Child! I am hounding myself to death, and can find no peace of mind! -
I must have someone here to run my house for me! -
I cannot spare you the shock of being shaken out of your peaceful existence by the question:
Will you come here and run my house? -
Can you account for my long silence? - I had to go back to Vienna again; packing and unpacking furniture, sorting things out! And in town again in the autumn! - And me - always alone with - servants: me of all people! No womanly being at my side! no educated person to talk to in the house! - It is quite clear that it cannot go on! No king nor emperor can offer me anything if things are not right at home! I can find no peace of mind. I am again looking for a woman to keep my things in order! It comes and goes, I cannot make up my mind. Is there a curse on me that prevents me from managing here? -
Once more; it cannot go on like this.
The Bülows are now coming to stay with me for a couple of months: I have made everything ready for them, so that their stay in this vast house of mine is as comfortable as possible; - this will help in the short term! Certainly, I have people around me, but no one to take over the running of the house.
But how are you yourself? Do I still have to fear upsetting you each time I ask you to come here? Has nothing changed? Everything still as it was? - How it torments me to know you once more surrounded by people from whom you even have to conceal the letters I send you! Ugh! I’m ashamed! - Can you not see that things must change? My needs are not to be gainsaid: they must be met. I speak only of my familiar, domestic needs. -
If you were to marry, would you not also have to leave your mother? And were you not once before on the point of accepting an appointment? Regard my own case as the same kind of thing, and call it by the same name! As in Munich I am living on 2 floors here, one above the other: I am on the downstairs floor, and you could live upstairs. My God! My God! always these pitiful petit-bourgeois considerations; - and this where there is so much love! What is it ultimately that one loves more? - You see how it is! I have struggled for a long time to write to you calmly on this matter, but now my patience is at an end, - it is a disgrace that I am for ever expected to manage on my own! I cannot go on, I simply cannot: - a decision must be taken here, for I fear that you will lose me one day if you do not help me now. It is no good here simply talking and writing letters. - Heavens, it terrifies me in advance to think of how worked up I shall again be making you: - but I am incapable any longer of writing anything but this litany of my distress. I can find no peace of mind; my days, my house, my very life will be a source only of sorrow to me if I have to remain like this. This was the chief cause of my distress all last year, and the reason why I was unable to work: I kept this from you, because I know how much this would unsettle you, without inspiring in you the decision to help. I beg you, come in September, examine the matter closely, help me - and impose whatever conditions you wish, only let me have you! -
Well, here you have it, the whole truth, I’ve done with playing games! -
Send me the answer I want, I beg you!
Yours,
R.W.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 305