I could not help wondering whether I should have to give up my Penzing establishment, but, on the other hand, what alternative was open to me?  Every time I was seized with the desire to compose, these cares obtruded themselves on my mind, until, seeing that it was only a question of putting things off from day to day, I was driven to take up the study of Dunker’s Geschichte des Alterthums.  In the end my correspondence about concerts swallowed up the whole of my time.  I first asked Heinrich Porges to see what he could arrange in Prague.  He also held out a reasonable prospect of a concert at Lowenberg, relying upon the favourable disposition of the Prince of Hohenzollern, who lived there.  I was also advised to apply to Hans von Bronsart, who at this time was conductor to a private orchestral society in Dresden.  He responded loyally to my proposition, and between us we settled the date and programme of a concert to be conducted by me in Dresden.  As the Grand Duke of Baden had also placed his theatre at Karlsruhe at my disposal for a concert to be given in November, I thought I had now done enough in this direction to be entitled to take up something different.  I therefore wrote a fairly long article for Uhl-Frobel’s paper Der Botschafter on the Imperial Grand Opera House in Vienna, in which I made suggestions for a thorough reform of this very badly managed institution.  The excellence of this article was at once acknowledged on all sides, even by the press; and I appear to have made some impression in the highest administrative circles, for I shortly afterwards heard from my friend Rudolf Liechtenstein, that tentative advances had been made to him with a view to his accepting the position of manager, associated with which there was certainly an idea of asking me to become conductor of the Grand Opera.  Among the reasons which caused this proposal to fall through was the fear, Liechtenstein informed me, that under his direction people would hear nothing but ‘Wagner operas.’

In the end it was a relief to escape from the anxieties of my position by starting on my concert tour.  First I went to Prague, in the beginning of November, to try my luck again in the matter of big receipts.  Unfortunately Heinrich Porges had not been able to take the arrangements in hand this time, and his deputies, who were very busy schoolmasters, were not at all his equals for the task.  Expenses were increased, while receipts diminished, for they had not ventured to ask such high prices as before.  I wished to repair this deficiency by a second concert a few days later, and insisted on the point, although my friends urgently dissuaded me, and, as the event proved, they were quite right.  This time the receipts hardly covered the costs, and as I had been obliged to send away the proceeds of the first concert to redeem an old bill in Vienna, I had no other means of paying my hotel expenses and my fare home than by accepting the offer of a banker, who posed as a patron, to help me out of my embarrassment.