Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of November 23, 1872

Overview

R. suffered a severe headache, but they still went to the cathedral, where Strasbourg struck her as French in spirit, polite in manner, and marked by patient waiting rather than resignation. He then wrote letters about finances and possible conducting work, while she corresponded with Rohde, whom she saw as isolated and without prospects. In the evening they visited the Kessingers and talked at length about the war, especially with the major who had witnessed many of its major events.

Content

Saturday, November 23:

R. has a severe headache; we go out to visit the cathedral. Curious impression: French culture everywhere, the costumes much more decorous than in Germany, the people polite, exerting themselves to speak German, yet everything expresses the state of mind we saw depicted in a painting: Elle attend; patience, but without resignation. View the cathedral.

R. goes home to write letters; he has received a letter from Feustel, urgently begging him to do what he can, for he is reluctant to proceed further with the finances in their present state. R. writes to Hamburg and says if he can be promised a colossal fee he is willing to conduct a symphony for them.

Dinner in the Ville de Paris; the hotel very run down, the people bad-tempered. In the afternoon R. goes for a walk with our friend and looks up a former clergyman in Bayreuth, now a newspaper editor in Strassburg, whom our dean recommended to him. I write in the meantime to Prof. Rohde, who is now also completely outlawed and utterly isolated and without prospects. In the evening to the Kessingers’; talked a lot about the war, for the major had taken part in all the great events.