It may be true, perhaps, that the public were pleased with my music the other night; I find that is substantiated. Very good, but there the matter ends! The most wearisome stuff pleases the public just as much as my music, and the next day performances of the most execrable kind will be applauded just like mine. Everyone who lives here is so firmly convinced of the worthlessness, effrontery, venality and vulgarity of the press here that, to tell the truth, I do not care to soil my hands by so much as touching a newspaper. Those who know and possess a really independent opinion never mingle with this gang of Jews.
Oh, the lovely music they have here! I was recently at a concert of the New Philharmonic Society. There was a whole string of overtures, symphonies, concertos, choruses, arias, etc., a perfect joy, all conducted by Dr. Wylde, click-clack, up to the end, which was fairly late, the public applauding as ever. And next day all the papers called this concert the finest of the whole season. Immediately following the second concert conducted by me, even reporters most favourable to me gave this concert the same praise as they gave mine. Don't you think I ought to send you these papers? The real delight of the English, however, is the oratorio. In this their music becomes the interpreter of their religion, passez-moi le mot! Four hours they sit in Exeter Hall, listening to one fugue after another in perfect confidence that they have done a good deed for which they will some day be rewarded in heaven by hearing nothing but the most beautiful Italian operatic arias. It was this earnest fervour in the English public that Mendelssohn understood so well, and he composed and conducted oratorios for them, till he has become the veritable Saviour of the English musical world. Mendelssohn is to the English just what Jehovah is to the Jews. And now Jehovah's wrath strikes my unbelieving self.
I have almost entirely forgotten my composition, The Valkyrie, and often have to meditate a long time as to how I once meant this or that to go. I have completely lost the inner memory for it here. It was not till the day before yesterday that I very laboriously finished the first act and I now cherish the pleasant hope of finishing at least the second act here; the third, however, I must reserve for Seelisberg, where, unfortunately, I shall not be able to begin Young Siegfried. Happy shall I be if I rediscover my capacity for work there and pluck up courage again for Young Siegfried. Believe me, I ought not to have gone to London!
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 277