Dear Friend Heckel!
He who is once just will always remain so. Accept thanks for your friendly information. Louis XIV said to Jean Bart, “I could wish for five hundred persons like you!” Whereupon he answered, “Sire, I can well believe that!”
You could make the same answer if I wished for a dozen Heckels with his just companions in Germany.
As to the rest, you are all peculiarly exacting people! And you really think you must warn me explicitly against accomplishing my purpose by means of a joint stock company. Is that all then my circular meant? Now, God knows! I didn't so understand it; whatever I may have hinted at in this respect was only with a view to humiliating the Germanic public! It was again a most unpleasant experience to find that the whole thing had been given to our beloved press even before I had received the slightest notice from anyone to whom the circular had been sent. What kind of people are my patrons! To run immediately to the newspapers with everything, as if it had only been gotten up for that purpose!
Now, you will have to go to work to undo this mischief in whatever way you think best, and you will have done a good deed. In the future I shall be more guarded; the public can write and gossip—also give hundreds and thousands of suggestions. But to do something—that only the “just men” do!
The chief thing is that we soon come to an agreement regarding a renewed attempt in the matter; subscription lists must be printed and sent around; a few can give (let us say, for a national object) a hundred thalers; some fifty, still more twenty, and a great many ten thalers,—namely, such as could be persuaded to support so great an undertaking, without having any special interest which could determine them at any time to make the trip to Bayreuth for the purpose of being present at the performances.
You should work out a sketch for a well-organised agitation of this sort and send it to me for my approval, and then, armed with my permission, bring the matter before the people with frightful publicity, so that no one can say, “Yes, but I know nothing whatever about it”—as I meet with so often.
Well! I hope to see you here soon! I shall give no more concerts. They only do harm instead of inciting to further effort; everyone thinks that enough has been accomplished by these concert receipts, and then all is up with the matter. So it is with Cologne, where, as a result of the concert, the Wagner Society has accomplished absolutely nothing. On the whole—!
Now cordial greetings to the just men, particularly the miracle doctor, also, greetings to you and your dear wife from me and mine.
Yours,
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. 45