Friday, April 21:
In the morning the conductor Schmidt; the rehearsal at 12. Richard greeted with a flourish; everything well and good, but the orchestra! In despair R. takes the baton himself, but nothing sounds right, a terrible decline! R. so perturbed that he writes to Tausig, who had informed him that at the Emperor’s command everything in Berlin would be at his disposal, telling him he does not wish to conduct the concert.
Dinner with the Brockhauses and a Prof. Danz from Jena. R. makes much fun, particularly about the theater director Haase and his producer v. Strantz, whose inimitable dignity of comportment is to him like a ghostly breath from the past. He says this was what Wilhelm Meister was striving for; we laugh heartily at his funny demonstration. Hermann we find immensely engaging.
In the evening to Clemens’ in the parsonage; a very congenial gathering. In Hermann we recognize a charming and very original character, much depth beneath the refinement: “an engaging, eloquently intellectual, reserved character,” as R. says.