My very dear Sir,
I took the liberty of instructing one of my younger friends to write to you, but was obliged to put your reply to one side until such time as I could read it with the necessary calm and apprise myself sufficiently of its contents to be able to communicate with you in turn.
In the fateful question that concerns the health of our friend N. I feel an urgent need to inform you, briefly and decisively, of both my opinion and my anxiety - but also of my hope. In my attempts to assess N.’s condition, I have been thinking for some time of identical and very similar experiences which I recall having had with certain young men of great intellectual ability. I saw them being destroyed by similar symptoms, and discovered only too clearly that these symptoms were the result of masturbation. Guided by these experiences, I observed N. more closely and, on the strength of his traits and characteristic habits, this fear of mine became a conviction. I believe it would be wrong of me to express myself more circumstantially on this point, the more so since my only concern is to draw a friendly doctor’s attention to the opinion which I have conveyed to you here. It is merely to confirm the great likelihood that I am right that I mention the striking experience I had whereby one of the young friends whom I mentioned, a poet who died in Leipzig many years ago, became totally blind when he was N.’s age, while the other, equally talented, friend, who now ekes out a pitiful existence in Italy, with his nerves completely shattered, began to suffer the most painful eye disease at exactly the same age as N. One thing that struck me as being of great importance was the news that I recently received to the effect that the doctor whom N. had consulted in Naples some time ago advised him first and foremost - to get married. -
I believe I have said enough to enable you to make a serious diagnosis along the lines that I have indicated. It would ill become me to suggest that you should re-examine the symptoms of N.’s illness: it is, after all, clear that the only remedy is to take the greatest possible care of him. But the need to strengthen and regenerate his nerves and his spinal cord seems to me far too important for me to conceal from you my very real wish that something positive be done here. Many years ago an intelligent hydropathist near Geneva cured me completely of erisypelas, of which I had suffered countless attacks until that time but which has not returned to plague me since then: I was utterly demoralized by this illness, to the point where I was afraid of even the slightest draught. My doctor explained that I was simply over-tense, and promised to restore my complete confidence in two months, a promise which he kept. The process he used was extremely successful and had a calmative effect with light compresses applied for brief periods, and cold lotions. - When Minister von Schleinitz paid a relatively lengthy visit here two years ago, he was in a pitiful state of nervous collapse, a condition which, given his addiction to a life of pleasure at an already fairly advanced age, he had no doubt brought upon himself. Six weeks in Gräfenberg set him on his feet again, so that I scarcely recognized him when I saw him again, completely rejuvenated, the following winter and again in the summer of last year. If I were to summarize these various experiences and turn them to the advantage of our poor friend, it would be because I feel so forceful a need to beg you most insistently to give kind and serious consideration to what I have told you. I am firmly convinced that the extremely sympathetic hydropathist at the Gräfenberg Institute will be of fundamental assistance to our friend. I hope you will advise him accordingly, and — if necessary - speak to him in all seriousness, without concealing from him the primary cause of his illness. A friendly physician certainly has an authority here which may not be granted to a physicianly friend.
I count myself fortunate indeed in having found in you the very man to mediate on N.’s behalf. Forgive me for having allowed the value which you immediately acquired for me as N.’s physician to override the other cause for satisfaction which I can feel at having found in you so intelligent a friend of my poem. However, I do not for that reason fail to appreciate these two qualities, but merely reserve for myself the right to clarify the former issue with you first, before going into detail in respect of the second.
Respectful good wishes from
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. 455