Monday, February 12:
R. got up once during the night and looked among his papers for his checkbook, which he did not find, and that disturbs him somewhat. He tells me gaily at breakfast that his barber has been complimenting him on his progress in Italian. R. had spoken of the rain as "piova fruttuosa" ["fruitful rain"]. And indeed a sirocco is blowing; we say goodbye to the poor conductor, who is still very run down. R. worked on his article.
At lunch the children and Jouk. tell us all sorts of droll things about the soirée yesterday, which amuse R. and tempt him into relating some very drastic jokes and anecdotes. In the afternoon he goes out with Eva — since I am expecting Princess Hatzfeldt — and he tells me on his return that he gave Eva some chocolate. Before supper he shows me in the newspaper a letter from my father, in which he quasi-justifies his attitude toward the Jewish problem; the letter is very well written, but we regret that he felt the need to write it. R. recalls that it was the Princess who landed him in all these difficulties, and he says, "Your father goes to his ruin out of pure chivalry!"
At supper we discuss with the children the sea and its creatures; before that, prisons, penalties (the treadmill), all there to protect property. (Yesterday R. read to me some very fine and frank statements by Bismarck about his longing to withdraw from affairs.) He reads Undine, of which he prefers the first part. He makes many jokes about the fact that the copy Jouk.'s father used for his translation is full of ink blots, and he quotes the joke from the Fliegende Blätter in which a boy made excuses for all the ink blots in his schoolbook by saying that the nose of his neighbour, a little Moor, had been bleeding.
When I am already lying in bed, I hear him talking volubly and loudly; I get up and go into his room. "I was talking to you," he says, and embraces me tenderly and long. "Once in 5,000 years it succeeds!" "I was talking about Undine, the being who longed for a soul." He goes to the piano, plays the mournful theme "Rheingold, Rheingold," continues with "False and base all those who dwell up above." "Extraordinary that I saw this so clearly at that time!" And as he is lying in bed, he says, "I feel loving toward them, these subservient creatures of the deep, with all their yearning."
[Cosima Wagner's entries end here. On the following day Richard Wagner died. The ensuing entry, which bears no date, was made in the Diaries by Daniela presumably immediately after Wagner's death:]
Among Papa's last remarks were those made at lunch (presumably on Monday), when he said he had read Herr v. Stein's article about the chorus in Aeschylus with great satisfaction. Regarding Aeschylus himself he exclaimed, "My admiration for him keeps on growing — Zeus's eagle for Artemis's pregnant hare, that reminds one of the Duchess of Anhalt's royal blood for ox's blood." On the previous evening he had asked Mama's opinion on whether he should retain Die Kapitulation in the second edition of his works, since it had been received so stupidly even in Germany, and by no means understood by his friends, either.
At our last meal on his final evening he said that the best thing that could happen to one would be to be exiled to Ceylon; the short days depressed him, it seemed like a perpetual winter. To Joukowsky he said, "You laughed when I said I was the most unfortunate of men for having built my lovely house in such a foul climate, but it is true." He considered, along with Mama, how little the town of Bayreuth had offered him, although they had both made efforts in all directions, and he said he could scarcely imagine Siegfried spending his whole time there, so that he had ended up exactly as he had begun. But a picture of the countryside near Brunswick appealed to him — if only the weather were better! He said he missed his library; he would have liked to go to the theater every evening, preferably to see things like Le Baruffe Chiozzotte. He also spoke with warm appreciation of Stein's dialogues, of Cornelia and Catherine of Siena, remarking particularly on the stumbling walk and the smile, and with it the holy intrigue.
In the evening alone with Mama (Sunday) he said as he sat down at the piano that "The Eternal in the Feminine" would be his last work, except perhaps at most something on Italian church music and German military music. On one of his last outings with Mama he resolved to write to the Duke of Mecklenburg, expressing his regret at having perhaps offended this friendly gentleman, and very cordially remembering the Duke's heir.
His expressions of disgust against affairs of state were connected with Bismarck's having himself carried into the Reichstag to announce that the Emperor was giving so-and-so-many hundred thousand marks for the victims of the floods — a sum which was to come not from his own money, but from the disposal fund, that is to say, from the people.
One of his dreams during his two last nights was that he received letters from women — one of them Frau Wesendonck, another a woman whom both Papa and Mama had forgotten [added at foot of page: "perhaps Friederike Meyer, of whom Papa was speaking during his last days, assuming that she was probably dead"]; he said he did not open these two, but set them on either side of the table, saying to himself, "What if Cosima is jealous?"
When there was talk of the studio which he wished to acquire in the Palazzo Vendramin for Joukowsky, he replied to Mama, who wanted him to sit for his portrait, that he no longer wished to be painted; he was satisfied with the one photograph showing him three-quarter face, and he wanted to hear no more talk of pictures. A joke he made to Georg while dressing, and which he told Mama during a gondola ride, was: "What is the difference between a flannel jacket and a tree? One grows long and the other short!"
On one of his last journeys to the Piazzetta, as the gondola was turning into the canal beneath the Bridge of Sighs, Papa told Mama of an elephant in Siam which, taking part in a festival procession, suddenly went mad and caused some damage, whereupon the people blinded the innocent beast in the most horrible manner and tortured it to death; this brought from Papa reflections on the lamentable foolishness and wickedness of people.