Dear Righteous,
Thanks once more for your visit to Bayreuth, also for the recent news of your Berlin adventure! To come at once to the most serious point in the latter regard, I beg you — as Herr L. expects to learn my opinion through yourself — to acquaint this patron that in no case will I give my consent to his projected lottery.
There really can be nothing more disheartening than the position into which I have been lured by exaggerated reports of the standing of a "Wagneriana" in Berlin, as they made me rely on help from a quarter which has proved to be a quicksand.
If anybody will offer me 200,000 th. for the realisation of my ideas, I shall be very grateful to the individual who pays it down; but to ask my authorisation for a lottery, after the experiences I have had of the "Wagneriana," to me appears a downright swindle, from which I should reap nothing save the scandal, while Herr L. would be left with the reputation for an acquaintance with a distinguished lady to which I should like to see a speedy end put.
Premature at least, good friend, I also think (though for different reasons than the Leipziger's) the invocation of a Verein whose tendence should aim beyond the immediate and so hardly-attainable goal of a first performance of my Bühnenfestspiel.
The care for this immediate goal will tax all our present forces: I shall reach it, if people stand by me patiently; my only trouble here concerns my dependence on the King of Bavaria.
I am already canvassing for the 9th Symphony, and expect definite news ere long about the bandsmen. If the foundation-laying goes off well, according to my programme, I hope for much assistance from the impression made thereby.
Best greetings to the five colleagues in righteousness! A happy reunion in Bayreuth!
Your heartily faithful
Richard Wagner.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 24