Probably you have been troubled afresh by Karl's news. He will have written to you that I have lost, or relinquished, the prospect of support from the Court at Weimar. This has made you anxious and led you to suppose that I am relying on you for more help than you are able to give me.
Your circumstances are not so unknown to me, for I was aware that every help you gave me in my need cost you a real sacrifice. Therefore I could never make the mistake of supposing I might burden you with the making of such sacrifices as a matter of course, and continuously. Though I have repeatedly been in need, it has never seemed to me anything but a happy accident that each time you should have been able to help me at the right moment. But the last time you helped me I felt very unhappy about it.
Liszt wrote to me himself in great distress about this affair, and, much as it pained him, had to ask me to apply, by means of an actual petition for support from the Court at Weimar for the composition of my Siegfried for the theatre there, if I wished to see fulfilled the hopes he had formerly aroused in me. I probably need not enlarge to you on the reasons which most definitely decided me against such a beginning. I expressed them to Liszt, however, and made him understand plainly that I would rejoice openly before the world were such a woman as the Grand Duchess of Weimar to offer me a helping hand of her own accord, but that I could not possibly sue for her help, and that least of all could I, under existing circumstances, make a business engagement of the composition of my Siegfried.
Were I, for the sake of a mere living, to disavow the most essential thing in my life or doom myself to work irreconcilable with my nature, I should not only seem to myself contemptible, but I should doom myself to actual physical suicide. We are agreed about this. I must not therefore bow my head to prevailing conditions; I must not, for example, become musical manager at any theatre which may happen to offer.
In a few days you will receive a brochure of mine in which, under the title of A Theatre in Zurich, I indicate the possibility of creating a thoroughly good theatre with the materials to hand here. It has become my wish and my will to found this theatre and to devote myself entirely to it. In my brochure I have been obliged to admit candidly that I do not suppose I can very speedily win the public to my views. Nevertheless, certain experiences of mine here lead me to hope that what I have in mind is no impossibility. Last autumn I made proposals to the local Musical Society for the appointment of a good orchestra. The people did not understand me and I was refused. Well, later I rehearsed a few symphonies and the effect was so astounding that now the same people are taking up my proposals on their own account and are setting about the creation of a good orchestra in earnest. I hope the same thing may happen with my theatrical proposals.
You think you must be preparing trouble for me with the news that you can only support me a year longer. Since I never believed I might count on continuous support from you, you make me quite unexpectedly and happily relieved by giving me the prospect of a year. Even if my hopes of Zurich come to nothing, however, I can yet face the future more calmly. I find daily that interest in my work is growing.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 201