Yes, best of friends! You ought to have let me know sooner that you had to return the Wölsungasaga by the 25th of December. If now a little delay occurs, "I really can't help it." I thought there was no hurry. Besides, I have kept far from me everything which would prompt me to work at my great poem, so as to leave the matter to take its time, especially amid these winter frosts. Now I have looked quickly through the Saga, and found out that it will no longer be of any use to me. So I send you back to-day — with best thanks for your kindness — the little book, and only with a few lines, as it is already late.
Briefly, therefore:
Your letter of yesterday informed me of your appointment, and conducting adventure; news which gave me great pleasure. For the rest, make no mistake about X.; if he once intends to serve you out, his liberal opinion of your criticisms will suddenly vanish. People of this sort take everything according as they find it useful.
But you must get leave of absence (certainly for 1852) — do think "of your health"!
Could you not haul X. once more over the coals? The man really is a bungler at his business! Baumgartner, wanting it for his choral society, has repeatedly asked, through the music-seller Hug, for the Sailors' Chorus from the Flying Dutchman (as I expressly arranged it for men's voices only). X. doesn't stir (and that has always been his way).
Would it not be possible, just at this moment, when the pianoforte edition of Tannhäuser is about to appear, to publish on a whole page of the Augsburg Allgemeine, and perhaps also of two of the most important political papers, a general advertisement of all those of my works which have appeared at Meser's (including the Tannhäuser score)? Only so can the business get a fresh start! Of course at the same time a fresh supply of music would have to be sent to the music-sellers. All this is really under the jurisdiction of my creditors; and I have already written to you on the matter. So enough for to-day!
I certainly should not have written my letter to X. if I had first read his article on my writings. Good God, what a weak-minded fool! The man thinks to bring about a better understanding for me by representing everything I say, and on which I lay most stress, as really not a matter for annoyance. That's just what he did in the matter of the Judenthum, when he showed that after all I really did not mean the Jews! Splendid! Now I can't in the name of fortune see of what use he could be to me. But enough of this!
The pianoforte score has arrived; I am chiefly pleased at its great correctness — especially with regard to everything concerning the stage performance. But the very idea of a pianoforte score was altogether so painful to me, that when it arrived I felt scarcely anything except distress and discontent; and it needed all the assurances of Baumgartner and Müller that the arrangement was an excellent one, to make me fair in this matter towards you and your careful work. You will excuse formal thanks, if I only simply assure you that I am highly pleased that this disagreeable work of arranging should happily have fallen into your hands, and that you should have attended to it with such great affection! Excellent homo, now how about the correcting of the full score? I feel — Heaven knows — quite incapable of undertaking this, and for a hundred thousand reasons which I cannot and, besides, need not, set forth. May I put this burden on you? Is it really not too bad? Answer frankly!
The next time I will write more. I am well. Certainly, I was much excited, and then again unnerved, by the immediate result of the severe regime. Anyhow, I am only half through the cure, and must complete it when spring comes. But I knew it would be so, and regret nothing.
Farewell! Greetings at home.
Your
R. W.
I have now become a subscriber through the post-office to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 50