Dear Fellow and Friend,
I will write to you, but I don't know exactly what. Yes — that I am more than grieved to have loaded you with so much work on my account. I seem as if I were ruining you. Quiet me, if you can honestly do so.
My wife has been here on a visit for the last four days, and only went away early this morning. I shall certainly remain here another fortnight. Minna has made a good joke; she called our doctor a water-Jew! Capital! Well, but he does me no harm! I already know myself what is good for me. He is also somewhat rough and unsympathetic, a money-speculator rather than charlatan. He is no longer actually a physician, and that is good; twelve years' practice have, however, given him the necessary experience. I consider and feel myself quite on the road to recovery: my strict diet helps me most of all; for example, of an evening nothing except a piece of dry bread and water. Milk only of a morning; no butter at all. Thus I am making good blood.
X. wrote in detail to me yesterday. He sends me a copy of an article from a very well-known but preferring-to-remain-unknown musician, which it seems you have not yet read. It is a phenomenon of interest, and you must try and get it. You will find it in the Feuilleton der Neuen Oder-Zeitung, 28th, 30th, or 31st July: "A letter about Richard Wagner."
X. is righteously wroth about the mutilations of Tannhäuser at Weimar. It must be restored. In short, I beg you (listen, another request!) to send off at once to Weimar a copy of the Tannhäuser score arranged like those which I begged you to have in readiness. Besides the new ending, the second finale (as we gave it last in Dresden), the retouched introduction to the third Act, etc., are of importance.
Have you yet seen Frau P.?
I have received no fresh numbers of the Musik. Zeitung. When I am back in Zurich, I will become a subscriber through the post; then, perhaps, things will be in order.
(Please let me know what you have expended for the Tannhäuser scores?)
Härtels have not yet written to Liszt; they certainly seem to have stuffed their ears with wool!
Isn't it strange that the most important articles on my works are never in musical, but in other — for the most part political — papers?
Enjoy this beautifully coherent letter as best you may. It pleases me so little that I will close and send it off. How is Elsa going on? Farewell, best friend!
Always your
R. W.
(Still no news from the R.'s.)
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 40