However, some wrong notes in this arrangement have drawn my attention to the fact that very probably there are many errors in the score as well.  You will remember that it was a copy which I sent to you for your own use, asking you to correct such errors as might occur in your mind, or else to have them corrected, because it would be tedious for me to revise the copy.  For the same reason I urgently requested the Hartels, if they printed the score, to send me a proof.  You are in frequent communication with the Hartels, and the edition of this overture is really your doing.  Be not angry therefore if I ask you to set the matter completely right when convenient.  For heaven’s sake, forgive me for troubling you with this trifle.  The day after tomorrow I have my sixth concert, and a month afterwards I start for home.

Shall I hear from you soon?

A thousand greetings.

Your R. W.

189.  Dearest Richard,

I returned here yesterday from the Dusseldorf Musical Festival, tired and dull.  Hiller, who conducted the whole, had invited me, and it interested me to go through the whole thing for once, to hear “Paradise and the Peri,” and to applaud Jenny Lind.  I need not tell you anything about it, and I am not much the wiser myself.  Although the whole festival may be called a great success, it wanted something which, indeed, could not have been expected from it.  In the art world there are very different kinds of laurels and thistles, but you need care very little about such.  “The eagle flies to the sun.”

Then you are reading Dante?  He is excellent company for you.  I, on my part, shall furnish a kind of commentary to his work.  For a long time I had in my head a Dante symphony, and in the course of this year it is to be finished.  There are to be three movements, hell, purgatory, and paradise, the two first purely instrumental, the last with chorus.  When I visit you in autumn, I shall probably be able to bring it with me; and if you do not dislike it, you must allow me to inscribe it with your name.

With the Hartels little can be done.  If the arrangement for four hands of the Faust overture has already been made, I do not advise you to propose some one else.  The only thing that can be done with the four-hand arrangement is to ask Klindworth to make some corrections in accordance with your instructions, and to have some of the plates newly engraved without mentioning Klindworth’s name on the title-page.  Another time it would be a practical thing to send in the four-hand arrangement together with the score, and to come to terms with the publisher about it.

The attitude of the Hartels towards us is naturally always a little reserved.  I, for my part, cannot complain of them, and they have always treated me in a decent and gentlemanly manner.  But I should not rely upon them for many things, because their intimate friends are decidedly adverse to us; and for the present we shall not be able to arrive at more than a peaceful, expectant footing with them.  Although this may sometimes be inconvenient, I think it best to let it continue.