Dear valued young Friend!
Thanks for your letter, — it was beautiful! Only to-day do I write you, as this mournful business had to be postponed because my health is such that my dear wife was afraid even to impart to me the news of the so terribly sudden death of your beloved father at the time: an accident revealed to me this stroke of Fate!
I am sure you will understand me, and forgive me, if I do not frame my feelings in words. I am in the third age of man's life, and already have seen two generations of contemporaries pass away: in your father I have lost the last member of that second group which still linked me to the past. In yourself I salute the third generation, to which I have to commit my ripe life for continuing. Be you welcome! I assume that you are ready to carry out the last act of your father's joint work with me.
At anyrate everything for it stands at your disposal, and you know exactly what is involved in the scenic representation of Parsifal.
Permit me therefore to summon you to fill your lamented father's place in my Bayreuth performances. In my absence from Bayreuth, for a few months yet, my Verwaltungsrath will gladly assist you with every information and requisite arrangement. Please order whatever you consider needful.
To the most sincere condolence with your cherished lady mother I add the assurance of the friendliest attachment to yourself of
Your
deeply sorrowing
Richard Wagner.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 94