Friday, May 26:
Horses and coachmen come to Wahnfried, which is unfortunately covered by a gray sky. I use the former to drive to friend Gross’s and report on many business matters. When I return home, R. receives me in a very cheerful way and says he has been helping Jouk., who is decorating my room; he says that some of the cloth was left over, enough for cravats for them both, but now, since an empty space remained, they are sacrificing their cravats. He is pleased that I should use what remained from the hangings in the salon in this way! He has been sent a printed leaflet about the significance of the Jews: they comprise our civilization, he says, that is obvious, and that is why it is worth nothing.
When I come down to the salon around 6 o’clock, I find R. in earnest conversation with the Count; he has been asking him how he came to study such things as the Persian language, and he is pleased that I join them. He praises the Count’s writings, saying that such work is the finest product of a lifetime. But they both tear lyric poetry to pieces, and R.’s motto, “I am like a flower,” is seized upon joyfully by the Count and continually quoted. In the evening R. reads to us the beginning of Richard II, to our enchantment; impossible to describe all there is in it, yet impossible not to talk about it after such a reading. R. has read a new article by Hans which again, it seems, contains jabs at him! He uses this occasion to express his utter hatred for the musical establishment, and says, “That has been our ultimate ruin, to humiliate the only thing that could have ennobled us, in the way these concert managements, music festivals, etc., do it.”