Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of July 1, 1872

Overview

The day began with irritation over the hotel’s poor management, though Lulu’s toothache was easing and R. was buoyed by rereading his old letter to Marie Wittgenstein, despite the absurd interpretation it once received. He read Darwin with pleasure and regretted not knowing Schopenhauer earlier, while I worried that even great ideas so often make little impression on the world. In the garden we watched the district president’s family near the Duke and Duchess, then took the children out walking, where Fidi’s stubbornness upset R. and reminded me how easily his mood darkens when work is interrupted.

Content

Monday, July 1:

Vexation over the bad hotel management. But Lulu’s toothache is subsiding.

Yesterday evening I read R.’s letter to M[arie] W[ittgenstein], which appears in the 5th volume, and I could not get over my astonishment, shared by R., that at the time Princess Wittgenstein saw nothing in it but an attempt to wriggle out of recognizing my father. Stupid world!

R. is reading Darwin with enjoyment, only regretting that he did not know Schopenhauer, which would have made so many things easier for him. Hopes set on Prof. N.; regret that things of such significance make no real impression, attract no attention. But was it ever different? Certainly Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason seems to have attracted very great attention.

Talked about Princess Marie Hohenlohe; R. relates what she said to him in her youth and says it is an enigma to him how such characters can entirely wipe such things out of their lives, completely ignore them. R. works and is satisfied with his work. In the evening read Gibbon.

In the afternoon the district president with his family in the hotel garden, nearby the Duke and his wife eavesdropping in a covered arbor! R., Fidi, and I to the Schweizerei, where the other children then joined us. On the way home Fidi is willful; in order to punish him I make him walk by himself, he only wanted to give me his hand, and that puts R. out of humor, which distresses me.

In the evening R. says I must forgive him his moody manner; either he is not in a working mood, and then he is despondent, or he is in it, and then he could complete his work to the end without interruption, and everything, eating, drinking, sleeping, speaking, becomes an obstacle which causes him suffering and vexes him. Alas, what distresses me is simply not having the power to smooth his path completely.