My Theodore, in a situation of which you yourself can probably have no conception and in which I too see myself brought to the extreme limit of possible misfortunes, I turn again to the friend of my vanished youth, to one who has himself suffered the hardest of fates. To avoid all appearance of hypocrisy, I set the most egotistic part of my letter at the beginning: I am in the depths of misfortune, and you are to help me.
For a year I have been living with my wife without being able to earn a penny and without a farthing to call my own. It is over four years since we saw each other. Since then you have become blind, and that is a stroke of fate enough for us both. Want has long eaten into my courage. I was unfortunate in every attempt to reach my goal as an artist, and after a series of failures I went to Riga, married there, and still could not escape poverty.
Then I heard the first news of you from someone who had seen you in Leipzig, and later I learned that your malady was only physical and that you had published a volume of poems. At that moment hope returned to me. The work I have just completed is called Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes. I believe that we have done the work together, and I chose Dresden for its production. It is in some sort my native town, and with Meyerbeer's help I have made preparations to have the opera definitely taken on there.
Now I am in Paris, and although I still have some hope through The Flying Dutchman, my situation with a wife and no earnings is desperate. I need money; I am ruined without it. In those days when you made sacrifice after sacrifice for me I thought I knew what want was, but now I know better. I beg you for three hundred thalers. If you send it, I have already lived over eight months on such a sum, and it would redeem my life.
Do not let me be lost. I write this behind my wife's back, for she would dissuade me from it. I am doing it all the same, and I write to you now because my heart is full and I want to wish you luck in your recovery. If you would like to give me a day of joy once more, write to me by return of post.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 49