Dear Friend,
That I can write to Rome to you, to-day, is really very fine. I am all eagerness to know how the horrible sea-passage was got over, and though I need have no anxiety about your wife — who has gone through long sea-voyages so well ere now — I hope with all my heart that the children may not have suffered too much from it: we had many storms about that time, and even the Mediterranean may not have been exactly pleasant. But I soon may hope for tranquillising news, and assume that you are not waiting for mine before writing me, as you may guess pretty well that — in spite of Paris — I have not much to report.
In fact I will tell you nothing to-day about my Paris undertakings: everything still hangs in the balance, and anything of importance can only be decided later on. [...]
God knows what, and how things will go with me yet. On the whole I have very bad language for my German fatherland just now: the speechless cowardice of my friends, especially in the Tristan matter — about which one in particular [E. Devrient] once made such a mouthful, proclaiming my return with the finished new score beyond all fail — has really something entertaining for me. There all of a sudden a cautiousness reigns, the silence whereof is quite charming. Yet my successes on this marvellous terrain must be very considerable, that people at last should seek me out as Schott's Sons have done: it really seems as if one no longer could get along without me.
Here I find myself once more in the ever-youthful function of a débutant. After playing this rôle for a good long time in Germany, and leaving there when I was beginning to get a grip of the repertoire, I had to go through the very same thing at Zurich, i.e. to try and give people a preliminary idea about myself by all the difficult expedients of a man who hasn't the right means of execution at disposal, and must fall back on his manuscript works. Well, having at last been installed there in my proper line by aid of excellent stage-ventures, I start the thing afresh in Paris; I always remain the beginner, who first has to make himself known. Presumably that's the reason of my still seeming so young to myself: age, with its fruits, absolutely declines to set in! — Thus much I see, however: I shall have to stick to it this time, and if ever I am to think of the realisation of my Nibelungen, it can only be on the basis of Paris successes. Whether that work and the Tristan will ever be performed, troubles no man in Germany, and least of all my nearer friends. As to what stands before me in Paris, well! about that next time.
For to-day, however, don't be cross with me for falling upon you in holy Rome with such uncanny rubbish. When one writes to folk in Rome, one ought to have the decency to talk of something better than I've just done. However, I hope your first reports will set me also in the proper swing to find the sanctity to send you seemly greetings. My man, who was in service at the Pope's in Rome, tells me much about it all, and is burning for me to take him on a trip there: according to him, it's very grand. What do you say? But say it soon! — And now a thousand greetings and wishes from
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 24