Honored Friend!
Today I have been able to finish only half of the arrangement. Don't take it badly, I really could do no better. My Jewish conservatory director scheduled the students' examinations a week earlier than they had been previously planned. So I have plenty to do to shield the conservatory from blame, for I was much opposed to the ostentation of advancing the examination dates just now.
The arrangement of the Faust Overture in its old form was not my doing; I obtained it from Uhlig, and later on I left it with the Ritters. It was not practical but it might have facilitated my work. I hope to handle the score in such a way that you won't have to complain about an abundance of misplaced reverence.
If you really want to give me a return present—let us rather say, if you wish to give me joy—present me with your essays, which I don't own and which I keep drawing from the lending library—an occupation economically unfavorable. Or give me another copy of Der Ring des Nibelungen, since my once well bound book is completely spoiled with being read, a permanent practice of my so-called friends. Are you now quite well again? Liszt is to leave from Weimar on the 25th—his concert is scheduled here for the 6th of December. On the 15th he is supposed to conduct the second subscription concert in Hanover.
Joachim is here; he never got a letter from you, which would have given him the chance and joy of an answer. He was in Zurich in July and stayed there for a few days, expecting you, and finally he had to return.
I heard infamous things about Dorn concerning Tannhäuser. But he won't get off so easily. Yesterday I wrote him an externally very harmless and enormously polite letter from which he however—and only he himself—may and must gather that I know him. I believe that on reading it he won't blush, but grow pale.
Frau Frommann is awfully anxious and excited about the "Event of the 15th of December," the preliminary date of the first performance. If only she would succeed in getting the Princess of Prussia to that performance!
Taubert would be in truth—better. But I remind you of a nice song which you once sang to me and Karl in Zurich, and this after all is fitting to all the mess here too.
Yours faithfully
Hans v. Bülow
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 225