Dear Friend,
A thousand heartfelt thanks for your charming letter; it has given me great and genuine joy, and thoroughly done me good! — I write you these lines immediately after receipt of your letter, lest any London atmosphere should blow up between its effect on me and my reply to you. Believe me, my longing for home is great: I have neither rest nor pleasure, and if you figure to yourself a caged tiger ever prowling to and fro with but one thought, how to make its way through the rails and out, you will have the picture of my daily disquiet. Yet be assured that I do not blame you for advising me to make the London expedition. I can imagine nobody who would not have advised it. Only I should have known myself better, and I alone committed an inconsequence, which it is only just that I should smart for. Were I Musician alone, then everything were quite in order; but, unfortunately, I am something besides, and that's the reason of my being so difficult to dispose of in this world that it is impossible to obviate a thousand errors. People have a deal of trouble with me: but thus much is certain, — money-making is not my business in the world, but creating; and to enable me to do that undisturbed, the world would really have to care: yet the world, you know, cannot be forced, but does exactly what it has a mind to, very much as I also should like exclusively to do. So then we two — the world and I — are two stubborn-heads against each other, and naturally the one with the thinner skull must be broken in, which is the probable reason of my frequent nervous headaches. Now you, dearest friend, have placed yourself between us two with the most excellent intention, assuredly to dull the shock: take care you don't also feel a little of it!
For that matter, the ground of my present dejection lies more in myself than in any unexpectedness of my experiences here. These merely confirm what I long had known before, and just as I latterly have aimed more and more at having to do with none but a few choicer spirits, whilst making no further demands on the public proper than at most the respect due to the Higher, so I have been able to console myself here with having won the true esteem of many individuals. What really disgusts and deeply wounds me, is chiefly inherent in the character of my function itself, inasmuch as I am obliged to play a rôle as concert-conductor and accommodate myself to the most inartistic views and habits, without even the satisfaction of getting my objections understood. — Well, my folly has been incurred, and for my wife's sake, who would have been terribly upset by the opposite course, I have determined to hold out, however bitter it may be for me. But at any rate this last experience will teach me to rush into no inner discord of the kind again, and to keep entirely outside this humdrum musicing, so as to preserve all my strength for my creation. The stay here has been most hostile to my work; it has thrown me quite a whole year back, for I now feel my mind so exhausted that I shall content myself for the rest of this year with bringing off the Walküre, and must save Young Siegfried for the next: this resignation is the only thing to give me a little peace.
To my great inner satisfaction — especially after your kind letter of to-day — I have no need to go any further into my relations with this place. You understand everything, and feel with me. O believe that I count that a gain! The edge of every sorrow is soon blunted, when we find fellow-feeling for it: ay, this is probably the only source of all sincerest and most prospering love.
So let us simply think about a cheerful meeting! With heartfelt joy I perceive that your dear wife is feeling well again. Give her my kindest thanks for the bass theme; am I not, perhaps, to make a fugue upon it? Another purse from your dear wife! Heavens! Anyone who knew of my stock of purses would really believe that I had become a speculator on the "Bourse" with reference to your dear wife. I really shall never manage to wear them out; and for very good reasons. Yet there still may be an opportunity of stuffing them all to the bursting-point; — for I have just received a tentative inquiry from New York whether I should be disposed to go there on the special invitation of several societies — perhaps in two months' time — and personally pursue the propaganda of my compositions which has already been commenced by others with great success. So you see, the second edition of London is being prepared. At any rate I shouldn't require to unpack at all in Zurich, to be able to go on to America at once. Or shall I wait till you are installed on your new domain? I see that you call it — Hochwyl; it makes no difference to me; I call it "Wesenheim," and so shall call it always: we shall see who gets the better of it, with his name! For to-day you still must greet the Hotel Baur and all that is therein, not forgetting wife and children!
God bless you! To our next meeting! To-day 5 weeks I start for home: may I find rest and refreshment among you! — A thousand thanks for all your friendship!
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 7