My poor, little Husband!
What you wrote me is really heartrending and horrible! You are certainly right in what you say about the last and the next concert program (excepting the Tannhäuser Overture). For that you need not have parted from your rather good wife for four eternally long months, in order to stroll about London like a lost sheep for such a long time—terribly bored and conducting the worst music, and not confining yourself to classical and good, significant music, as it had been previously stated. I quite realize that the directors of the Philharmonic had to take their obscure local composers into consideration, that finally they had to have such trash performed in winter and at the fifth concert, only they should not have brought you over there for it—for that, Hiller and his sort would have been suitable. . . .
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 151