.. there are times when I should like to
swallow him up'" (_Memoires_, II, 48). Berlioz did not add that
Mendelssohn also said: "They pretend that Berlioz seeks lofty ideals in
art. I don't think so at all. What he wants is to get himself married."
The injustice of these insulting words will disgust all those who
remember that when Berlioz married Henrietta Smithson she brought as
dowry nothing but debts; and that he had only three hundred francs
himself, which a friend had lent him.]
[Footnote 26: Liszt repudiated him later.]
[Footnote 27: Written in an article on the _Ouverture de Waverley_
(_Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik_).]
Wagner, who treated his symphonies with scorn before he had even read
them,[28] who certainly understood his genius, and who deliberately
ignored him, threw himself into Berlioz's arms when he met him in London
in 1855. "He embraced him with fervour, and wept; and hardly had he left
him when _The Musical World_ published passages from his book, _Oper und
Drama_, where he pulls Berlioz to pieces mercilessly."[29] In France,
the young Gounod, _doli fabricator Epeus_, as Berlioz called him,
lavished flattering words upon him, but spent his time in finding fault
with his compositions,[30] or in trying to supplant him at the theatre.
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