[...] I will therefore pass over all that I have thought and felt since I made the discovery that no appeal on my part could arouse the slightest impulse in any quarter to relieve me of the burden of the deficit on last year's Dramatic Festival. I am struggling yet under this burden, I have laid out my last halfpenny on it, and—am filled with an immeasurable indifference towards all so-called patronage and co-operative action.
I propose to make a final attempt this month to get the Munich Court Theatre to take over the whole business and then—for the present—to think no more of "Dramatic Festivals" (in my sense of the word).—
If I am not successful I shall go to America and provide for my family—and never dream of returning to Germany.—
Should the worst not come to the worst, however, I propose to spend my last years in doing what I can to carry through my idea (indeed it is impossible for me to do otherwise). I shall attempt, on the most modest foundations, to employ my time in Bayreuth in training conductors and dramatic singers. My preliminary plans are so practical that they cannot but be simple. I shall need four assistants who will get very scanty pay. My next business is to find them. You are one of the four. My school might be opened as early as the late autumn of this year. Remember that I may ask you to remove to Bayreuth—perhaps at no very distant date. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 705