My Dearest Motherling! I am certainly not one of your stiff and unbending characters. On the contrary, I might justly be accused of too great a mobility of soul. But I have enough enduring passion not to give up an enterprise once tackled until I am convinced by the case itself. So it has been with me in Paris. I have become firmly convinced that it is impossible for me to fight my way through as long as I have only my own strength to rely on.
I have now come to the conclusion that money cannot be dismissed as a chimera. I knew that I had not the slightest assured support or stay, and yet I behaved like a lunatic, exceeded my means in every direction, and brought about a complete break with my family and with all my circle. What my better self, the artistic genius in me, suffered through all this is inexpressible. If I am to redeem the past, I must depend henceforth on myself and my own strength.
The facts are these: after many miscalculations and much assistance from Meyerbeer I am now in Paris, working at drudgery for a publisher and waiting for a turning point. I am staying there penuriously upon the results of that work, and I still hope that fortune and circumstances may lead me in the desired direction. Yet I cannot now visit Magdeburg again until I have rid myself of debt amounting to 400 thalers.
That is my position, abandoned by and separated from everyone, only still followed by my mother's painful anxiety and unable to offer her anything but my love. Mother-love needs no reasons; other loves want to know why they love and therefore become nothing but esteem. If all forsook me, your love would be my last and dearest refuge.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 60