Friday, February 9:
R. works; at lunch I ask him, and he promises, to dictate an account of his journey, which is given below. (A Herr Voltz, wine merchant in Mainz, claims to have found a way of enabling R. to receive earnings from his works and from performances of them.) Fine spring weather.
Dictation. On January 24, via Basel, where I spent several hours with Nietzsche and Fritz B., and then on the night train to Berlin. Although I tried to keep up a brave face in front of them, a letter from N. which followed me showed that he had recognised the evil necessity behind my journey and truly regretted it.
With me in the train from Erfurt to Weimar was Herr von Loen, whom I had invited to join me for a talk. He was able to some extent to put my mind at rest regarding the state of things, since I realised that what I had to complain about was more his negligence as an administrator than the success of our enterprise in general.
At the station in Berlin I was met by the good Gersdorff and the mysterious leading figure, to satisfy myself about whom had been the main point of my journey: Herr Bernhard Loser, founder of the Wagneriana, that society on which all our secret hopes had been set. He accompanied me to a bad hotel of his own choosing, and the little room set aside for me he had stuffed so full of plants and bushes in celebration of my arrival that their scent made me feel ill. [In the margin: “He dreamed that he was sick.”]
After a sleepless night I rose next morning feeling ill. Before receiving my mysterious benefactor, I was surprised by friend Feustel, who, in his now habitual, very pleasing way, came quite unexpectedly into my room, along with Neumann, whom I had invited. Since some differences had arisen between the Bayreuth building authorities and Neumann concerning the building estimates, Feustel had immediately journeyed here to put matters right, and his arrival showed that he had been sent to me by Fate.
This soon became completely clear after I had spent some time conferring with Herr Loser. From him I wished to learn exactly what this Wagneriana was, which in the eyes of our friend Marie Schleinitz looked something like a choir of angels. Obviously, if this society really possessed the considerable funds of which Tausig had spoken, I should be well advised to put it in charge of the business side of our great Bayreuth enterprise.
It cost me much effort to extract from Herr Loser’s expatiations the true state of things, but in the end the Wagneriana dissolved into the usual Jewish fog. All that clearly emerged was that the founder of this society of names rather than people had succeeded through Tausig in making an impression on Frau v. Schl., but he was now to collapse into pathetic misery, being forced to admit that my previous good opinion of him had been quite without foundation.