Dear Uhlig,
With your letter I received also one from Michaelson, who asks for a book of Tannhäuser for Riga, because this must be examined at St. Petersburg by the censor before the director can buy the opera. So please send to "Herrmann Michaelson (Theaterkommissionsgeschäft), Leipzigerstrasse 42, in Berlin" half-a-dozen books of words (I suppose X. has some in stock?), and tell him from me that the books of words for the theatre are only to be obtained through X. Besides that he will receive the score through you, but only upon advice from me; I shall have already communicated to him what he must do to obtain such order (payment in advance).
I have no money yet from Düsseldorf: I have a presentiment that, as you have already sent off the score (you unprincipled man!), there will be no end of trouble about the money.
Mühling (not Schmidt's father-in-law) has left Frankfort, and Hoffmann has taken his place: the latter wishes to give Tannhäuser with unheard-of splendour, as his inaugural opera.
Hence the delay. I shall receive money as soon as Hoffmann has arrived in Frankfort.
I cannot write any more to you to-day: I have already devoted my whole writing power to Röckel, to whom I have just addressed a long letter. I am also sending him a Lohengrin score, which had been bound for myself (as duplicate).
You have misunderstood me.
As to the purchase of an estate, I had no one specially in my mind: do you consider me so obstinate in my superstition? As Berlin seems to have smashed up, my scheme has again disappeared into the dim distance.
Now listen:
Man! man! man!
Get hold of Hafis ("Poems of Hafis," collected by Daumer).
I. At Campe's in Hamburg.
II. Lately issued in Nuremberg.
This Persian Hafis is the greatest poet that ever lived and wrote. If you do not get him at once, I shall hold you in thorough contempt: put down the cost to the Tannhäuser account.
Only be thankful for this recommendation! Farewell. Look after wife and child, and do all in your power to stop Tannhäuser at Dresden!
Your
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 80