Dear Old Friend!
You are certainly right when this time you complain of my procrastination in writing — perhaps louder even than I did last winter, when I wondered at your silence. You answered me at last in detail, and at the same time gave me so strong a proof of your vigilant care, by sending me a catalogue of my Dresden musical effects, that I was almost painfully ashamed. Then I thought I ought in my turn to write you a right substantial letter, but waited until I had finished composing the first part of the Nibelungen, with the final result that I was less disposed than ever to write long letters. I get more and more out of the habit of doing this; for one thing, because I lead so retired and exclusively industrious a life, and one with such an absolute dearth of outward events, that I should not really know how to fill a decent letter. Yet I must frankly confess another thing: after your last disclosures I ought again to have sent you money for disbursements; but just now — in fact, since last winter — I have been so infamously hard up that I could not spare anything, and all chance sums received were so needed that I could not think of sending off any.
So then I waited till orders should commence again, so as to be able daily to set aside a little sum for you. Yet up to the present I have waited in vain, and I must now conquer my shame and at last write to you even without money. In the course of this and next month I think something must come in, and then you shall be sufficiently provided for immediately. So do not be angry with me!
Best thanks for the catalogue, but it was really not necessary for you to take all that trouble! If it is not in your way, let everything quietly remain in your place: if I ever want anything, I'll ask you for it. I should much like to have my arrangement of Palestrina's Stabat Mater: you might, at your convenience, send it me one day.
For the rest, I get news of you through Noack, that you are going on in first-rate style, and that in your theatre management you are swimming along better than ever. Now, that gives me great pleasure; but your pension, which you wished to spend with us in Switzerland, seems a long way off yet.
I heard from Heine that, on the whole, he was in good health: only his good wife was ailing. Dear me! it is a shame that I have not written to Heine either for a long time! But he must not look upon that as any diminution of my love: we often, very often, think about him and his, and, I assure you, always with emotion. Tell him this, and give him a thousand greetings.
About myself I have nothing to say to you. I live, on the whole, a life full of sorrows, however little it may seem so to many — for I have become silent respecting my inner life. Since last winter, I have returned to my music, and work is the only thing which remains dear to me; therefore I work to excess! To me the whole day only exists for the purpose of setting me in a good mood for as much work as possible.
I have finished the Rheingold, and the Walküre is already commenced. It too must be completed this year. My wife will travel to Germany next week, to see her old parents once more: she will not, however, go to Dresden, but her parents will meet her at Zwickau; she will also visit Chemnitz, and pass through Leipzig on her way to see a lady friend in Berlin. If you could manage to go and say how do you do to her anywhere, she would be uncommonly pleased!
I, for my part, would likewise wish to see my friends again, and especially you; but even that would not tempt me to Germany, and I am really glad not to see all the bad performances of my operas there, which would probably break my heart.
So I will endure and work!
Farewell, dear, good old friend. Ever thanks for your faithful love!
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 126