Dear Minna,
I see very well, I was a fool to let myself be betrayed into any share whatever in the odious gossip that continues to surround you, to my deep distress. I thank you, also, for having returned me the letter in which I expressed myself to you about it; I should really have been obliged to attach more reason to your declaration that I had offended you afresh thereby, if I had not had this opportunity of reading it through again. How you understood those lines, is your affair; it is my own satisfaction, that I seriously and honestly meant to enlighten you concerning a slur on my character, and whatever may have offended you in them reposes on your own misunderstanding. However, it has given me an experience the more, how circumspectly I must deal with you, and that I had better put up with any and everything, than endeavour to explain things to you in my favour. —
I beseech you by all that there is in this world, Shut close your ear! Don't let reports be brought to you by X or by anyone else, but think how we old folk may yet conduct a supportable life to its end. Really things are hard enough for us without that! I am beleaguered with care upon care, and never have a merry day, God knows, to win me but a semi-peaceful evening from this wretched mundane existence. It is becoming hard, very hard to me, to keep my courage up, and my weariness of life is greatly on the increase. I often feel of late as if it would be best for me to put an end for ever to this constant battle! Whence should I gain but a vestige of joy? Impeded in each and everything, restricted to news from without, I've got the length of picking every letter up with fear and trembling, which unfortunately prove only too justified. How can I help being so profoundly dejected that even tidings such as the Frommann's last make all but no impression on me any longer? To prepare a time of kindly rest for both of us at the close of this wearying life, to tend yourself and sweeten your toil to the best of my power, is my sole remaining aspiration on this earth, to which I else hardly belong any more. Daily do I ponder how I best may set about attainment of this final goal, take this and that step toward it: — then another letter comes from you — the whole old misery is opened up afresh: I had once said this or that — so-and-so can tell this or that, — and all has been in vain once more!! — I try to rectify; I only make bad worse! — How long is this to last with myself, too? — I'm always poorly; not a day passes on which I am not plagued with this or that disorder. For a long time I've been suffering increasingly in my lower regions again; added to it, a fresh severe cold: I couldn't go out again to-day, as I had fever (also, my legs are swollen). I had been long impatient to receive an answer from you; it comes, another shock for me, and self-reproach that I had let myself for once be tempted into intervening in your everlasting gossip — you women and (to please me) men! A sensible man should at least know what he intends and with whom he has to deal; and as soon as he has cleared his mind on that, he should let the world talk as it pleases. I might have been entirely at ease thereon, for I know what I intend, and can also tell myself that it is good: I intend nothing more on this earth, than to cherish you, to deal honourably, faithfully and well by you — God is my witness — and so my reckoning might have finished; but alas — I still am a little mistaken as to whom I have to deal with: unfortunately I have to keep experiencing afresh that such insane misunderstandings can arise, as now again. Will this source of trouble ne'er dry up? —
A few days since I wrote to Pusinelli, and assured him that he and his faithful interest in you were the only thing that stopped me from repenting having ever let you go to Dresden; otherwise you had dropped into the most atrocious scandal-hole, where you were always being stung up afresh. As your summer cure will take you away from Dresden tittle-tattle, I mean to build good hope on it, else I should have proposed to you to join me at once; for it is to be hoped I should then at least be so far master in my house as to keep this eternal hearing "something," now from this person, now from that, at arm's length from you. Believe me, once you're with myself again, I mean to tend you better than your good lady-friends, who have nothing better to confide to you than Mad. T. — And I am even to hold my tongue when such an ass as that X behaves so rudely and insultingly towards my wife, who had received him in her house with open arms! I had only meant to let it depend on your answer, to write to him myself, and give him a piece of my mind about his insulting behaviour after I had particularly commended you to him as well; but God preserve me from it now! Heaven only knows what fresh proof of my want of affection for you I should be furnishing thereby again! — On the contrary, if it eases you, also believe that I've told the B.s about the Hotel de Saxe story! Believe anything, and interpret everything as you think fit, I'll stand it all; for I see, my words and protestations avail me naught! —
But enough of that, I am horribly sick of it! God grant I very soon may hear you're out of Dresden. I heartily repent not having influenced you to go to Weimar; you would have been admirably looked after at the Altenburg, and in any case very intelligently and considerately treated. But I expected something different, and didn't want to oppose you. —
My good Mutz, I can't tell you much more to-day. My not having written you earlier was because your intermediate letters seemed to contain nothing of equal importance to the letter I expected with an answer to my last. Everything else, the whole Berlin Lohengrin, doesn't chain my interest enough. If you want to go and hear it, though, please do; you will shortly be receiving 10 louis d'or again which I've assigned to you — from Mannheim (through Härtels). For the rest, I've much trouble and weariness; to-day I feel aching and ill all over, and wish I —
Child, child! fulfil your promise, and — not another word about the past! —
If I feel a bit better and freer tomorrow or the day after, I'll write you again, but hope to be never prevailed on again to wade in that pitiful mud with you! —
Salute our house-mates. If you are suffering, console yourself with me; I'm suffering — also! —
Farewell! Very soon more from
Thy very bad Husband.
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 2 (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), No. 159