My longing for home is great, I assure you. I am restless and unhappy, and if you picture to yourself a caged tiger prowling to and fro, its only thought how to make its way out through the bars, you will have the very image of my daily disquiet. But rest assured that I do not blame you for having advised the London expedition. I cannot think that anyone would not have advised me to make it. It is only that I ought to have known better, and I am solely responsible for starting on a wild-goose chase which I have now, quite rightly, to pay for. If I were only a musician everything would be quite all right, but unfortunately I am something different and it is this that makes it so difficult to fit me into the scheme of things, and makes a thousand errors inevitable. I am a great nuisance, but this much is sure: I am not in this world to make money but to create. The world ought really to see to it that I could do that undisturbed, but admittedly the world cannot be constrained and does nothing but what accords with its desires and whims, very much as I should like to do all the time. So we two, the world and I, are two stubborn fellows at loggerheads, and naturally whichever has the thinner skull will get it broken, the probable reason of my frequent nervous headaches. Now you, dearest friend, have come between us with the most excellent intentions to ward off the blows, no doubt. Only take care that some of them don't fall to you!
I have received a tentative inquiry from New York as to whether I would be disposed to go there, perhaps in two months' time, at the express invitation of a number of societies in order to carry on in person the propaganda of my works, which has already been begun by others with great success. So you see a second edition of London is being prepared. At any rate, I should not have to unpack at all in Zurich but should be able to go straight on to America.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 282