My dear Minna!
You are right in worrying about me and insisting that I continue and hasten my flight; but I am correspondingly confident about my situation, and you must believe me when I assure you that even if the worst happens I am in no danger here. Everything has been foreseen and taken care of by my numerous friends. Even if I am prosecuted with a warrant of arrest, the first person who is informed of it, twelve hours before it is published, will be the police director here, who is ready to notify me immediately, so that I may have plenty of time to leave quietly, or to move somewhere near by under a changed name. Why I don't want to make full arrangements for a precipitate flight to France I'll have to explain to you at length, for, you bad woman, you don't seem to understand me at all.
First: I must first see you again and be with you for a few days. This is the main thing and everything else is unimportant compared to it. I will not be separated from you this way. First I must come to an understanding with you about everything and about our future, and give you thousands of passionate kisses. Our meeting will strengthen us both, and everything which we will then begin will be more blissful than if we were now roughly torn apart. This is the most important of all.
Second: I first have to await the result of a statement I have made about my whole participation in the late Dresden catastrophe, and which I sent to Devrient; you yourself still seem to be uncertain whether I am not more deeply involved in the affair. What you heard everywhere in Dresden on your last inquiry may best reveal to you what silly and exaggerated stories and distortions concerning my person are going about, and all that disgusting stuff must in the long run turn out to be unfounded. Now God knows what kind of suspicion has been caused by one circumstance or another; and since Bakunin appears to be the most compromised, and since they have probably found out that I was associated with him, I imagine that they are making every effort to find evidence of a plot about which, they suspect, I could perhaps give some information. If it were not for my disgust with everything which is called questioning, arrest, trial, etc., as well as other considerations, I would straightway go to Dresden and confidently present my case; for my participation was a quite general one and my acquaintance with Bakunin has only a purely human and artistic interest. I certainly heard about his plans for a united action of the Slavs and Magyars against Russia, whose liberation from despotism was his aim; but of course these matters were of the most remote significance, particularly to me; I was mainly interested in him as a most witty and wonderful man, and he himself knew that I could have no other part in it. It is therefore of great importance to me to wait for the news from Devrient about this; and if the affair turns out better than it looks now, I may keep my Dresden position in the future after a rather long leave of absence.
Third: I must know exactly what will happen to you, my good wife, and to your poor relatives— How can you believe that after all the sacrifices you made for me I would not be concerned to know, if we must be separated for some time, that you are in an adequate and independent position? If I should lose my Dresden post, and if my salary is already being withheld, I should be to blame for not doing everything to find a quiet and worthy place for you. I hope you have already read what I wrote yesterday to Wolfram about this: you with your whole family must stay here securely and pleasantly on one of the splendid grand-ducal country estates. The details about this and a full assurance of your future are things which must now be arranged in detail by Liszt with the Grand Duchess. Unfortunately Liszt has gone away for four days; today he is to return; after a conference with him I shall tell you the particulars. Until then only these general points: Germany, my dear wife, is now going to become a morass in which Art, having until now brought only trouble to the German artists, will be entirely bogged down. In Germany we could either live only a retired life or not at all. It probably is of the greatest importance for my whole creative work of the future that a thorough change in my life should now begin: think how, in my Dresden position, my art continuously disintegrated! Believe me, only the most mediocre, philistine artist is able to reconcile himself with those sterile conditions and to feel at home in them; he who has higher aspirations must perish in them: I came near to it!
Sunday Morning: Last night, when I was in Liszt's room in company with others, your last letter arrived, poor Minna! So it is really true, the long-nurtured hatred for me of many worthless people, the outward circumstances and the mean, vengeful feelings of the reactionaries have combined to produce a warrant for my arrest? Good, then! So be it! The measure of the torment of my soul is full: at last—I feel free once more. I know only one care now; it is the care for my beloved wife! Everything has been arranged for you; your position is to be worthy of you and secure at all times against the need for charity and against the worst eventualities; only one thing is not in my power: to keep you from defeat by new strength, pride, and vigorous health. Minna, my one and only, have courage! Don't forget that such a warrant of arrest can only honor me and that a faint heart before such baseness would only mean a triumph of the enemy. Be brave and steadfast, and so we have now already defeated them! For your sake, I won't yet reject every means of reconciliation; but I would almost prefer to part with Dresden at once and completely. You know my intention of going to Paris and London; I am to receive the means to attain my goal there entirely from Liszt or through him. But hear me further: you must depend on no relative, no friend. I am secretly negotiating the following arrangement with the Court here: I am to pledge to deliver all my operas, finished and to come, to the Court without fee; to make every necessary rearrangement for the Weimar stage, also to prepare them where needed. For this I am to get a yearly salary of 300 thaler (I didn't demand more) and free lodging for a whole family in a special house on one of the Grand Duchess's estates. So you, my Minna, are now going to move to this charming countryside, together with your parents and sisters, and will take over the house and with the 300 thaler you will have sufficient means for you and your family to live on; at first I shall turn this over entirely to you, while I create a new future for us both in London or Paris. When I have once concluded my contracts in those cities, I need never stay there long, but for the greater part of the year I shall return to you; and thus our often and dearly cherished wish will come true: to own a pleasant country house for our whole life. I shall send exact reports to my creditors: according to my present plans they have a better chance to collect soon than would otherwise have been the case.
In an hour, beloved wife! I am to leave Weimar, because I am too well known here in public; I shall stay for a while on an estate two hours from Weimar, under the name of one Professor Werder from Berlin; I could live there safely for years if I cared to. There, my Minna, I shall eagerly await you; you will, you must, come to me there for a few days. Take the train to Weimar, apply to Liszt at the Erbprinz, and he will surely take you safely to Professor Werder from Berlin; for the Kapellmeister Wagner from Dresden has already left today for Paris via Frankfurt, and you certainly wouldn't meet him there, nor would any one be able to tell you where else he might be. In case you are not able to come in the next few days, I urge you to oblige Liszt by immediately sending to him in advance to Weimar the score of Lohengrin (get it from Uhlig), likewise the libretto (from Heine), the poem of Siegfried's Death (from Ritter); you might also send on a score and the libretto of The Flying Dutchman. Don't pay postage. But be good enough to let me know exactly when you are coming—address your letters for me to Edouard Dewen (at the Erbprinz, Weimar). He is really Liszt's valet; or send it to Professor Wolff in Jena. From both places I receive letters promptly.
Yes, dear Minna, here I realize what it means to have friends! Liszt is a fine person; of this I am getting more and more convinced.
You, my poor, dearly loved wife, be brave! Despise the baseness now let loose against your husband, who pursues only the noble and the great. This thought should give you the strength you need to go on and to be happy with me after all— Yes, yes, farewell, farewell! My old, true love!
Your
R. W.
I have had no money from Leipzig.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 70