Most honored Sir:
When, in 1849, in that period of my misfortune during the breakdown of our domestic life, you offered to keep the library of my husband, it was done with the assurance that you were doing so with only the most friendly intention to save the book collection—so costly to my husband—from a threatened seizure by the Court. Now my husband informs me that you intimated to an intermediary some time ago that you are considering keeping the library as a pledge or compensation for a former loan given to him. Since I was the one who delivered these books to you with a quite different understanding, I should regret having deprived my husband of his particularly treasured possession by having put my trust in you while you really intended to indemnify yourself in this way. That is why I consider it my duty humbly to submit the question to you whether you really meant to take advantage of my great distress and of our need for saving our small possessions. This would mean that you wanted to be reimbursed as the only one among several others, at a time when even the least creditor felt obliged to renounce his demands. Considering your means and the character of your relation to my husband, that loan so decidedly had the meaning of friendly help that I, like my husband, never supposed that you could press the payment so crudely; especially when the personal circumstances of the debtor are so desperate. So I beg you to tell me frankly what I am to expect of you in this matter, and whether I must confess to my husband that my own ill-considered step caused him this great loss. For this affair concerns only me. Your claim on my husband is a different case.
If you can't make up your mind to cancel his debt, you are indeed at liberty to come to an understanding with him about a repayment presumably indispensable to you. Considering your favorable financial position and remembering the time when you helped out my husband with the loan in question, you could follow the procedure of other much less affluent creditors, who, on account of the unusual circumstances and the exceptional position of my husband in life and art, canceled his debts.
I have only wished to make you understand that until now I have considered myself personally responsible to my husband for the preservation of the collection of books which are in your keeping. Awaiting your friendly decision, which may clarify your present as well as your former intentions, I am with greatest respect,
Faithfully yours,
M. W.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 98