Most Esteemed Herr Apel!—First I feel that I ought to beg your pardon for the manner and vehemence with which I lately wrote to you. It is becoming clear to me that my violent excitement must be ill-suited to stir your sympathy for our fate. Your silence tells me that I am right. But be so good as to attribute the agitation which probably affected you unpleasantly and may even have wounded you, to the great sorrow, the stunning blow which fell upon me that day. Since then I have become calmer—much calmer. I have been to see Richard and have given him your esteemed letter. He thanks you warmly for it. At the same time I comforted him with trust in you and awakened in him the hope that you may decide to make some extraordinary sacrifice in view of an extraordinary situation. I confess to you that I have daily tarried in expectation of the fulfilment of my despairing request. Richard is ill. I would like to go and nurse him, but as that would mean expense which I cannot meet, I must leave him to God's care in this respect. [...]
Richard's creditor sent to me yesterday and had the impertinence to suggest that I should write to Richard's brother-in-law H. Brockhaus to get him to pay the debt. So he knows this relationship and I now understand why he proceeded so severely against my husband. But Richard and I, we would endure our lot for years on end rather than break our vow never to be a burden to his relations again. Nevertheless this step has decided me to apply to you once again, even at peril of being spurned by you as an importunate person. As intermediary I am perhaps better able than Richard to ask you to make a sacrifice, as I speak more for another than for myself. I can even place myself beside you, for I too have made sacrifices for him. I have given up my own peaceful independence to bind myself to his destiny which it seems must be accomplished only through the most violent storms and trials. [...] In your letter to Richard you reply that it is impossible for you to do more for him than you actually were doing. It is proof of your good and generous will that you should have done so much. I must believe that you can make no greater sacrifice on his behalf without exceeding your usual scale of expenditure, since you assure us it is so. But with no desire to boast, let me tell you what, as a girl, I did for a brother who was less near to me perhaps than Richard is to you. My brother was to study in Leipzig, but my parents could not support him there. I undertook to do so at a time when the finances of the theatrical management were in such a bad way that I often lacked four groats to buy myself dinner. I then pawned my earrings and other things of the kind which were often indispensable to me for my theatrical work and sent the money to my brother to pay for his lessons, keeping back only threepence to buy myself a roll that I ate for my dinner while I walked about the town, having told the people at my lodging that I had an invitation to dine. Is it right that only the poor and needy should have the feelings which lead to such sacrifices? Ought not the wealthy, for whom it should by comparison be so very much easier, to be able with all their resources to help in the same way? I may be told that it was for a brother; it would not be too much to sacrifice half one's livelihood for a brother; ought not a friend then to be worth a hundredth part? And Richard was and is your friend in a special sense. I can testify to it, for I saw the impression the first news of your sad fate made upon him and I was witness of and sympathiser with the very deep emotion with which he always thought of you when for years he was parted from you. And more—it would not become me, it is true, to let myself go upon the subject—in Richard there is a talent to be saved which otherwise is nearly lost, for he has nearly lost the courage without which his high destiny will never be fulfilled. A heavy responsibility rests, perhaps, on those who shrug a shoulder and turn away from him now. I cannot give him up; that perhaps is why I am the one to feel most keenly how shameful it is to let him perish. I am begging for my husband, for your friend. Will you abandon our Richard when it is a matter of sending him a sum of money quickly upon your credit? Indeed you cannot do it. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927)