I have no other care now but to come to an understanding as quickly as possible with my other self, respecting our united efforts to conquer the world before I myself (_i.e._ Richard Wagner the elder) leave it. I therefore entreat you to keep me well informed of the exact state of the development of my substitute. Even at this very moment I very much need his help.
I have received an invitation from America to conduct at New York and Boston. In addition to a thousand other things I have been promised very large receipts. It is, however, quite impossible for me to accept; that must be the province of Richard Wagner the younger. When will he be able to accept the invitation? I beg of you to be very explicit on this point. Further, I have a multitude of projects and subjects for operas in my head. Ferdinand imagines them under the roof of my house; he is mistaken, my house is myself, the roof my skull. But, alas, I have neither the time nor the requisite tranquillity to release them from the prison-house in which they are confined: that also, then, must be the work of my other self; and when he has liberated them he may give what he likes of them to his father to set to music. When will he be developed enough for this pressing work? Be prompt in your reply on this point. Ask Ferdinand if it is not important! Ah! good heavens! there are such a number of other things which we must arrange together that an early conference is imperative.
Do you know Dr. Wylde? Well, I am expecting an invitation from him to give him lessons in the “music of the future.” But will not Richard Wagner the younger be better fitted than I to teach that kind of music, since he is still more closely connected with the future? What think you? There is no time to lose. Make haste with the little education absolutely necessary for ripening the faculties of my _alter ego_, and telegraph to me the moment the time has arrived--that time of complete development so anxiously waited for by me. Is it not so, dear sister Léonie? Eh! my mother (you understand!) Now you must not fail to remember this.
But above all, you must not omit to teach my _alter ego_ to make money, the one talent of all others which, by some incomprehensible fault in my education, has never been cultivated. And this causes me sometimes (_i.e._ always) horrible anxieties, since by nature I am luxurious, prodigal, and extravagant, much more than Sardanapalus and all the old Roman emperors put together. In this I am sadly in want of another self (pardon me for saying so), who will gain money enormously. Now be sure and do not forget this and send me as soon as possible a few millions, stolen by my double from the innumerable admirers I have left behind in England! On pondering over the situation, I perceive that herein lies the crucial point, so that my last entreaty is that you instruct my other self in that which I have never learnt, viz. making money--make money--but much! Much! Enormously much!