Best Friend,
Nature has a cure for everything! For several days I have not felt well; I feel heaviness in my limbs; I am disgusted with work, and only with difficulty can I get through a part of my daily task; which again puts me out of humour, because only my work can cheer me. So this morning early I looked with trouble at my music-sheets; and yet I tried to force myself to work; then comes a bill of exchange from friend X. at Dresden, payable fourteen days after sight — 395 thalers. Well, this unforeseen event cured me; it reminded me that I live in a world in which men make other demands on me than those of art-creations! I placed my music-paper on one side; a good loud sneeze escaped my nose, and I attended to my "business"; also I have written to Herr Henniger, as you will see by the enclosure.
Pray say what has suddenly entered into the head of this unfortunate man X.? I did not know but what he was well disposed towards me. If he found that inconvenient, he might have said so sooner. Some one must be specially to blame for this sudden, quite unforewarned behaviour towards me. The business must be in a bad state. Heavens! how my heart bleeds when I look on helplessly at this scandal from afar; nor can it afford me any consolation to have done everything in my power to help. But, for a reason like this, one does not pounce upon an old friend one had else treated with consideration. There must be some sort of gossip at the back of it, and my supposition is surely correct, that these people think that through my operas (perhaps also London??!!) I am up to my ears in gold, and living in riot and revel! Well, I have written to X., to set his mind clear on the matter. These sumptuous receipts are no longer mine; but I have been fortunate enough to find a friend to whom I could make over this most uncertain revenue in return for a small yearly allowance, which at least makes me certain as to what I have and what I can spend each year. Still, if I do not wish to contract fresh debts, I have only enough to enable me to make both ends meet; and the difficulty of doing this is increased by the fact that I have still to pay out of it some debts contracted here, from the time of my flight and settling down. It is quite impossible to think of accepting such a bill of exchange. If, on the other hand, I could only learn what state my business is in; there must be already some profit from it? This is really my only hope, for otherwise I do not at all know how I shall satisfy the sudden importunity of the man.
Please be good enough to have my letter sent to Henniger; I do not know the address.
I suppose I must have patience with Wölfel: it is really a tiresome piece of work. I do hope he will be ready in the course of November — say by the middle; then there will still be time, and by that date I shall have money to pay him.
(Have you anything more of mine?)
I hear the Heines are really thinking about America. I also am invited there now, but for the present I have had to decline. Yet America floats before me as a possible money-source, if indeed one's sole aim were the making of a small fortune. In two years I shall have completed my Nibelungen; then I shall look around for a whole year to see whether it is possible to bring to pass a performance according to my ideas. If I see that possibility, then I'll move heaven and earth to carry it out. If, however, I am convinced to the contrary, I will have my scores beautifully bound, put them away in my chest, and go off to America — as I said above — to make a small fortune. Whether there or here, I shall then become a Philistine, and say to the world henceforth: … Here, I would then play the Philistine in your company: there, after all, with the Heines. It would indeed be funny if we all played the Philistine there together! Tell that to the Heinerei, and assure them that, even if I do not write, everything remains as of old. I am delighted to hear of the fellow's tough health.
Farewell! Hearty greetings to yours: study your choruses, lead the life of a saint, and do not go in for too much management!
Ever your
Richard Wagner.
Would you be so kind as to send a book of words of the Flying Dutchman to H. Michaelson (Leipzigerstrasse 42, Berlin)?
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 138