Dear old Friend!
What is all this that you are repeatedly telling me? If I were quietly going to pieces, you wouldn't know anything about me: now that I'm so often a public topic, you mistake this notorious person for the friend who was once close and well known to you for several years. Do you by any chance think that all this is just a comedy for the sake of getting ahead and that basically everything is still the way it was in the rue de la Tonnellerie or in Meudon?
If you complain about a lack of replies to your letters, it may console you if I assure you that—notwithstanding all my fame, etc.—I have "friends" who never, never answer me as soon as I ask a favor of them, but that on the other hand I receive letters every day asking me to use my "tremendous influence" for this and the other thing.
So far as I know, you are always in a situation resembling actual ruin: as often as I've seen you since those days, you always had to be "rescued," to use your expression. Whoever knows you and esteems you as I do regrets this much, much more than you probably believe. I have learned that in such situations I was protected from bitterness on your part only when I was able to prove to you quite plainly that I myself was no less desperate. How gladly I should now invite you to come here, to be a friend of the house, to do what you like, to earn what you can, and otherwise to take advantage of what I can offer you as friend of the house! But I know you have a very definite standard which you think you have to live up to; also that you always need this or that sum to rescue you, etc. There I simply cannot help you; I cannot make any rescue payments, etc., available to you, simply because I am not able to do so. If Rienzi is now successful in Paris, the receipts for a long time first belong to Herr v. Erlanger, whose loans supported me in Paris at that time. If I have accomplished anything at all, it is only and solely the pension which the magnanimity of the King of Bavaria has granted me. My whole strength in the outside world lies in the fact that I don't speculate on success and the like, and it is due only to that person that I don't have to do so; it has no other significance, nor does it mean that I can give myself false airs as a wealthy man.
Perhaps this seems very hard to you, and you could answer that you did not give me any immediate cause for such statements in your various letters to me, all of which I admit I have received. But you must excuse me: I like to jest, but I'm not making fun of anybody, least of all of an old, faithful friend: if I see he is miserable, I believe I should help him; merely groping around with jokes I consider unworthy treatment of such a friend. But how could I help you? It grieves me to know that some one who was once as close to me as you is in the miserable situation into which, by all indications, you seem to have sunk in that silly Epernay. But how can I help you?? I have told you above what I can do. But what good does that do you?? That is my question! And this is a serious, well meant question.
And now something to cheer you up!
Your assumption that I'm seriously concerned about making a great success in Paris, and that this is actually the main thing in life, is especially amusing because on the other hand you think you have sufficiently familiarized yourself with my writings and my "tendencies." So I shall horrify you with my pamphlet Judaism in Music: you'll be able to gather from this what a terrible uproar it has created among the now most active part of the European public. Just imagine what kind of man it must be who does a thing like that, and how much he resembles the one to whom you think you must give repeated advice about his appearance in Paris! This just for fun. Moreover, it is possible that Rienzi will make the grade: well, then you'll have to come to Paris after all! Just paint hard: Pecht can do it better! Now, old fellow, light up your lamp! Good night! All in all you must see that I mean well by you, and that consoles me!
Your old
R. W.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 302