My dear Klare,
It is wrong of me to have delayed so long before replying to your letter: how this has come about will be understandable to anyone who is at all familiar with me and my strangely secluded, yet unceasingly eventful, life. I shall therefore not waste any time in apologizing, but would only ask you to believe me when I say that it was not any lack of sincere concern on my part which prevented me from finding a suitable moment to write to you. In this regard, too, you could easily have formed a true opinion of me if you had been present on those evenings when I have been dictating my biography, &, much to my own surprise, have seen my past life unfold with such vividness and clarity. The pile of pages has already grown quite large, and if ever you were to look through them yourself, you would realize what a vivid & immediate impression I have retained of you, too, dear sister, in my memories of our experiences together, and how tenderly I recall you and with what feelings of emotion. Of course, these pages cannot be published until long after my death; whenever I am in the right mood of an evening, I dictate additional sections for my young friend, the King of Bavaria, who is already receiving them section by section in order to keep them for himself. I have at present reached the period of my Dresden appointment: it often affects me deeply to look back over my past life.
A further reason for delaying writing was because I was half planning to revisit my birthplace & my relatives. But I have been prevented from doing so until now because of my work on the Mastersingers, which I was finally able to take up again last summer & which I shall not now put down again until I have finished it. But I am counting upon carrying out my plans next summer, when I intend to relax again for a while. I shall then visit you, & tell you how sorry I was to hear of your severe trials & tribulations and how much I sympathize with you. - That Minna did not make better provision for you in her will is a matter of great regret to me for several reasons: but you know that her private feelings were never directed at any of the people with whom I was friendly. God knows to whom she assigned much of what was hers, though I have no doubt but that it would have been better looked after in other hands. It would, however, have been a matter of the deepest repugnance for me to have had any dealings whatsoever with her on this point. As for the grand piano I do not believe you have lost very much, apart from what it may have been worth as a souvenir: I hope one day to be able to provide you with a suitable instrument to go in your house. My latest composing instrument already belongs to the King of Bavaria. Your report of Minna’s death has once again filled me with a very real sense of horror: the poor woman - it was enough to make one weep, but there was nothing that could be done for her. There is something quite hopeless about her fate which casts a shadow over the whole of human existence in my eyes!
Whether you have a clear picture of the curious fate that I myself have suffered in recent years must remain an open question: from time to time I have come across things in the newspapers which came fairly close to the truth. I was forced to make it my general rule to observe only the most absolute silence, since any public utterance could only expose my poor young friend. I had to let everything depend upon the course of events, upon the young King’s progressive maturity of judgement & character, and upon his ultimate actions. What was at stake was no more and no less than the ruin of Germany’s last, uniquely promising prince; unsuspecting as he is, he was ensnared and betrayed by his own most privy officials; it was no small undertaking for me to make him see things clearly at last, & only his boundless love for me finally gave me the power to persuade him to take the decisive steps that have finally freed him from the most extreme of dangers. I have now every hope that his welfare is assured, and, for my own part, desire only to be left in peace here for a relatively lengthy period of years, now that I am living in another world and have finally found occasion to work again & pleasure in doing so. -
That, in brief, is really all that I can tell you by letter: if I wanted to go into detail, there would be no end to it. Let us hope we may see each other again soon! I number this among the more agreeable prospects open to me at present. Keep well and - be brave & face up to life’s ultimate trials! Kind regards to your family, and remember me with affection,
Your loyal brother
Richard.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 356