My highly esteemed dear Friend and Associate!
If I remain silent so long, must you also let nothing be heard from you? As far as I am concerned, I require a great deal of good news from you. You have heard, no doubt, how tormented I was? Finally, I was obliged to start out on a predatory excursion in order to keep our administrative council afloat at all hazards. In this respect the expedition to the North has done much good and opened up to us significant sources of assistance. At present I am letting my back heal from the scourging it has received, in order to resign it to the executioner again in March!
But now one thing! Can you not get after Brückwald energetically and induce him to furnish us with the interior of the theatre according to our recent decisions? It makes me, and also others, appear ridiculous to be able only to show to parties interested in our theatre the very uninteresting exterior, but not the interior for which all are eagerly waiting. I wish very much to have this, as I should like to use it as an engraving in connection with a little treatise of mine on the construction of theatres.
Do take the architect soundly in hand! . . . God bless you, my dear friend, you “pillar of my temple!” Cordial greetings to the excellent committee of the Wagner Society. They were the first—then the matter went further!—and may they collect much money; I hope soon to accomplish miracles!
Your faithful compagnon and associé,
Richard Wagner.
Source: The Story of Bayreuth as Told in the Bayreuth Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Caroline V. Kerr (Small, Maynard and Company, 1912), No. 40