Best Friend,
My warmest thanks for your friendly letter. You were perfectly right in attributing my lengthy silence to my gloomy mood. In my life I have had to do battle with much unpleasantness, and the ironical gift of total impecuniousness, added to so obstinate a temperament as mine, has prepared me nasty conflicts at all times. No one grasps this wholly, and yet it may be seized with both hands; for instance, were any one to take a good look at me now, when I ought to be snatching at everything that promises to lighten my burden, and yet can stoop so little to concessions that I yesterday declared to the Director of the Opéra here that the Tannhäuser shall be given either as it is (without a ballet in the 2nd act) or not at all. What this obstinacy means, now that you know my situation, you best may judge. For I must confess that in all the 8 years during which my operas have been given in Germany, a condition like my present one has never yet been known to me; I always had something coming in, and could manage in the way I lived. But now my older operas are quite played out, my new ones hindered, enormous losses — and no one to help me! — All I ask for, is credit during a stoppage! Impossible! I unbosom myself, and gain nothing by it but exposure. In the journals I read that I have been given 10,000 francs, and the mockery with which they dress the news is all that I get of it. My Russian General arrives; it transpires that there can be no question of Petersburg for next winter, as I should have to be there at the same time as I am needed here; consequently — done for! I have had to stave off claims on me from one day to another, the most annoying upsets in the house, agitation and insomnia of my wife. She is ordered to Soden, for the baths, and I can find no money for it. So it goes on, and will last for half a year at least, if last it can. And to me this happens, who am always being told of the enthusiasm I am arousing here and there and everywhere, etc.
Of all the people to whom I have addressed myself, Madame S. must rank with fullest right in my eyes as the only creature that could really brace herself to help. As things have turned, I truthfully assure you I have learnt to value Mme. S. most highly. When I remember how you came to me on that day of peril, and handed me the heavy sum required, I cannot but admit that she was the only one to prove her staunchness. Please tell her that. Don't be astonished at my uttering no words of praise to you, although I had to recognise in Mme. S. your work alone; for that goes without saying, whereas Mme. S. did not. Of the subscription there can be no more talk; here everything has rotted root and crop. What should have been the work of two days at the outside, has dragged itself through two indiscreet months into the journals, and unfortunately also into the hands of Fould; which, alone, is sufficient reason for declining any benefit.
Let us drop that. To me there remains nothing but my debt, my thanks, and my sorrow for Madame S. (not to be able to repay her at once), and further the hell from which I haven't the remotest idea as yet of how to get redeemed. It is still a matter of 5000 francs, the balance of my deficit, before I arrive at the performance of Tannhäuser.
Nevertheless I have been able to devote my sympathy to Garibaldi also, and assure you that I always take the evening-paper with great eagerness; as you very rightly observe, it was the only thing that could refresh even me, as the artistic element is the most incapable of all in positions like mine; for one must be free, for that, not merely want to. Nor can I, in such moods, gain freedom even for artistic reading, and Plutarch has again been my solitary distraction. I had been much struck, indeed, upon reading his life of Timoleon once more, on which I lit by hazard. This life has the quite remarkable distinction, that it really ends completely happily, an altogether exceptional case in history. It really does one good to see that such a thing was possible for once; yet, remembering the fate of every other noble thing, it cannot prevent me from recognising such a case as but a decoy-bird set by the World-demon. This possibility had to remain open, if such countless numbers were to be misled about the actual import of the world. Had this possibility been nowhere presented, one might almost assume that there would have been a shorter road for us to take to where we Occidentals — so it seems — shall only arrive by a very long circuit. Well: how many points of contact there were, to make me lately bracket Garibaldi with Timoleon. He still is lucky! Should it be possible for him to be spared the utmost bitter dregs? From my heart I wish it. Yet I often tremble when I behold him as a mere fly in the huge European spider's-web. But many possibilities stand open: perhaps the fly is too big and strong. Upon his Folk he should not count, but very much upon his Alpine chasseurs! For the rest, let treason help him, and the prudence to direct it. Through the baseness of the bad one sometimes triumphs o'er their insolence.
That you are coming to Paris, is a great consolation to me. I cannot possibly get away from here, and shall thank my stars if I even get my poor wife to the baths. Farewell, and accept the best wishes of
Your
R. Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 47