[...] Do not let the circumstance of my recent request be a worry to you! I am not so serious as all that about Paris, and whether anything comes of the matter there or not is in itself pretty well indifferent to me. For Heaven's sake don't imagine I am striving for fame and honour. If I have any object as regards my opera, it is simply that I desire the possibility of a good performance, purely as a matter of artistic interest. To be plain, your father has other views for Johanna and even you have so far forgotten yourself as to talk of the "good" of his children being his one thought. A little while ago Albert wrote to me unasked on the subject of Johanna's Parisian contract and of how it all hung on Meyerbeer. I wrote to him very hotly of my distress that Johanna of all people, so near my heart as she is, should have been obliged to sell herself to that avaricious Jew. She might well have found nobler employment for the strength of her youth than this sacrificing of herself to that mouldering skeleton! If Hans really loves me so, can she find satisfaction in what is, in a sense, a flat betrayal of me? Yes, but this "good"! It just means more money and more fame, doesn't it? Oh, come now, with your "good"! It's true Johanna has not enough yet, but could she not achieve the very highest fame by serving a noble cause? It would be a very good thing for me if Lohengrin were to be given in Berlin next winter. Everything inclines that way, only Johanna—for whom I wrote Elsa—blacks her face and brings Meyerbeer's African into the world—all for the sake of her "good." But who knows whether I shall still survive the year after, and I would certainly not have allowed Lohengrin to be given elsewhere before Berlin. Enough—nothing grieves me, wounds me and hurts me so much as when those I love are untrue to me!—[...]
[...] I cannot endure men and won't have anything to do with them. Not one of them is worth a snap of the fingers, unless some woman can love him truly. The stupid donkeys cannot even love. If they have brains they take to drink; the common run make do with cigar smoke. It is only women who are any use to me now—if only there were more of them!
No one has any courage—everything's gone to wrack and ruin!—Ah well—do you make a better job of it; I expect it of you!—[...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 229