With pleasure, with indescribable pleasure, do I take up my pen to tell you that I at last feel human again, less incapable than before of writing a sensible line to you in particular and of asking you to withhold the recognition of my right to exist no longer. On the 12th of this month at three in the morning Cosima was delivered of a “healthy girl.” The circumstances were those which constitute what is called a very happy delivery—why, I cannot imagine, for honestly it was more horrible than I had imagined to be possible. Poor women, they have a positive martyrdom to go through, and the onlooker who is, relatively speaking, bound to appear unaffected by it plays an even more pitiful part. Well, it is over, and my wife is as well as is possible and at present in a normal—that is, uncritical—condition. The six weeks’ imprisonment which she has to undergo is comforting to look forward to in comparison with those bad alarming days before. As for me, after my long period of oppression, I say with Don Octavio (though in a different sense): “Respiro”; and one of my first new breaths is naturally blown into your eyes. In the middle of next month our daughter will receive the names Daniela Senta, if you will permit her, your eldest daughter, to choose that sacred personage for her patron saint. It would be my own and my wife’s greatest happiness to dedicate her one day to your service. Should she have any of the talent requisite to an Isolde, she shall be a singer. It will be the devil’s own luck if she is not furiously musical.
But enough of the nursery, although I really do not know what else to write about. I live more cut off and unsociably than ever and am scrupulously careful to avoid troubling myself about what is spoken or written (I won’t say “done,” for only in the Jews’ quarter is anything done).
After innumerable postponements, signalled by red placards, your Lohengrin was given again for the first time this season. As the house was overflowing, a repetition is announced for next Sunday. The two Italian companies at the Royal and Victoria theatres appear to absorb the rest of people’s interest. The Berliners are mad with enthusiasm over a certain alto, Fräulein Trebelli, who is being idolized in the Jenny Lind fashion. I expect we shall see two parties rise up as once in Byzantium, the green and the blue. The court is still away. It will be all the same, though, whichever cause it espouses. The poor ballet is heading towards ruin. At the opera they are preparing for a revival of Spontini’s Nurmahal and (with more dispatch) Lachner’s Catherina von Cornaro. The result will be a confirmation of two death certificates, I imagine. I cannot think what the Princess of Prussia arranged with you at Baden; the woman is, I suppose, too superficial to deign to order them to put Tristan in hand here. Wagner, the manager, certainly robbed me of the score a month back, and, judging by his good intentions and demonstrations and his report on Taubert’s enthusiasm for the work, I thought it seemed clear that if it depended on these two gentlemen they would do their utmost to combat any assumptions from on high. But the opera-house certainly cannot carry on for ever without one of your operas and I assume therefore that they will look out Rienzi or the Dutchman. If only I could warm them up a little at court about it!
Liszt has good news from Rome: he has had to wait a long time. The Princess appears to have worked the dispensation at last and announces her return at the end of the month. I do not yet feel jubilant, for I see the workings of an unfavourable star in this affair, and all the former good news proved to be premature. In the beginning of November my father-in-law is coming to us for the christening. The child will naturally be received into the bosom of the “one and only,” although certain honest and sensible men have advised Judaism.
I have not been able to get going yet with my various items of work and musical plans for concerts and so on. It seems likely that I shall keep as quiet as possible this season and only think how to earn my travelling expenses—and perhaps my wife’s—to Paris for the Tannhäuser performance.
Alexander Ritter passed through here the other day on his way to Schwerin, where he is now going to live. His wife will take up her old post at the theatre. Karl is still in Naples with Winterberger, where he seems to be squandering his capital (according to accounts Alex. has received from Petersburg) and behaving like a fanatical Bourbonist and Austrian. I suppose I must not expect to hear from you yourself, as you will be having to toil by day and night, but it would be very nice if you would depute Lindau or Flaxland to send me your news. The arrangement or disarrangement of the Tannhäuser Overture has aroused your displeasure, I hope. Kindest regards from us both to your wife. Do not be too angry with me.
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. 285