Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 14, 1875

Overview

Though still not fully recovered, R. works through letters, books, and accounts, and later dictates his circular to the singers. A report about London schools leads him into a fierce denunciation of English cruelty toward the poor, especially after he recalls police driving homeless people from shelter to shelter.

Content

Thursday, January 14:

R. is still not completely well. He writes several business letters, reads Gfrorer, and looks through the bills. In the evening he dictates to me his circular to the singers.

A statistical account of the incredibly small number of schools in London, compared with this country, rouses R. to a long discourse on the wickedness and heartlessness of conditions in England. In London he had seen how the police chased the poor people from one courtyard to another, never directing them to a place where they might find shelter. Among these people was a woman with beautiful features.