Dear friend,
When I saw myself constrained to sacrifice a considerable part of the receipts of the London concerts that had originally been promised to me, and use that money for the artistic survival of this enterprise of mine, some of my friends had the idea of making good this loss by means of a subscription - since the income was uniquely intended as a contribution towards covering the remaining deficit on last year’s Bayreuth festival, - and you yourself headed that subscription with an appeal to friends of my art in England.
Since that time more obvious ways of covering the deficit have opened up, and I therefore consider it only right to beg the esteemed subscribers whose names were recently sent to me to take back the money which they so generously placed at my disposal, a request which I would ask you to convey to the parties concerned with the assurance that I shall always remain sincerely grateful to them for the support they have shown me.
With all good wishes
Your obedient servant
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 452