Thursday, November 24:
Henry VI is still our breakfast topic. R. goes to his work and today writes two and a half pages of his score, although the somewhat lavish meal yesterday, which he much enjoyed, did not entirely agree with him.
We go for a walk in the English Gardens in the afternoon and spend the evening in chat.
R. tells of his constantly recurring dreams: among others, one in which he has left or forgotten Friederike Meyer in Paris; also experiences with orchestras. The fact that Dr. Strecker now wants to publish the Prelude to Parsifal annoys him, like almost all notifications from the outside world (Herr Neumann again announces his intention of taking legal action against the management committee!). He says how pleasant it will be next year on the Nile: he will hear nothing for 3 months.
Discussion about the Emperor’s speech, in which everything hinges on taxes. And R. is much amused at a joke by J. Gallmeyer; he recalls this famous actress, her enthusiasm for him and the modesty with which she forbore from visiting him: “Such characters ought to be studied,” he says.
I talk about Talleyrand’s correspondence with Louis XVIII, the sparing of Saxony; R. feels it would have been better to give it to Prussia and do away with the dynasty which is disloyal to Protestantism.
Today R. said he was convinced that modern scientific studies were making people completely heartless.
A glance at a newly discovered picture of Napoleon I in his youth brings from him the remark how much more racial beauty, and expression too, there is in this head than, for instance, in Bismarck’s: “I can’t bear bald pates,” R. exclaims drolly, “Caesar has spoiled them for me.”
When I tell R. about the Congress of Vienna, he says, “It was Beethoven’s best period. The concert brought him 4,000 florins!”
He relates that he made a mistake in writing and wrote a stage direction for Kundry next to the violas.