Actually, Jack, Keith was a regular performer of songs and was very well-liked as such in his local area. Joe Offer told me that the chap we know as beardedbruce is, in real life, an amiable and agreeable fellow. We have to be a tad careful as to how we judge people in this rather two-dimensional Mudcat world, in which it's more than possible to set up your persona in a way that might not equate to you in real life.

Whether or not you think those composers' reputations need damaging (I definitely disagree about Mendelssohn but don't know much Meyerbeer), Wagner set out to damage them because they were Jews.. As I was trying to say, too little information can end up with our exonerating people who don't deserve to be exonerated.