Dearest Friend,
I was delighted to hear from you again. Be sure you make out the visit. I remain here the whole summer. If it suited you, I should prefer that you came to me early in July. About that date the Bülows are coming here for some time. I shall have forthwith to read them The Meistersingers, and I should like to read it to you as well, but as I have several times had to do so already, I have lost some of the freshness for such undertakings, and it always takes it out of me; therefore I should be very glad if you would communicate with the Bülows (Hans von Bülow, 12 Schöneberger Strasse, Berlin), and, if possible, fix the same date for your arrival at Biebrich. Bülow might then inform Schnorr (in Dresden) of the date, for he proposes to pay a visit about that time to submit to the same ordeal.
As a rule I live in such solitude and retirement that I greatly look forward to this combined outburst. It will do me a world of good. Another reason for choosing this time is, that I shall be then in a position to let you hear my new things to some advantage. Hans will play, and Schnorr, who is a very good musician, will help with the singing, of which I nowadays can make but little. Of course Edward will be heartily welcome.
I am very anxious and curious to see you again. It seems strange to me that I should go on living, when I have outlived so much in myself and my surroundings, and on the whole, alas! to feel so unchanged, that I often appear to myself like a ghost. Heaven knows, when thinking of you, I often quite forget the incredibly long episode of your imprisonment, and go back in thought to the time of our Dresden walks. And yet your appearance must have changed considerably. The enclosed will show you what I looked like two years ago.
Well, we shall see!
Yesterday I caught myself once again in a burst of political rage. I felt strongly moved to write to the Swiss advising them not to come to the Frankfort Rifle Meeting: those asses having behaved in such a compromising way to the Italians. It would have been an excellent lesson to them and well-deserved. Perhaps you will write. However, you have a political position and must keep up appearances — it stands to reason one has sometimes to be prudent. The Devil take you politicians!
However, au revoir. Make all the necessary arrangements.
Heartily yours,
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to August Roeckel, trans. Eleanor C. Sellar, with an introductory essay by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (J. W. Arrowsmith, 1897), No. 11