Dear Friend Heckel,
Who once is righteous, remains righteous always! Have thanks for your amiable tidings. Louis XIV. once said to Jean Bart: "I wish I had 500 men like you!" whereon Jean answered him: "Sire, I believe you!" That's about what you might reply to me, were I to wish for but a dozen Heckels, with his Righteous, in the whole of Germany.
For the rest, you all are strangely thick-skinned people! You think needful to warn me solemnly against turning my affair into a joint-stock company? That's what seems to have been the whole drift of my circular? God knows, I never meant the thing like that; honestly, what I hinted in that sense, was merely said to shame Germania's public. Again I have had the most abominable experience, that, before I even had a line from anyone to whom the circular was sent, the whole thing had got into the precious press. What sort of persons are my Patrons? To run to the newspaper-hack the very first thing: the lot is only fit for that!
Again you have to work against this nuisance — in your own way; and you do very well. But in future I shall be more and more reticent. Write and clap, can the people, — eh! give advice by the hundred and thousand. But do anything — do only the Righteous!
However, the main thing is to come to a speedy agreement about a better mode of attack: subscriptions must be started, lists hawked round; few can give 100 thlr. (say, for a national object), but several 50, still more 20, many 10 thlr., especially such people as can be talked into supporting the thing for its magnitude, without their having special interest enough to undertake the journey to Bayreuth for the performances themselves some day.
You must work out the draft of an organised agitation in this sense, send it me for my approval, as it were, and then make a thorough good blaze of the thing, thus furnished with my sanction; and with such publicity, that nobody shall be able to say, "But I've heard nothing at all about it!" — as I so often get for rejoinder just now.
Well, well! I hope to see you here soon. No more concerts will I give. They only do harm: instead of being stirred to further action, people think they've done enough with these concert-takings, and there's an end to the thing. Just so at Cologne, where the Wagner-Verein hasn't brought off the least stroke in consequence of the concert. As usual!
Now greet the Righteous, particularly our wonder-doctor [Zeroni], most heartily from me, as you and your dear wife are greeted by me and mine!
Your
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. 38