My dearest Friend Heckel!
You are really the first person in Germany from whom a sign of life has come. Accept my thanks for this.
As yet Herr Feustel has let nothing be heard from himself but the most terrifying reports about the increasing deficit, in covering which it is claimed that I am the only one who can save the situation. Good! I have framed my appeal and sent it out; I have made inquiries in Berlin and also of the King of Bavaria without having received an answer.
Your idea of having a fourth performance to cover the deficit is, under the wretched conditions, certainly the most feasible; however, the payment of certain debts cannot be postponed so long.
As I hear nothing at present but distressing news in connection with the closing of the Festival, and as I feel just now that very great encouragement for the repetition and continuation of the Festival must be given me, if I am to overcome my unbounded repugnance for the entire matter, I am only waiting for some particularly painful experience to occur which would decide me to retreat entirely, and I wish this to be interpreted in the most literal sense. I shall then remain silent, and without a murmur give whatever there is to the creditors of the undertaking, just as would be the case with a legal bankrupt.
Really, you are the only one—yes, the sole one—who shows serious solicitude about me in the matter!
Under such circumstances my health cannot be of the best, my mental suffering and this agony of uncertainty are too great. On the other hand, I am able to rejoice over the good health of my wife and children in these beautiful surroundings. . . . However, we shall soon be obliged to turn our faces homeward, as my private treasury was so exhausted last summer (in spite of the American March) that it will not suffice to keep us here much longer.
Therefore! Most cordial greetings from Wagner's to Heckel's.
Yours faithfully,
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. 95