My Theodore!
In a situation of which you yourself can probably have no conception and in which I too see myself brought to the extreme limit of possible misfortunes, I turn again to the friend of my—alas!—vanished youth, to one who has himself suffered the hardest of fates. To avoid all appearance of hypocrisy I set the most egotistic part of my letter, which should fitly be reserved for the end, at the beginning of this, my first communication for years. It is this: I am in the depths of misfortune and you are to help me! [...] For a year I have been living with my wife without being able to earn a penny, without a farthing to call my own. Think what this confession means and you will see what makes me begin my first letter to you for years as I do.—
It is over four years since we saw each other. Since then you have become blind and I must begin my first letter to you like this—there is a stroke of Fate enough for us both!—
We had scarcely begun to realise that we had our youth before us when we had to feel it crushed out of us. Your flight was checked by blindness, mine through everlasting want. When last we parted and I turned North—do you know what sad foreboding seized me?
It was a foreboding that we should never again see each other with our hands clasped so! Long ago, want ate into my light-hearted courage and hung like a weight upon my natural sanguine vigour. I have been unfortunate in every one of my attempts to reach my high goal as an artist. I got so far that my opera [Das Liebesverbot] had been accepted in Berlin and all that was necessary was for me to stay there six months to keep an eye upon the weak and vacillating manager [Cerf], over whom I had, nevertheless, personal influence, but I was too poor and no one would help me. I gave it up, as I have given up so much since then, and went to Königsberg where I was promised a post. There I married, but poverty and want persecuted me. I could not get the post promised me, and had to struggle on as best I could. Then at last I heard the first news of you from someone who had just seen you in Leipzig. From that hour I knew the meaning of my foreboding, but never had I believed that it could receive so terrible a fulfilment. When we meet again, ask my wife what I became like from that hour! The poor thing suffered greatly under it! I lost all joyousness, all freedom, all openness. The best way to make you see what condition I was in is to say that was the year of my life in which I composed scarcely a note, planned nothing, took a grip of nothing. I was very miserable! After this year of suffering my situation improved, at least outwardly. I got a good position as director of music at Riga. There I spent two fairly peaceful years. I might say that I began to recover there, except that I was forced to see that I was never made to earn my bread in that fashion. I tried to find forgetfulness in almost passionate activity, but my physique was not made for that and the northern climate was bad for me. I became seriously ill and a nervous fever threatened to make an end of me. I had scarcely begun to get well when I heard that during my illness my supposed friend Dorn had deprived me of my post in the most treacherous way! It was terrible, but in the midst of my excitement I tried to see the will of God in it, as though the event were a sign to me not to stand still but to press on again to my high goal. I got together a few hundred roubles and told my wife we would go to Paris. Out of love for me she consented, though she never has very exalted hopes and foresaw what misery lay before us. We embarked in a sailing ship and after a terrible journey of four weeks, during which storms brought us three times within an ace of death, we got to London, whence we proceeded at once to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Our resources were already so diminished that I thought it almost impossible for us to maintain ourselves even a few weeks in Paris. Then by a miracle of fate I met Meyerbeer in Boulogne. I told him about myself and my compositions and he became my friend and protector. I knew that my prospects in Paris could only be expedited by patronage such as Meyerbeer could give me, so I took courage and decided to make the venture. Oh, what awaited me in Paris, what a mixture of hopes and disappointments! Meyerbeer has remained tirelessly faithful to my interests, but unluckily family affairs have forced him to spend most of his time abroad and, since nothing but personal influence is any use here, this circumstance has of course had the most crippling effect upon my affairs. Hopes alone support me, but apart from these it is clear that my situation, with a wife and without a farthing of earnings, is the most terrible in the world. More than once I have longed for death—at any rate I have become quite indifferent to it.
I have thought of you, my Theodore, my heart heavy with grief. I never received any detailed news of you and what was told me was—was horrible! Is it true that you did not even know your friends?! I had not the means even to condole with you. What could I do—utterly destitute? You were my friend, whom I mourned for, but who could hear me no more! Then, quite a little while ago, I heard detailed news of you from a Leipzig lady staying in Paris. What I heard then shook me, moved me deeply, yet it filled me with revived hope! I learned that your malady was now only physical and that there were substantial hopes that you would recover even from that. Oh, believe that that was the only news which could have lifted me in an instant from the gulf into which my misfortunes had cast me! I was told, too, in confirmation of the news, that you had published a volume of Poems. You are still a poet! My poor, poor friend, you can still sing, for you have suffered the deepest anguish! Just for a moment let me drag myself out of my slough of despond and tell you that I too am still a poet—or perhaps we have both only just become such! My God, it seems to me this moment as if we both sat together again before some fair prospect and that you could see it! Hope on, hope on, my Theodore, we shall see again! And don't you see how I have been living in you, at one with you? The work I have just completed is called Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes! Who first thought of that idea? I believe, too, that we have done the work together! Anyway it is my best. Let me call it to you our Rienzi, now an opera in five acts. I brought it half finished to Paris with me. When I planned it I destined it for this place. I soon found, however, that I might wait two or three years yet before I could get so big a work performed, for I should first have to make a name by smaller operas. So I decided, lest my favourite work should perish, to get the opera finished in German and destined it for the German stage. I chose Dresden. It is in some sort my native town and I have made all preparations, with Meyerbeer's particular help, to get the opera definitely taken on there. Furthermore, Dresden now has a big and really worthy theatre. Tichatschek and Devrient are suited to my roles and with them I hope to make a success there. In a month I am sending off the score; it may be produced by the beginning of next year and I shall go there myself. There we are,—old friends again! You would never have heard all this if you hadn't published a volume of Poems!—
You see, Theodore, these are just lightning flashes which sometimes break upon my sight, yet they do not illumine my darkness for—O my God!—what hopes have I not already seen destroyed! I would almost prefer certain death, yet here, it seems, one cannot die so quickly. Paris is too rich, too rich in prospects, too various not to offer ever fresh hopes. At present I again stand in a fairly favourable relationship with the Grand Opera on account of a two- or three-act piece The Flying Dutchman, my sketch for the subject of which has won great approbation. Have I not once again much to hope for?
But I wish now that I could buy medicine for my poor wife! Will she survive this misery and shall I be able to bear hers? Lord God, help me! I no longer know how to help myself! I have exhausted everything, everything, every last resource of the starving. I, unfortunate, never knew mankind till now. Money—it is the curse that annihilates everything noble. Many a friend, ready to do service, cools at that word. Relations stiffen before it is even mentioned. And yet, good God!—what is all other help often enough compared to this most real one? Those who know real need feel that that alone can relieve it. In those days when you made sacrifice after sacrifice for me I thought I really knew what want was. Oh, fool that I am, I have learned now that I mistook embarrassment for need. To have to turn the last little piece of jewellery, the last bit of necessary household stuff belonging to one's wife, into bread, to have to leave her then, sick and suffering, without help, because the pawning of the engagement ring did not yield enough to procure bread and medicine—what can I say now about my one-time talk of want! In a word—God forgive me—I curse life. What more bitter thing can I do? My first word to the friend I have but just found again is—send me speedy aid! My life is in pawn—redeem it! Well then—I beseech you for three hundred thalers and, be assured, if you send it to me, I have already lived over eight months on such a sum, for all this time I have been able to afford nothing but bread. If you too turn your back on me I know what my fate will be!
This then is my cry from the pit of misery! Will it soften you? Am I yet to know happiness? For all answer to this question I have only a bitter sigh! And yet there are hours when, looking at the paltriness of those who oppose me now, I could feel proud of my situation if it were not that I have to look upon my poor good wife. She has sacrificed her youth to me and all I can do for her is to—send you this letter. I am doing it behind her back, for I know she would dissuade me from it, having no hope left. I am doing it all the same; I must write to you now my heart is so full, to wish you luck when you are recovering from four years of illness. [...] If you would like to give me a day of joy once more, write to me by return of post. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 49