[...] I can well understand how hard it is for you to leave Vienna, for I myself, as you will remember, moved heaven and earth for a time to make my return there possible. But I am inconceivably astonished that you should be under the delusion that it was "Vienna," the "Imperial City," I clung to! You know better than anyone that I lost no time in trying to reconstruct the Vienna I parted from so unwillingly on the Lake of Starnberg. You know with what ardour I endeavoured to tempt you and Heinrich Porges to live there and to get Standhartner to visit me there. You must have seen, too, how coldly and indifferently I turned my back on Vienna after my short business visit last June, once I had persuaded myself that I could not take my Vienna away with me—and yet can you confuse my emotions in this regard with those which seem to affect you at the moment in respect of the "Imperial City"? How strangely out of touch with me you are, after all! [...]
Dear Peter, do this time take me very, very seriously! You in Vienna can have no idea of the possibilities here, not "in Munich," but under the patronage of this ideal youth whom Fate has called to be King of Bavaria. Everything is possible—the highest, the most ideal! But—men are needed, true, ardent, purposeful men of high talent. Alone I can do nothing!—That expresses the whole situation!—When am I to see you? [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 598