Oh, my dear child! No, not at any price do I want that! I can & will bear anything in the world, but not the renewed storms of emotion & conflict which I am bound to foresee if you give my letter to your dear Mama! Yes, I admit it, I am an egoist, - I want peace, gentle relaxation, and tender embraces, - and I intend to renounce everything, but everything, that can be obtained only by desperate and convulsive measures and that can be retained only at the price of some private grief! I must, and shall, manage on my own, without upsetting you further; I cannot possibly wish for anything that can be acquired only at the cost of some catastrophe! Have you no notion of how tired I am, how I yearn for uniformity and peace, & to glide gently away? -
I really flattered myself that your mother was now more prepared to be parted from you. But I see that you did not think the time was at all ripe when you could attempt to acquaint her of such a possibility. Or was it only the questionable nature of the position you might have adopted towards me which constituted the real impossibility? On this point I can only remain silent and strive to understand you: for you alone could know, in the light of your knowledge of the ideas entertained by your family’s circle of friends, what is possible here and what is not possible. At all events I am bound to fear the very worst from every point of view, otherwise you would not have gained the impression, upon reading through my letter to your mother, that this letter, in spite of its rational tone, would “crush” her! - It is here, my dear creature, that my error lies: I did not think that my request to have you here could have had so dreadful a significance & effect.
But you will no doubt realize that it is enough for me to have been apprised in this manner of how things stand for me to know at once what I must do. It is to beg you most sincerely neither to give the letter to your mother nor to communicate any of its contents to her! - I was - apparently - over-hasty again: your last letter encouraged me to think that it was admissible to take this decisive step with your mother. I was wrong. - There can be no question for now of any change in our mutual position. - After all that has happened, it hardly befits me to appeal to you for calm! - but that is all I can do. It is a bad situation I find myself in, and highly unsatisfactory, with my life wasting away like this: but it would be quite dreadful and utterly unbearable if I were suddenly to be swept away by a torrent of emotions to which I am no longer equal and which would rob me of my peace for ever. Whatever may come to redeem me must come in the guise of gentle and peaceful happiness, untainted, without any passion, like the sun after a storm, - just as my gracious King came to me at the blackest hour of my life. I can bear no further convulsions of pain, no more silent grief, for I have already borne more than is humanly possible, and my strength to do so is now at an end. -
You need fear no aberrations on my part either: for the present I shall be having friends to visit me, and for the autumn I may still be able to get Vreneli to come here from Lucerne: at least I shall then be relieved of my household responsibilities, - and for the rest I shall perhaps be helped by my work and by becoming involved in performances. And so - calm down! Adieu, my child! I cannot today. After having felt sickly for some time, I was seized by a terribly violent attack of fever a couple of evenings ago - but it was only the result of a chill: the illness I feared has failed to develop. I am all right again! - Fare you well, take care of yourself, and, in spite of everything, do not stop loving me!
Truly yours,
R.W.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 307