Dear Fischer,
I write only a few lines to set you at ease, although you will already have received a letter announcing to you the receipt of the Hamburg bill of exchange. (By the way, it was quite unnecessary for you to specify this bill on the envelope: a bill is never specified; at most, the letter is registered: mark that, you man grown grey in business, and receive a lesson from your reformed scamp!!)
Yesterday I received five thalers from the Ballenstedt director, so you will have this order to add to your load.
But all this does not make me soft-hearted enough to give money to X., forsooth, for the new pianoforte scores: what I now receive is once, and not again — I shall never again obtain a regular income — and, with exception of present receipts, I may whistle to the wind. From the publishing business, however well it may be managed, I shall never draw anything: I assign it wholly and solely to my creditors, so it is for them to take interest in the business on their own account, just as with the effects of a deceased debtor. If they want the business to yield income, they must spend the necessary working capital on it. If they won't do this — well, they have nothing to expect from me, when I see that they allow the business — my only real property, which I hand over to them — to go to ruin. I have already expressed myself so definitely on this matter, that I have nothing more to say. Perhaps it will be somewhat better managed: God grant it!
Go on writing to me to Zurich; all my letters will be speedily forwarded. I am off to-morrow evening: I hope that the fulfilment of my long-cherished wish (to see something of Italy) may turn out well: I now am terribly in need of working power.
Farewell, best friend! Greetings to Wilhelm and the rest of your family.
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. 123