Your last visit, despite the discordancies to which our intercourse was subject, has left one decided impression on me and it is this: Your friendship is the greatest and most significant event in my life. If I can enjoy your society oftener, quietly and undistractedly in my own way, it is all I can wish for. Accordingly my one desire is to be able to visit you at need and stay with you periodically.
Well seriously, how about it? This letter will be waiting for you in Weimar. What kind of news have you to give me of the Grand Duke? As to Weimar, listen to what I propose. I would like to come to Altenburg, not to Weimar, and if it were practicable I would be content to live there quite incognito. As this would not be possible, my presence might be known to the Court alone. If the Court want anything of me I am ready to read my poems there in person, perhaps with you to perform, according to our ideas, by playing fragments of my music, as for instance Act I of The Valkyrie. But I will do nothing at all in public.
As regards my subsistence and my last fond hopes of a pension from Weimar or from some combination, you have given me a momentous hint which I have not let pass unnoticed and the bearings of which I have considered. My conclusion is that I would prefer to remain unsubsidised from that quarter. Nevertheless my livelihood is now threatened from a somewhat unexpected quarter. Karl Ritter's absurd behaviour towards you and his consequent impudence to me have deeply embroiled me with the Ritter family, since Frau Ritter took her son's part and blamed me. It is true that the mother has recently taken back these reproaches and asks me to forget what has passed, yet I feel clearly by this time that an important change has taken place in my position as regards this family, Karl having insulted me most deeply - I have very definitely broken with him - so that I can no longer accept the support which came to me from them. I do not deny that I should be glad if you could succeed in bringing about a speedy agreement with Hartel's on the subject of The Nibelungs. If this too fails, it would certainly be expedient to interest the Court of Weimar in the work in question, at least to the point of according me certain advantages for a time. If you should find the cost of achieving this too high, there would be nothing for it but for me to give up The Nibelungs and take up a simple work, such as Tristan, instead, which would have the advantage that it could probably be disposed of easily to the theatres, thereby bringing in royalties for me, even though - as you know - I should get nothing for it from the music dealers. Since my return from St. Gall I have not seen a soul except Herwegh. Lonely walks, a certain amount of work and reading, constitute my whole existence. The letters between Goethe and Schiller have very much edified me, though they suggested our own relationship very closely and showed me what rich fruits might spring, under happier circumstances, from our working together. In your letters from Munich I saw you in an increasingly happy artistic environment - a thing which I gloated over very heartily. I regret your rencontre with Schmitt; all I told you of the fellow was that I was extremely well satisfied at one time with his voice and his manner, but that I could not judge in the least as to his methods. As you could not hear him sing, though, and none of his pupils was far enough advanced to be able to sing you anything worth hearing, I can well understand that the poor fellow must have bored you terribly with his theory.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 322