Friday, April 4:
Change in the weather; it is cold, but R. had a good night. In the morning he speaks of Schopenhauer and what he owes to him: “Previously,” he says, “I always dismissed things of that sort with a platitude; how can I thank him enough?”
The children bring me their marks from school; they are not good, and that saddens me, since at New Year’s I had exhorted them to be sure to bring me home good reports at Easter, so that I could send them to their father! R. gives his pamphlet on Bayreuth a new ending; he wants to send this off along with a circular to the patrons, in which he informs them how things stand with our undertaking, before malicious rumors get around in the newspapers, which do our cause so much damage among ordinary people.
Went with R. to the house, where he is much vexed over several things which have been badly done; I take pleasure in two blackbirds and a finch hopping around our building plot. On our return home R. finds all sorts of things which upset him. Herr Loser has announced the concert in the Viktoria Theater in the Berlin newspapers! This gentleman seems to have taken Herr Lang’s place in causing us annoyance. The concert in Cologne is postponed again, and a singer applies to come here to study, that is now premature and has to be refused.
On the other hand, a Herr Tesarini writes from Milan about the seventh successful performance of Lohengrin in Milan; he says the hissers, there are about 500 of them, were paid by Ricordi. An ill-humored evening, too many things are occupying R.’s mind, and he is asking himself whether he really has the strength for it all; if it were the exertions of some real task or the excitement of creating, he says, but these material difficulties of getting a thing going!
Unfortunately I hit upon the idea of glancing through a reply to Dr. Puschmann’s essay, and trembled in my very soul to see intimate relationships being discussed from this angle and from that, but I recover my composure and accept it with all my heart as expiation and atonement! Now and again R.’s spirits rose, and then he said, among other things, “It is all too much: henhouse, circular to the patrons, Loser, Tesarini, my waiting singers, it really is too much of a muddle.”
On R.’s behalf I write a letter of thanks to New York, where the Philharmonic Society has made him an honorary member.