Wednesday, January 13:
Dreamed of Blandine, my sister. When I woke up, I looked for her: “Of course she is dead, alas.” Richard well, the children lively, but the weather dull.
Before going into the garden with the children I say adieu to Richard; he tells me his spirit is engulfed in heavy clouds, “the sort of thing one does not talk about.” Oh, how well I understand him! Yet in the early morning, when he wakened me with “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” on the piano, I had hoped his mood would remain cheerful.
When I return and go once more to greet him, he says, “Poor woman, all you have is me!” “Then I am not poor,” I observe. However, he is working hard on his score.
At table the conversation turns to Lola Montez. Describing her wretched ending, I say, “The poor creature!” Richard admonishes me severely, saying that such heartless, daemonic beings should not be grieved over, one should reserve one’s pity for others. He is certainly right, yet badness seems to me always pitiable and nothing more worthy of our compassion than a wretched ending.
We are delighted with the books he has bought, a new Lessing and the Simrock set of folk tales. The latter in particular delights me. While with the children in the evening he reads me two letters from Paris; the Rienzi venture there is being wretchedly handled. I continue to hope that it will not reach the stage. The Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin with the “Bridal Song” is reported to have been a tremendous success.
But no news of the children in Munich. I am not worried, just sorrowful. My worries concern the future, and it is for that reason that my nights are always bad and uneasy.
In the evening R. again spoke somberly; he believes that after his death they will drop his works entirely, and he will live on in human memory only as a phantom. However bad things look among the public, the theaters, and the press, I still cannot believe that he will disappear in this way. He maintains that not a soul studies his scores, and that seems to me, however widespread the stupidity and indifference, scarcely possible.
In the evening he dictated to me again, and the day ended very merrily with his reminiscences of his second visit to London. I looked in once more on the sleeping children.