The last few weeks have been very unsettling for me, dear and honoured friend, though not unpleasant. All the concert plans which I gave up at the time of my stay in Paris have now, one after the other, materialized. The persistence of the Halberstadters, Brunswickers, and Schweriners, that I should play to them, found an ally in the persistence of wintry weather, and so vanishes the last pretence of sacrificing my own interests for the sake of Roger’s friends.
I brought back a great piece of news from Brunswick yesterday. In a momentary absence of bad temper three days ago the Duke gave permission for Tannhäuser to be played, on condition that there should be no extra outlay in connexion with it. A new and (without exaggeration) magnificent theatre has been built and is to be opened in the beginning of October. Kapellmeister Abt wishes to celebrate the occasion with Tannhäuser and is hoping that the public response will be so brilliant that the Duke, as a good economist, will see fit to allow others of your operas to be performed.
Then Herr von Gall, who was present with me at a very decent performance of the Dutchman at Frankfurt (newly rehearsed, and received with wild enthusiasm), conceived the desire to transplant this opera to Stuttgart. So that it looks as if the material outcome of your “pre-March” work was not yet complete.
I hear that you have been to Karlsruhe and I was delighted that you had decided to go. You will not, I hope, have had reason to regret it. I have confidence in the Grand Duke’s conscientiousness. He is said to be difficult to bring to the point, but rigid in carrying out what he has promised. I should so much like to know a little more about your personal relations with both these amiable people. The Frankfurt papers had only very meagre reports. One curiosity I did strike, however: shortly before your arrival at Karlsruhe there appeared in the Didaskalie (advertising organ of the Karlsruhe intendant) a further statement as to the impossibility of producing Tristan and Isolde. This was not, I swear, merely inspired by Uncle Devrient, but presumably written by his own hand. Perfidious swine! Every day throughout the month of April the Frankfurt Konversationsblatt had an excellently written, detailed description of everything that concerned the Paris performance of Tannhäuser. I have been nosing round, but cannot trace the writer. Whoever it is, I am delighted that a section of the press should be exerting itself to keep up the public interest in you. If the Tristan performance at Karlsruhe takes place, as you intend, the box-office will have to rely mainly on the influx of south German residents in the neighbourhood (Stuttgarters, Darmstadters, Mannheimers, Frankfurters). But our crowned Maecenases appreciate an artist nowadays according to what he brings in for them, and not according to what they spend for him.
I have not yet thanked you for your divinely good and affectionate letter of April 4. It came just in the rush of concert work, now behind me, which is usually crowded into the end of the week; and for the rest of the time I had to double my teaching activities in Berlin, so that my only free time was that spent in the railway carriage, and even then I had to exercise my memory. Now I have really a little peace until the middle of June, when, as I told you, I have to take my wife to Reichenhall. When do you go to Vienna? You will be obliged to go through Salzburg, coming from Paris, so we may perhaps see you on your way there or back. Reichenhall is about ten miles from Salzburg, an hour and a half by coach.
Liszt left Weimar yesterday. After a short stop at Frankfurt and a slightly longer one in Brussels he will arrive in Paris, probably by May 8 at latest. He is not staying with the Olliviers, but at the Hôtel du Helder, quite near you therefore. I hope that your meeting will have the result which I have long desired in the interests of my own most sacred feelings, though so far in vain. The hour which brings you two face to face has for me the character of a Whitsun festival. Would I could be free to join you!
I sent for Baudelaire and found him most refreshing. Beckmann mentioned a Janin feuilleton in his letter recently, but I have not been able to obtain it. If you see B., would you mind asking him whether he received my reply? He asked me to do something for which I at once placed myself at his service, and I am still waiting for his next step. This is all for today, just a sign of life, which I hope you will answer if it is not too great an effort.
PS. Do give Liszt a word of encouragement. He needs it so as coming from you. His self-confidence has given way lamentably under the caresses of German criticism on paper and otherwise. The effect of your Leipzig letter penetrated everywhere and carried general conviction. It has raised you in the estimation of all circles, and indeed it was a masterpiece of its kind. You alone could have done it. One cannot deny the Germans a certain respect for great men, particularly when it costs them nothing to affirm it.
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. 288