The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎614v] (119/239)

RICHARD AND MINNA WAGNER.
sleep the first night in the calm belief it would be possible hence
forward. Next morning came a strange intervention of Fate,
whose ocular demonstration really set me in amazement this time.
Listen !
“ Since our last meeting in Venice 1 a prolonged stagnation had
instinctively entered the correspondence between myself and my
lady-friend W[esendonc]k. Everything is so perfectly under
stood between us, and ordered by the fullest resignation, that it is
only in a good and friendly humour that I still communicate with
her; particularly since the society of her most estimable husband
has become so trying to me—quite apart from personal considera
tions—that, renouncing any more enduring personal intercourse
with both of them, I merely maintain a slight intercourse by
letter, chiefly meant to ease her load of life a little : in times of
such upset and trouble, as these last have been for me, I prefer to
keep dead silence. So it happened that my lady-friend had heard
nothing at all of my journey to Paris, and sent me a little
Christmas-present to Vienna, which returned to her at Zurich
after going long astray. After a while I did write from Paris,
telling her also of my proposed migration to the Ehine; whereon
she informed me of the miscarriage of her Christmas parcel, and
asked me to acquaint her with my eventual address on the Rhine,
that she might forward me the present there. This I accordingly
did, from Mayence, but remained long without tidings. At last
she tells me briefly she has been at Diisseldorf to bury her mother,
and I convey to her my heartfelt sympathy forthwith. For this
she thanks me at some length, as also for the Meistersinger [rough
MS. poem], and announces despatch of the belated Christmas
gift.
“ Now > that tetter arrives here on the second, the little box on
the third day of my wife’s stay with me, and both fall into the
unhappy woman s hands at once. Incapable of viewing my re
lations to that lady in aught save a revoltingly trivial light, she
i cfuses to understand any of my explanations—given simply for
the sake of reassuring her—but bursts into that common tone again
vhich makes me lose all self-possession, in my turn : she reads
m y anger as an effect of that lady’s agitating hold upon me, and—
the whole mad house of cards stands stark once more ! It was
enough to make me lose my senses : this woman on just the self
same spot as four years since ; the same explosions, word for word,
the self-same common tone !
“ These ragings over, I composed myself again, tried to regard
(1) When Wagner paid a three-day visit to the Wesendoncks, leaving Vienna
November 7th and returning the 13th. Those three days clearly told him all;
see letters 124-125, E. Wagner to M. Wesendonclz.