For your news and for the beautiful lines of the dear Princess I am cordially grateful.

Unfortunately I have nothing reasonable to tell you in return.  My whole existence here is a perfect anomaly.  I am in a strange element and in a thoroughly false position.  If at Zurich I conduct symphonies now and then, it is done for the sake of amusement and to please a few friends; to make a vocation of it, in the sense that I am to be judged as an artist by a wholly unsympathetic public and press on these grounds, is simply an absurdity.  I sincerely regret that I am here, and shall never in my life come again.  Pecuniary success is out of the question; and even if they were to offer me a larger fee for next year, I should probably feel bound to decline it:  the misery I have to undergo is too great.  This is not my business, and if at my present age, and in the unsettled condition of my health, I cannot at least abide by my business, I would rather not abide at all; I have quite enough to bear without that.

Perfect performances, which in the long run could alone console me, I cannot achieve.  The rehearsals are too few, and everything is done in too businesslike a manner.  Although the pieces from “Lohengrin” were favourably received, I am sorry that I have given them.  My annoyance at being compelled to produce such trifling specimens of my work and to have my whole being judged thereby is too great.  I also hate like poison to have to take a single step in order to gain the favour of that wretched pack of journalists.  They continue abusing me to their heart’s delight, and the only thing that surprises me is that the public have not so far allowed themselves to be misled.  In short, I would have nothing to do with these contemptible matters even if I happened to please the people.

Let me finish my “Nibelungen;” that is all I desire.  If my noble contemporaries will not help me to that, they may go to the devil, with all their honour and glory.  Through London I have got into awful arrears with my work; only yesterday was I able to finish the instrumentation of the first act of the “Valkyie.”  Body and soul are weighed down as by a load of lead.  My chief wish for this year—­to begin “Young Siegfried” at once after my return at Seelisberg—­I shall have to give up, for it is very unlikely that I shall get beyond the second act of the “Valkyrie” here.  Such as I am, I want a soft, clinging element around me, in order to feel gladly inclined for work.  This eternal need of self-condensation for the purpose of self-defence supplies me with obstinacy and contempt, but not with the love of expansion and production.

Klindworth has probably written to you; at least he was startled when I recently conveyed your reminder to him.  He was ill, and is not doing well here, but how am I to help him?  Blackguardism, obstinacy, and religiously nursed stupidity are here protected with iron walls; only a blackguard and a Jew can succeed here.