Sunday, January 1:
Greeted R., the angel of my existence! And at the same time deep gratitude and a deep prayer of regret for all the good I have neglected to do and all the evil I have done.
The children, all five, come with greetings. Loulou recites her English poem to me in a good accent and proves in this, too, her easy powers of comprehension, just as she yesterday delighted me with her lively attentiveness while listening to music. Boni also listened with devotion and cried when she had to leave.
Family lunch; at about 4 o'clock Prof. N. takes his departure. R. has been ruling lines in his score, so this year will be nulla dies sine linea. Fidi starts the year with "Herr-mine," the word which to him expresses everything.
As some visitors arrived R. was just fixing his large pin (Der Bauer als Millionar) in a bright-green tie; when he told me he felt a little embarrassed, I answered him that he need not worry: to strangers he would look only like an archivist, a sort of Lindhorst. R. laughs and the name sticks: he calls me the Orange Lily and Prof. Nietzsche becomes the student Anselmus.
Yesterday morning, in great excitement, Richter brought us the news that Heinrich Porges has now really been appointed musical director in Munich. Since things were not going at all well in the theater, Baron Perfall played his favorite trick of proclaiming through the newspapers that it was all up with freedom in the Munich theater, since R. Wagner was having himself appointed manager.
The object was to make Porges's appointment look like R.'s work, because Porges is known only as a supporter of Wagner, and at the same time to secure the permanent appointment of Herr Wullner, who is supposed to offset Porges, since it is known that the latter cannot conduct, or at least has never yet conducted. Things always remain exactly the same! But the King?