You can look back on a chapter of your life with pride, and return to your former sphere of action the richer by an experience. In perhaps the most unfavourable circumstances you have to record a sterling deed such as that of the Nibelungen-performances, fulfilled in the very brief period of your tenure of office; and you have helped an excellent man, like Fischer, not only to an appointment, but, what is of still more importance, to the free development of his gifts. That is much; and what is no less, is that you retire at the instant when the narrow-heartedness of short-sighted men prevents your being of further service to Art. That is worthy and right; and if three years ago we could recognise in your election a victory for our cause, in your withdrawal now we greet a victory of yourself over all the fallacies which others would assuredly have held before their eyes to keep them to the post.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 91