Best Friend,
Before I go to Albisbrunn — that is, to-morrow — I will quickly answer one point in your letter of yesterday, and so settle this much.
In two successive letters you bring before me X.'s complaints. What effect do you wish to produce on me by this? Do you wish to determine me to think about help for X.? In that case you ought to have stated to me how I could procure help. So far as I can now see, I can only help him by being less scrupulous with regard to intended performances of my operas than, according to my principles, I ought to be. To spread them about among the theatres would bring good business to X., and with it freedom from his cares. You know that even for Leipzig I have in mind to get my two other operas produced before Lohengrin. I have sold Tannhäuser to Schwerin. Would you have me hand over to him, forsooth, this, and perhaps other honoraria which may follow? Who would justify me in disposing of these small and chance receipts otherwise than for my own wants, so long as I am indebted for the supply of these to the real sacrifice of one single family? Even in this very year I was in the deepest need of money, and in pitiful manner was forced to seek help through friends. I am using the Schwerin honorarium for my water-cure. Up to now I have no sure prospect of receipts from any other quarter. Well, just say what I could do now, when X. is pressed, though only for the moment — for his receipts are standing (if only) on paper? If I can give him something before the paper is turned into money, then I'll do it. Besides, if I cause X. trouble, I have the strongest reason for considering it my greatest misfortune that formerly I went to him. Of all persons in the world, he is the least fit for such a business. During the last years in Dresden this man tormented the very life out of me. I can truly say that the greater part of all the martyrdom which I have ever suffered bears the name "X." But now he is utterly incompetent to manage his own business. Only here in Zurich have I really received the clearest proofs how injurious he has been to the sale of my operas. If any one asked to have music on approval, he explained that he could only give it for cash down, or on account; and such conduct is outrageous. By this means he has prevented musicians who wished to get my things put before their pupils from doing so. Of similar nonsensicalities I have had endless cases mentioned to me, and from other sources. In short, our sorrows are decidedly mutual; and I confess that I have become somewhat hardened against his lamentations. Also, rest assured, it is not always so bad as he makes out. There's a tale!
R.'s letters have filled me with melancholy and grief: everything is sad, very sad, and I can take no pleasure in R.'s good humour. Could not Schulze procure for him Feuerbach's lectures on the nature of religion? More about this another time!
One other request. Let me know exactly the state of the Lohengrin business at Dresden. I will not allow the opera to be produced there, even if I provoke public scandal over the matter. I should like to see if the people will be able to avoid knowing who I am!
Unfortunately I have no answer yet from Härtels. If they ask you again for the score, give it at once.
If they mean to engrave it, the Wölfel copy will thereby become useless: whatever Wölfel has written could go at once to Härtels; and the copy could be finished at leisure in Leipzig. I think that, should they wish to have the score in any case, even if they do not engrave it, they can have it copied just as well there (and this would be of advantage to them for the purpose of circulation), and so in the principal matter they get their way.
You have not grasped the right meaning of the ending of Tannhäuser. This ending is no alteration, but a rectification, which, unfortunately, I could only make after seeing the work on the stage, when I became convinced that the former ending only gave a hint of what had actually to be communicated to the senses. I understand that slaves of custom prefer the first (because accustomed) ending — and all the more as the rectification in Dresden was insufficiently carried out so far as stage management was concerned. But in a certain sense I am ashamed of the first working of the end, which, in truth, is only a sketch: it should therefore cease to be known, and of course disappear entirely from the pianoforte score. (An "ossia" is the very deuce!) The only practical objection would be want of money to engrave it; so if X. will not give it, I'll find it! You must pay the costs; I'll send them to you! So that's settled!
Your fresh emaciation causes me truly deep anxiety. If you do the right thing you will join me at the colony: I stick to that. I cannot see why, from some citizen-like feeling of honour, you should go on fiddling yourself to death in Dresden. Farewell! I'm off early to-morrow morning to Albisbrunn. Truly your
R. W.
That Figaro affair was most ingenious: I laughed right out! One thing more! Send me scalding hot all the numbers of the Brendel newspaper which contain articles of yours, in wrappers and unfranked (!!!), to Albisbrunn. Don't forget this! (Every one of your articles.) You have my address. (I have not yet seen your reply to Kr.!)
P.S. I am just in receipt of your last letter. I have nothing fresh to announce to you. I have already spoken to you about the Tannhäuser ending. (In this matter I am somewhat surprised at you.) I will write out the certificate, and will have it witnessed. If it does not go to-day, it will be sent on to-morrow. As a matter of course the portraits are already on the way.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 32