I have really grave doubts about urging you to attack the pianoforte arrangement of Tristan. I certainly have no need to tell you how glad I am that you appear to attach value to this work; nevertheless I am reluctant to accept such proffers from you. The time you needed for the easy Iphigenia is enough to show me how very little you have to spare for such work and how much you are taken up with lesson-giving and other business. If any real artistic work was included in this business I should not have a word to say and be simply grateful to you for making time somehow for work of a subordinate nature. As, however, I am unfortunately led to suppose that you hardly ever manage to get time for creative work of your own, it becomes a reproach to me which I cannot lightly and egotistically brush aside. Under these conditions to press you, as necessitated by my engagements with Hartel's, would be a most unpleasant task to me. Accordingly I ask you to consider, quietly and seriously, whether you were not overtaxing your powers and, more particularly, neglecting the duty you owe to yourself, when you so kindly offered to undertake the pianoforte arrangement of my new work? I fear that it is so, and if I am right I beg you to lay aside all false delicacy and tell me speedily and definitely that you agree that my work shall be passed on to another.
Chance, an important chance for me, has now brought little Tausig my way; he could do the pianoforte arrangement quickly and easily with me and under my eye. It will be an exercise and a study for him, while for you it can only be a hindrance to more important work suitable to you. The practical side and the advantage of getting the work done quicker I leave altogether out of consideration, and I hope that you have too secure a belief in my friendship for you to think that any such advantage could influence me to do you the slightest injury or impinge upon you in any matter which you could really suppose advantageous to yourself. Consequently I would ask you, when forming your decision, which I shall expect very soon, to weigh carefully what I have just said, and not for anything in the world to read any unworthy motive into my representations to you. For you know how dearly I love you!
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 355