O you most admirable of men!
Accept my warmest thanks for all that you are doing, into the details of which I have no need to enter now. You may tell yourself that, if your ways and efforts don't lead to the goal, nothing else — that is honourable — could help us to it.
God knows, perhaps you'll even reap some good from the newspaper-editors: I have remarked that unintelligence often works more havoc than downright malice!
To-morrow I shall start for Munich, to see if there still is hope of the King's intervening. In the worse event, it may yet be possible to retain the date of 1875 if this winter only bears good fruit. If I can definitely settle with Brandt and Hoffmann in the spring, they still will have time to get ready — according to former statements. At the end of this month I shall confer with both of them here.
So — we will hope then! On the path you have struck with such energy and prudence we yet may find still-hidden forces of the German nature: this is of almost greater importance than the success of the undertaking itself.
A thousand hearty wishes to you and yours from myself and my dear wife!
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. 43