I have waited forty-eight hours, my dear friend, before answering your last letter; you must not take it as a sign of lukewarmness. I missed Teichmann twice the day before yesterday and found him at home yesterday, but it was only today that I got the sort of answer out of him that you would want. It was to this effect:
That you should at once send me a receipt for seventy talers for Teichmann, as representing an advance on your share of the dividends for the current (third) quarter of the year. Teichmann will then honour my demand at the box-office and I shall immediately send you Austrian money, or rather bills. This solution of the matter seemed at first to present peculiar difficulties; I really did not dare to expect today’s answer after my yesterday’s visit. But Teichmann proved to be obliging and amiable. He sent me to consult a lawyer, Justizrat Licht, about my power of attorney, and legal opinion has it that you should have a judicial act made out according to the forms of the country in which you are at present living; that is, obtain through an Austrian solicitor the powers necessary for me to draw the sums that are due to you. There is, it appears, no other way of doing it. And in fact it seems to me essential since, in spite of Teichmann’s courtesy, there is no avoiding the delays caused by the receipts and so on, and your point is that you want it immediately.
And, by the way, don’t think me a cad. Had my still outstanding fee for the court concert come in, I should have sent it you straight away. Equally as a matter of course do I insist on your claiming the remuneration for the pianoforte score of Aulis from Härtel’s. I always did regard that piece of work as a very minor service rendered to you. Goldstein is at Dieppe. He was the only soul I could have tapped at the moment. Unfortunately I had already transferred the hundred reichstalers in question to his firm on receiving them. Nothing else possible anywhere. Stern had played me a nasty trick into the bargain. Before I had written from Zürich to say I was arriving here on August 19, he had sent off another letter to Herr Pflughaupt, a pupil of Liszt, asking him to take my place. And although this fellow only deputized for me for six hours, his travelling expenses have run up the fee to a much more dazzling figure than I was at all prepared for. For the moment, therefore, I am likewise a Hessen-Casseleer (penniless).
Curious the way our letters crossed! I wrote on the 8th, but on the 9th your letter arrived. I don’t know whether you had the letter, as all the address Richter gave me was Palazzo Giustiniani. Tannhäuser has been put on only once so far. Receipts: 1,007 reichstalers. Teichmann hopes it will be produced once more this month, though, worse luck, with Tuczek, as Johanna only returns the month after.
Lohengrin will certainly not appear before the end of November. The chorus has at last undergone a satisfactory and indeed essential reorganization. No one can really replace Krause as Telramund; Salomon is too stiff and his voice too low, Radwaner too Austrian and cloying. The King, Fricke; Elsa, Fräulein Wippern (quite a good choice, voice and production magnificent, looks not too prosaic, not much experience of stage routine yet); and the Herald, Pfister, who will certainly be more suitable than Rost.
Fortunately Formes has heard Lohengrin in Vienna, so that he has received some enlightenment as to his part—which he thought “very boring”—from Ander. What Johanna will make of Ortrud musically, Heaven only knows; you can be happy about the dramatic side.
A thousand thanks for your dear letter, which both touched and shamed me, on the ground of my admitted helplessness the other day. More presently; it is urgent that this should go today. I will just end up by trying to make you laugh at two bad jokes. The first is a Saxon jeu d’esprit: Ganz leise kräht er. Solution: Kanzleisekretär. [“Softly crows the cock.” The four words, pronounced with a Saxon accent and run together, sound the same as those for “government official.”—Tr.]
The second is a sample of culture in high circles: scene in an exhibition of paintings. The great lady, who has selected the painter Richter as her cicerone, stops in front of a picture of Lessing to remark: “Does not this shade of colouring remind you of old Duroc?” “Duroc? Really I do not know of any Duroc, Your Highness.” “But, as a painter, you must surely know Duroc! I mean the one who painted Marie Antoinette, the famous picture.”
Sorry if you are not in the mood for them. Well, good-bye, I must hurry. Do not be angry, and do be sure that another time I shall be better equipped to render you any small service.
PS. Remember me to Karl, please!
Source: Letters of Hans von Bülow to Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, His Daughter Daniela, Luise von Bülow, Karl Klindworth, Carl Bechstein, ed. Richard Count Du Moulin Eckart, trans. Hannah Waller, ed. Scott Goddard (Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), No. 276