My most gracious Master and Friend!
I hope you will not be angry with me if I send you in but a very few lines my warmest thanks for your most kind remembrance of my birthday yesterday. I stood in need of the consolation given me by the kindest of friends, for at present I languish in a state of exhaustion for which I must soon find some drastic remedy, if I am not to succumb altogether. My fortune here has been—as everywhere throughout my career, and as in Bayreuth a year ago—unprecedented success—but a disproportionate outlay. This recent London venture has completely failed of its object, largely because of the ill-advised handling of the same. My illustrious friend may picture for himself the emotions with which I withdraw from my recent exertions, when my one desire was to escape anxiety for last year's deficit if only for the coming month, which I hope to spend in taking the cure at Ems!
During the last months I spent in Bayreuth, hoping that the London enterprise would secure a favourable turn in affairs, I was possessed by a mood similar to that following Schnorr's death and in the anxious Munich days, and so I called Parsifal to mind, drew it out and finished the whole poem—which helped me to forget my situation to some extent. I have not yet found time to make a fair copy of it for my King, but I hope at least to be able to get my wife to do it while we are in Ems. You will, I hope, soon receive the poem which I really intended to reserve for your Royal Highness's birthday. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 700