# - Wagner, Richard.

the celebrated letter in which Wagner asks Mathilde Maier's mother to let her daughter live with him, stating his absolute need for a cultured woman to manage his domestic affairs, admitting that he has even considered whether he should ask his estranged wife Minna to return to him, but noting that experience and the warnings of his friends advise him against this course of action, discussing the impossibility of obtaining a divorce from Minna, given the precarious state of her health, expressing his view that he is of an age to adopt a daughter, believing that in Mathilde he has found the woman to look after him, asking whether she might not come to live with him as a quasi-niece, assuring her that his intentions towards Mathilde are entirely honourable, explaining that she will live in one half of the house, he in the other, noting finally that, in the same way a king has become a most beloved son to him, he desires a loving woman at his side



...Ich bedarf eines weiblichen Wesens, welches mir zunächst die Besorgung meines Hausstandes abnimmt, und endlich durch Bildung und Character mir nahe genug steht, um durch ihren freundlichen Umgang meinen geistigen und gemütlichen Bedürfnissen zu genügen. Ich bin in dem Alter, welches mir gern erlaubte, ein junges Mädchen als Tochter zu adoptieren, und ich glaube, dass ein solches Verhältnis vollkommen meinen Bedürfnissen entsprechen würde. Nur lässt sich auf solch ein Verhältniss nicht ausgehen: wie und wo soll ich das Mädchen suchen, die ich noch nicht kenne, mit deren Annahme ich mich vielleicht übereilte, und dadurch neue, unerträgliche Leiden über mich brächte. Das was ich bedarf, lässt sich nicht suchen, sondern es muss als ein Geschenk des Schicksales gefunden werden. Das freundliche, geist- und gemüthvolle Wesen dessen ich so sehr bedarf, habe ich aber auf diese Weise gefunden: Sie wissen, was mir Ihre Tochter Mathilde ist... 



5 closely written pages, plus blanks, 8vo, autograph envelope ("Frau Notar Maier in Mainz"), some later manuscript annotations, Starnberg, 25 June 1864, folded horizontally and vertically, spines strengthened

Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, iii (1945)

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a celebrated letter concerning wagner's private life.

Wagner met Mathilde Maier (1834-1910), daughter of the notary Johann Maier (1801-1844) and his wife Josephine (1801-1879) in the house of the publisher Schott in 1862. In a covering letter to Mathilde herself (not included here), Wagner states that no one else could fill the role he has in mind for her. A few days later, however, on 29 June, Wagner wrote again to Mathilde asking her this time not to show the letter of the 25th to her mother and, indeed, not even to mention the matter to her. His reason, ostensibly, was that he had no desire to have his creative peace of mind disturbed by any possible emotional turbulence. What he omitted to mention, of course, was the arrival at Starnberg (on 29 June) of Cosima von Bülow. And at a stroke Mathilde was rendered superfluous.