben (627), that he was very ill at this time, and prone to outbursts of irritability, during which his friends often had to suffer.
[11] Frau Ritter was at this time making an allowance to Wagner.