This recent occurrence has tried me very much and it concerns me more deeply than even you appear to suppose. I have mastered myself to the point of not retaliating upon Karl in any way, and am glad now to have become sufficiently quiet and collected to be able to adduce what I still feel it necessary to tell you for my own justification without doing violence to your feelings as a mother. I would pass over what has happened recently in total silence, as you wished me to do, if there were not a mistake to be put right. You take it for granted that there must have been a long-nourished animosity between Karl and myself which was only waiting the kindling spark to become a conflagration. Forthwith I assure you that on the contrary, as far as I was concerned, a steady, or even a growing, feeling of kindness has been the leading feature of my attitude to Karl since he recently became my neighbour. I am simply conscious of having exercised such patience and forbearance towards his whims, peculiarities and really offensive discourtesies as I have never done before, not at least to a man.
But for me, my esteemed friend, the decision involved in my future attitude to Karl has a further consequence! Do you think it possible that I could continue to accept the too great sacrifice which you and your dear family have been making for me in this annual, very considerable, pecuniary subsidy? That you make a real sacrifice on my behalf in the fullest sense of the word I know and am able to judge - or perhaps it is greater than I am able to judge. You and yours made this sacrifice for me in order to ensure for me the independence and leisure for further artistic activities, indispensably necessary to my situation as an artist. The true and only basis of my independence has been and is this income and nothing else; anything else that came my way was only of use in adding in little ways to the amenities of my independence and giving a semblance of comfort to my radically baseless standing in the social order. But it was always this yearly allowance and this alone which secured me, whatever might befall, and made it possible for me not to allow my free artistic spirit to be forced to make concessions in any quarter. I tell you frankly that at this moment I have not the slightest prospect of replacing this extraordinarily valuable subsidy in any way whatever; and yet I see that from henceforth I must renounce it. Please understand plainly that I could only accept such a sacrifice as long as I could be sure that its source was perfect sympathy, a sympathy so strong that it indulgently embraced my very faults and weaknesses. I have no reason to doubt your incomparable friendship for me, but it is impossible that my now lasting breach with your son should not so cloud our relations as to make me feel a silent reproach at each receipt of the money for my support. I must confess to you that Karl has already frequently made me feel my dependence in painful fashion, and filled me with a troubled foreboding that I might become a burden. Indeed, I go so far as to believe that much of Karl's behaviour to me may be explained simply by his knowledge of my dependent position. There may have been things in my manner of life which, in view of this knowledge, may have frequently betrayed him into the bitterness which I have repeatedly been made to feel in him, despite the fact that he would now and then be seized with a generous mood which was quite enough to lead me astray.
Even before this occurrence I had been recently thinking how I could possibly find a substitute for the support you accorded me, so that, thus equipped, I could come to you with a light heart and gratefully restore from henceforward the use of the yearly allowance to your esteemed family. Indeed this was my urgent duty in view of your pecuniary circumstances. Accordingly I was already thinking whether it might not be possible to get the Grand Duke of Weimar to allow me a sum equal to the amount of your subvention in the form of a pension, but Liszt informs me that this could only be realised if I were to be amnestied and able to visit Weimar. Of this, however, I have still no real prospect; all the same, it remains a hope and I would ask you to consider it as a prospect. In this way only can you relieve my overburdened feelings, and you may be sure of one thing: if you now take back the allowance you have made me, I for my part surrender it with a feeling of gratitude to you which knows no bounds! When I look back on my past life I see here and there a flashing, quivering, dissolving light, but once only did I meet with enduring life-giving warmth such as shone upon me from your friendship. Never before had I experienced anything in the remotest degree resembling it; it is you alone who have saved my life and my art. Judge then whether I can ever cease to honour you in my inmost heart as the guardian angel of my life.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 324