Dear Anton,
At present I need all imaginable energy and circumspection in order to maintain myself with the necessary outward bearing and ease. Tomorrow is the first of April, and here I am thus far not arrived at the desired goal, because of the unspeakable slackness of my lawyer: therefore, I have taken steps personally — and to be sure, with someone with whom I shall not be compromised in the least — which now afford me the prospect of completely settling my position during the course of this month. However, tomorrow I must settle one thing, if my position is not to appear truly suspicious, and so I am once more turning to my truest friend with the question, whether, by making a little sacrifice, he can help me out again by letting me have 500 thalers for four weeks — until the end of April. In this connexion, I must say that the 30 thalers which you recently advanced are now at your disposal (I would have sent them along with this, if they were not in silver!). — Although this same need has already been tormenting me for several weeks, I am making the request for the first time now, when I have the prospect of being able to satisfy, in the time stated, any obligation I may be assuming. Dear friend, if it please God, this is the last time that I shall trouble you with such a request, which as always I have made only with great reluctance.
If you could see me now in my restless and devoted activity, preparing for the next great musical performance — how I struggle for five hours with carpenters, joiners, and musicians — then you would see for yourself the means I have chosen for making myself insensible to this torment which proceeds from the most unpleasant of worries — financial worries. This is making me older by many a year — I can feel it: shall I ever regain complete serenity? Shall I ever be able to lose this inner bitterness, caused by the contrast between my life without and within? — Certainly only one thing can save me: if I soon pull myself together again for new and intense work!
In my recent life I have once again committed a great mistake, namely: after my initial stroke of luck in Dresden, to believe that my life would enter upon a steady orbit of good fortune! I know now that this fortune cannot be meant for a man of my ardent temperament, and it is this conviction, which I have arrived at without any bitterness, that I recognize as the fruit of experience which will lead me now to a modest, and later, I hope, an untroubled lot.
Farewell, dear Anton!
Your
Richard Wagner
Could you perhaps let me have 100 thalers today?
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 4