Dearest Friend!
Here are the two paragraphs.
I hope that these invasions of the privacy of my family will at least be useful in giving me time to learn quietly what my surroundings are and with what sort of people I have had to deal all my life long. One thing is plain, I think, and I shall never lose sight of it, namely that it is not my work which is condemned but Bayreuth. My work will be performed everywhere and draw vast audiences but—they will not come to Bayreuth again. This is the true inwardness of the matter and the reason for the growing coldness towards my enterprise. I can only blame the place in so far as I chose it. Yet my idea was a great one. I wanted, with the support of the nation, to create something entirely new and original in a place to which that creation should first bring fame—a kind of art Washington. I thought better of our upper classes than they deserved. For my sake (and a little out of curiosity) people put up for once with the immense inconveniences of Bayreuth, but they shrink from the idea of a repetition. Also that is the main reason for the unsympathetic attitude to my position.—A very prominent London firm have suggested that I should move all my Bayreuth stage properties, etc., to a big London theatre and give a series of performances throughout the coming season. If I really wished it, I could subsequently get a theatre built in Leipzig and carry on there. Würzburg or Nuremberg would, after last year's great success, have had the money to cover my expenses and continue the performances. But Bayreuth could only be a success now if my idea of a musical-dramatic high school, as recently sketched out, were to be realised, resulting in a considerable settlement of artistes there. The town itself, many of whose inhabitants at any rate would benefit from such an institution, might, after all, address a petition to the King, to the Estates, etc. For my own part, all I shall probably be able to do is to harass myself about covering the deficit and disposing of the theatre! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 701