My good Minna,
Only fancy! it will be a whole week tomorrow that I have been caged up again. Since I wrote you last about my trouble, I have had to accept a new doctor, as the body-physician has fallen ill himself and can't go out. I passed three days without having my sore inspected, till at last I became really alarmed, as the hardness absolutely refused to yield, and the inflammation grew more and more painful. Now I'm in good hands, praise God, and the sore has been discharging for the last 3 days. It is by no means what we took it for at first, but a regular carbuncle of the largest kind; the opening is at least as big as a two-franc piece, and I still daren't think of standing up, it hurts so. As in the last long period of my life I have committed no errors of diet whatever, but always chosen my food most carefully — as you know — this sore must certainly be regarded as the long desired and awaited crisis that is to free me from the secret mischief forever brewing in my blood; in any case I have to thank the London diet for it, the first consequence of which was my Face-rose. So I mean to hope the best for my health, and together with this matter that my body will get rid of much upsetting it. Really I could do very well with that, to be able to keep to my work without a break at last! Scarcely having resumed it after my last illness, of course I have had to give it up again for the present, and for the last 6 days I have been in a reclining-chair with pillows thrust under my leg to maintain it in a horizontal position; thus am I lifted into bed by Pietro, and out of bed again next morning. A trial of patience! And it's to last at least half another week! Luckily I am well nursed; my pock-marked but very intelligent and obliging Donna servente, Luisa by name, has the unpleasant office of putting fresh poultices on the discharging abscess 4 times a day, and always fulfils it with great cleanliness. Naturally she also reckons on a tidy tip. —
See, that's how it fares with poor me, true Lazarus with the sore! — Yet whatever I can write you in a very inconvenient attitude shall come to pass, so long as it will. I received your last letter the evening before last. In the first place I saw to my great regret that Karl had not arrived in Dresden punctually, to deliver you the presents as early as the 24th. But it was an agreeable reassurance to me that at least the mantle pleased you, and you are going to sell the other one. Now wear all that for my sake, and think of me calmly and kindly when you do! Karl will soon be bringing me the presents I begged of you, I hope?
I also hope you have seen his mother! If not, rest assured it is really through nothing but ill-health that she hasn't received you. You will be able to inform yourself more exactly on that, and her present condition, upon the spot. I had commended you heartily to her, and not breathed a word — you may be sure! — about the unhappy complications of recent date. Do give me credit for a little sense! —
Apropos, why ever do you enquire of me whether you ought to notify the Brockhaus's of your residence in Dresden? Please act in that entirely according to your inclination. If you believe that silly rumours may have reached their ears, however, I should advise you the rather to do so, on purpose to refute them. Adduce as the quite natural ground of our passing separation my own wish to spend a winter in Italy, and your need to recreate and distract yourself in your native country, since you had a dislike of knocking about in foreign parts; whilst both of us hoped to settle down in Germany again next year for good. —
But that Julius has inspired me with great dismay; I cannot understand, particularly in your present state of suffering, how you should allow yourself to be pestered daily by that horrid blackguard! Certainly I had my fears of it before, and saw in it a point against your choice of Dresden; it is to be hoped, however, some remedy may be devised. Don't vex yourself, but simply beg Pusinelli to have a talk with the wretch and insist on his not calling on you any more, if possible. He might allege that you are in need of the completest rest and freedom from excitement, whereas, upon enquiring the cause of a considerable agitation he had observed in you, he had elicited that it was in consequence of his disturbing visits; but he, Pusinelli, had been authorised by me to keep a sharp look-out for anything that might be harmful to your health, and therefore felt pledged me to forbid his further calls on you, otherwise he must report the matter to myself and leave me to proceed against Julius. Promise the man half a thaler a week if he doesn't call on you again; I fancy that will do it. But no other tenderness towards him! I have reason most profoundly to despise that sort of men, who live moreover on nothing but gossip and scandal, and to deem them absolutely worth no pity. I beg you most earnestly to turn this unsavoury visitor for ever from your house without exciting yourself in any way; and forgive me also for my kinship having ever placed you in the predicament of having to deal with such a vagabond. I know your strength in instantaneous mastery of your aversion, but you should save it for something more imperative, not waste it on such scamps; for it really is a great strain on you, and the results are not far to seek. — Reassure me by an intimation that you have leant ear to my wish. —
Why on earth do you ask me, also, whether I mind if you go on visiting the Devrient? By all means do so, and above all give her my kindest regards: she still stands for nothing in my memory except the great and grand, just as she has remained the beau-ideal of dramatic singing that looms before me ineffaceable with all my works. Already I had promised myself to present her through you shortly with the poem Tristan (of which you will receive 10 copies, the distribution whereof you're to attend to for me), and to write her in addition a letter reviving to her mind my recollection of her splendid feats. This shall be done, and purely from a certain gratitude for what she was as stimulating artist to me even in my earliest days. For that matter, I anticipate no abundant sympathy with my present works: it would be another thing if she still could perform them herself; but she moreover isn't very quick at grasping. —
Your being satisfied with N. lifts a great weight from my mind. God grant duration! Salute her from me, and tell her she must go on proving herself, when on my side I will also faithfully observe my promise to her. —
I might have expected you to bestir yourself for my acquittal, and my thanks would almost be an insult to you. Only thus much: don't build too much on it! I enclose the answer to your questions, however; make what use you think fit of it. For my part, I believe Prussia alone can assist me, and almost hope so too. They could allow me to go there in King Johann's despite; and if he remains obdurate, I know already what to do to compass that.
Now farewell for to-day, and rest assured you now have given me, as well, my first true calm. Continue thus, and trust
Thy R.
I occupy the room on the first étage with the projecting oriel and the two windows to the left of it.
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 2 (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), No. 153