Sunday, December 17:
R. had a somewhat restless night. At breakfast he comes back to his impressions of the whist game, we mention Gobineau, who never touched a playing card, then Semper, and R. recalls his failure to visit Tribschen after his long letter. This causes me to observe that there is something curious about forgiving: one may see these disloyal people again, but how can one have the same feelings of affection toward them? R. says, “Yes, all sympathy for what they say or do, their gestures and expressions, has been lost.”
At lunch my father says jokingly that he feels humiliated - he has been told that all he is now good for is playing whist! When R. hears that, he greatly regrets what he has been saying, and he tries in every conceivable way to make up for it, just as he is wonderfully kind toward Jouk., having been somewhat curt with him on the previous day. At lunch there was talk of ancient Greek music, toward which my father shows himself cool, if not actually hostile. R. then says that he read a piece about Arabian music which could frighten one out of one’s wits. “The simplicity of our music is truly godlike, as simple as Christianity; all this wealth of tones and half-tones strikes me as idolatry.”
Over coffee he tells my father many stories from the Bayreuther Blätter, which make him laugh heartily. Since the doctor has ordered Eva to be kept very quiet, I remain alone with her; R. goes out with the children, and they tell me he was very cheerful and sprightly and walked along swiftly and briskly; he himself is conscious of it and says it does him good to be back in his métier (conducting). At supper he repeats the declaration he made at lunch: he is looking forward to a splendid game of whist; yesterday the rehearsal had left him feeling agitated, then his bad cards on top of that, along with my father’s solemnity - it had all been too much for him.
There is talk of Princess H. and the difficulties she is having with her household; R. says that a widow should not run a household of her own, she should either live with her children or go into a convent. Widowers, too, he says to my father. We play whist with much merriment, R. has good cards, and he also tells my father that the game is nothing if one does not take it seriously. But in the end, when R. tries to explain cadential form with examples from Die Schweizerfamilie or Das unterbrochene Opferfest, and my father, after comparing the beginning with the “Marseillaise,” stops listening, a comical situation arises which at first causes great laughter, but then R. becomes extremely annoyed; my father goes off, still amid laughter, but when R. finds a letter from Hedwig L[iechtenstein] to Lusch on the table, he loses his temper. We go to bed, but R. continues for a long time talking to himself in his room, severely criticizing my father. I go to him; when he assures me that it is not meant against me, I attempt to make a joke of it, telling him that it was like the cuff on Meyer’s ears - “it has got nothing to do with you.” However, he continues to complain about my father’s character. I try to make him see that my father is very tired and not fully aware of what is going on, but he will only half accept it. I go off to bed; it is a long time before he follows me; he comes in quietly, looks to see if I am asleep; when I say good night to him, he exclaims, “You best of all creatures!” and a very tender embrace delivers us lovingly into the arms of the friendliest of gods!
During whist R. talks about his symphony and says that it could be placed between Beethoven’s 2nd and 3rd, and it sounds very droll when he adds, “If one really thought that, one would be surprised at the advanced state of preparations for the Eroica!” Then to my father: “If we write symphonies, Franz, then let us stop contrasting one theme with another, a method Beethoven has exhausted. We should just spin a melodic line until it can be spun no farther; but on no account drama!” At lunch R. told the story of a woman who threw her children to the wolves; I observed that a mother dog would have sacrificed herself first, and R. says, “Yes, because she has no reasoning power.” R. tells us that he received a complaining letter from Herr Neumann.