Tuesday, November 10:
On Luther’s and Schiller’s birthday. I read yesterday in a newspaper that Hans gave a very well attended matinee recital in London; I thank Fate for shaping his career as a virtuoso so favorably. How different it might all have been, and how dismal!
The month of November is always the most eventful in my life. If Götterdämmerung is really completed this month, then in silence and humility I shall understand you, O sublime power who guides me!
I wrote to Dr. Pringsheim, who claims to have found the connection between Darwinism and Wagnerianism in primitive human beings who are singing. R. goes for a walk in the afternoon while I am occupied with domestic matters and lessons for the children; just as he is stroking and teasing Rus, two poor women carrying high wooden baskets on their backs encounter him and cry out: “Oh, Herr Richard Wagner, have pity on us! Our man is at home, has to pay 8 florins rent, and doesn’t know where to find it.” R. gives each of them a florin; we discuss whether he ought to have given more.
R. says: “If I had given them the whole of the rent, what would it have meant? Fundamentally one can’t help others, but I wanted our meeting to remain in their minds as a sign of friendliness, and for that the two florins were just right.” At dusk I wandered a while in the garden by myself with troubled thoughts. Come what may, I consoled myself, the children’s youth has run a free and harmonious course, the rest must be left to the forces of Heaven or earth.
In the evening an attempt to read Prof. Overbeck’s book. But R. is so vexed by it that he lays it aside. Instead, he reads to me from the report of the general staff, and if, with the Battle of Colombey, we again had to shudder over the terrible damage which can be caused by the willfulness of a limited intelligence, nonetheless the description of this evil event by the man who surely had to suffer most from it is so magnificently calm and simple that its effect is quite uplifting.