Most valued Friend!
I suffer greatly by your conduct. The caution you employ leads me to infer that you consider our representation of my position in London as exaggerated, and that you imagine we should be able to help ourselves, while the chief thing for you is to make payments in Bayreuth.
If no further help comes, then I am resolved to surrender everything to which I have the least shadow of a title. I desire that no attempt shall be made to dissuade me from doing this. I need the London money for London, in order that I may not appear as a bankrupt. Everything I have experienced here is confirmed with my former knowledge of London; and yet, in spite of this, I sacrificed my better views to you in order not to appear indolent and unwilling.
I leave quite out of the question how much older I have grown under these renewed experiences, and how much vitality I have squandered in vain. This and that will still be tried here, and a local subscription will probably bring in something; but for the present I beg you to take my explanations and wishes quite seriously and not bring me to a point of desperation by opposing them.
Forgive these lines! But I cannot do otherwise!
With the most respectful greetings.
Your ever grateful
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. 104