Sunday, July 11:
R. slept well, and we enjoy a cheerful breakfast, though it soon gives way to bitter thoughts: “One cannot be blamed for feeling nothing but disgust for such a nation, for regretting that one has to speak the same language as these people.” And he begins to talk of the petition concerning vivisection. “One’s own thoughts, too, one could be disgusted with them, seeing how they are represented. Our crime of settling down in Bayreuth was a fond delusion; I am coming more and more to feel that the only thing for us now is a vagabond life, with no home at all for ourselves and our children. We should be like the old woman who sat down to rest: We are running Botsch (Botschaft [messages])!” In our amusement over this idea we talk about America; I am to write to Jenkins for next September.
At our last lunch he spoke words of encouragement to our friend Stein and said: “At your age, 23, I got married, and I had already written two operas and many overtures. You see how far one can get from the fact that at the age of 68 I have to think of traveling to America in order to gain my independence.” (He also wants to keep Parsifal itself.) Since he is not feeling entirely well, there is no sea bath today, for he has severe congestions. After a siesta he plays the Pastoral with Lusch as a piano duet. Herr Rub. surprises us in the middle of it and continues with it (storm and finale), to our great delight. R. feels enchanted anew by this wonderful work.
But only too soon he reverts to his usual line of thought. Beginning with joking remarks, such as, “I should like to see field marshals turned into meadow marshals,” he breaks out into expressions of indignation. “Oh, this nation of ours!” he exclaims at supper, “no other is quite so wretched; the English are at least dealing with this problem properly.” In the evening he discusses various musical matters with Herr Rub., and when the latter mentions, among other things, the witticisms the Papageno in Vienna is now making, R. says, “Oh, he can never be done with too little wit.” Later he reads some of Goethe’s letters to us.
Monday, July 12:
The heat is probably to blame. But he takes his peau de chagrin walk. At breakfast he greets me with Goethe’s letter of dedication to King Ludwig I of Bavaria, which he finds very moving and which touches me deeply when he reads it to me. He intends to mention it to the King of Bavaria, for he entered his life at just the right moment, he says. “The very last moment,” say I. He: “Yes, and how much energy had already been frittered away!” “When I have put my religion in order, I shall set about earning money,” he says, “and then I shall write nothing but symphonies. I’m looking forward to that.” To the telegram, he remarks jokingly, he will have to reply “Tantara!”
A letter from Herr v. Stein gives us much to talk about concerning this unusual person and our remarkable relationship with him. Yesterday Lusch told us about a dialogue he had read to her, Bruno and Shakespeare in a London tavern. Jouk. observes that if he had discovered him he would have remained in London, “or moved to Bayreuth with him,” R. interjects. Over afternoon coffee he talks about our friend and says, “He is like a tender and ethereal little cloud coming from a race which, though talented, possessed perhaps some streaks of brutality; the brutality and strength have gone, and all that remains is this little spark of intellectuality, and none of the robustness.”
(I am again beset by great worry and concern over the physical condition of the two elder girls. Last year Frau Herz allayed my fears, but now Dr. Schron’s examination has revealed a bad state of affairs. Great inner efforts to keep this concern to myself and not to upset the girls or R. with it.)
America constantly in our conversations; R. would like most of all to go directly there in September in order to make his fortune. We take a sea bath together, R., two of the children, and I; he is pleased with Eva’s graceful swimming. Siegfried still in bed with a headache, but nothing to cause any anxiety. Vesuvius very active for a while, until, as R. says, “the devil’s coffee has been brewed.”