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Heligoland, September 7th, 1849
I am very sorry, my dear M. Reinecke, not to have met you at Hamburg. It would have been such a real pleasure to me to make acquaintance again with your Nonet, and it seems to me, judging from its antecedents in the form of a Concerto, that by this decisive transformation it ought to be a most honorably successful work.
The "Myrthen Lieder" have never been sent to me. If you happen to have a copy I should be very much obliged if you would send it me to Schuberth's address.
With regard to the article which has appeared in "La Musique" I have all sorts of excuses to make to you. The editors of the paper thought fit, I do not know why, to give it a title which I completely disavow, and which would certainly have never entered into my mind. Moreover the printer has not been sparing of changing several words and omitting others. Such are the inevitable disadvantages of articles sent by post, and of which the proof correctors cannot read the writing.
Anyhow, such as it is, I am glad to think that it cannot have done you any harm in the mind of the French public, which has customs and requirements that one must know well when one wishes above all things to serve one's friends by being just to them.
Two numbers of your "Kleine Fantasie-Stucke" have been distributed, up to about a thousand copies, with the paper "La Musique," under the title of "Bluettes,"--a rather ill-chosen title to my idea,--but, notwithstanding this title and the words "adopted by F. Liszt," which the editors have further taken the responsibility of putting, I am persuaded that this publication is a good opening (in material) into the musical world of France, and, looking at this result only, I am charmed to have been able to contribute to it.
I shall return to Hamburg by the last boat from Heligoland on the 27th of September, in order to go to the baths of Eilsen, where I expect to spend all the month of October. In November I shall be back in Weymar for the rest of the winter.
If you would have the kindness to send to Schuberth's address a case of 250 cigars of a pretty good size from the Bremen Manufactory, I should be very much obliged to you, and would take care to let you have the money (which in any case will not be a very great sum) through Schuberth. The samples you sent me to Weymar did reach me, but at a moment when I was extremely occupied, so that I forgot them. Pray let me hear from you from time to time, my dear M. Reinecke, and regard me as a friend who is sincerely attached to you.
F. Liszt
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