Dear Natalie!
Your letter and your news made me very happy. It is really fine that you are going to be married: accept my cordial wishes and return in kind the friendly message of your fiancé. Let me know the day of your wedding and tell me what you would most like to have in the way of a small wedding gift. On the whole, I may assume that through Minna's inheritance you've acquired not inconsiderable household effects with which you can establish yourself comfortably. I shall continue to the best of my ability the allowance which I have been sending until now, even after your marriage.
But now I ask a favor of you:
Ask at the Arnold bookstore whether they would be willing to lend you—for me—the volumes for 1841 and 1842 of the Abendzeitung for a short time; they contain essays of mine which I now need.
If not, look for the best old lending library in order to hunt up the same volumes there for a fee: at the same time I should like to get the same volumes for 1841 and 1842 of Lewald's Europa from the lending library.
If you can take care of this for me, I should be very pleased.
At the same time you could perhaps have someone announce in a Dresden newspaper that my demands for the Meistersinger about which there is so much clamor are limited only to the royalties as they already exist in other theaters, and to the guarding of my work against mutilations such as are current in Dresden too.
Now farewell and let me soon hear good news from you again.
With cordial regards, your
Richard W.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 296