My King! My sublime friend,
A man who, trusting to my star and yielding to my most eager persuasions, gave up the prospect of an exceptionally influential and advantageous position in Berlin after years of patient waiting in order to accept your royal invitation to settle in Munich, today sees himself obliged, in return for this and for the great kindness which you have shown me, his friend, to leave the town as a result of a kind of treatment unprecedented in the most sordid history of German Court life, and, with all the apparent signs of disgrace, to abandon a place and a sphere of influence which in any other country he would have graced to general acknowledgement as a result of his spotless integrity and incomparable artistic achievements. His noble wife who, with the most sympathetic devotion and helpful encouragement, has consoled, supported and sacrificed herself to the friend of her father, the mentor of her husband, and the highly regarded protégé of a King whom she reveres with such deep infatuation - this woman is now, as a reward for the love which a kind-hearted monarch has shown towards his friend who, for that very reason, is now being persecuted - this woman, I say, is being dragged publicly through the mire and heaped with a shame which, were it inflicted upon the angel of innocence himself, would stain him with its taint. And all of this - has gone unpunished! - Those who have been abandoned in this way without protection have thus no alternative but to withdraw for ever from the scene of such undeserved shame. Their decision is as necessary as it is irrevocable. -
To you, my King and beloved friend, I would address but a single request at this time of such great need: break your royal silence, at least on this single occasion: write a letter expressing your sovereign satisfaction with my friend Hans von Bülow and, at the same time, give vent to your royal indignation at the abject treatment which he and his wife have suffered at the hands of some of the newspapers in your capital city of Munich, and allow the recipient to publish it; and, in the event of you yourself recognizing that Bülow’s continued stay in the city is no longer possible, at least ensure that your conduct as King towards him and his wife (who has behaved towards you, too, like a devoted friend) gives them both the satisfaction they need in so unheard-of a situation, in order that they may not seem to have been summarily excluded from the enjoyment of your hospitality and dismissed in shame and disgrace.
My King! I beseech you most generously to accede to this request, which I address to you, at the same time, as a duty that friendship imposes; for upon your response to this request may yet depend my own predisposition to regret having made the Bülows homeless, since I shall not be able to count any longer upon finding their house, with its sheltering welcome, open to me as their guest, as was the case in Berlin; so that any future move to Munich would be the total ruin of us all.
Since I am bound to assume that my kind friend is so far removed from the lowly concerns to which the rest of us are exposed that he will be unable to tell the best means by which to express himself in the letter that we are requesting of him, I make so bold as to enclose, by way of a suggestion, a draft which I myself have composed.
My King! My august friend and last refuge! Deign to grant me my request! There is nothing more I can say to you today, so deep is my distress!
Loyally and lovingly
Yours,
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 350