My Dear, Good Heine!
If I were not really driven to it, I certainly should not get so far as writing to you! Excuse me all protestations about being so continually plagued with letter-writing and bothers of the kind, that I absolutely find no time for anything else.
I really believe that I shall soon be able to see you and Mamma Heine again: then we will set everything properly to rights.
Meanwhile, for to-day a piece of business, for which I must take refuge in you. Our Tannhäuser costume- and scenery-sketches are wanted. Desplechin no longer possesses the latter, and for the former we wish to have recourse to your work. So be good enough to see to the French sketches (if only in copy) being sent here again: if things were really more successful in Berlin than in Dresden, you might perhaps manage to get the sketches from there. The Tournament-hall is said to have turned out very fine in Berlin: I certainly do not believe it answers to my scenic demands (for I cannot consent to give up the open arch with the stairway and tower), still it probably contains interesting suggestions of which we could make use. The costume-pictures you have entirely in your power. So send everything as soon as possible, for Tannhäuser is to be taken in hand at once. Make an account of the whole expenses, and draw a bill for the amount, or simply charge it to the management: it will be sent you by return. Address the whole to
Mr. Alphonse Royer, Directeur de l'Académie Impériale de Musique, 3, Rue Drouot, Paris.
Now, do this very nicely, right quickly, and let me know beforehand when you hope to send it off.
It must surely seem a good joke to you, that your costume-designs should be wanted in Paris as models!
I regret not to be able to do anything for my health this summer: I cannot get away from Paris for a single day. Heaven knows how I shall feel this winter! My wife has gone off to the baths at Soden, as P. wished. Altogether, she feels fairly well, although my recent life-adventures have not been exactly of a kind to make me good-tempered and patient. I am now heavy, very heavy at heart, and the only thing which at all enlivens me is, that from a distance I am always looked upon as one who does not know which way to turn for good-fortune and prosperity.
Now, let me have good news from you: greetings to Mamma and Maria, and the Emperor of Japan into the bargain!
Farewell, dear old friend!
Your
Richard Wagner.
(16, Rue Newton, Barrière de l'Étoile.)
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 176