My love,
Cosima has asked me to write to you about certain errands which I shall entrust to you when the time comes to think about New Year presents, etc.
In the meantime I shall take advantage of this (admirable!) ruse for a very minor matter - entre nous, as it were. Our eldest daughter Daniella’s birthday falls on the 8th of this month: Cosima tells me that her daughter would be delighted if I included a pretty perfumed sachet with her presents, but she does not want me to spend any money on it. In total disobedience to her wishes I am sending you a postal order for 62 francs, and would ask you to see to a very pretty sachet, filled, and made of silk, etc. Choose a perfume to suit your own taste, entirely to your own taste, and add about half a dozen paper powder-bags, so that I can put them between my own morning linen, which will put me on good terms with you when I sit down at the piano to compose the music of Parsifal. -
Address it all to Monsieur Bernard Schnappauf, Barber, Ochsengasse, Bayreuth.
It will serve as a surprise! -
Yes, it’s the music to “Parsifal” that is at stake. I couldn’t live any longer without throwing myself into a task of this kind. Help me! -
How is your German coming along? Oh! If you really understood my language, how you would like my poem.
And when shall I see you again? You who were so unkind as to not accept my invitation to London? And what was your excuse? All right! I know! Oh, but it was unkind of you! - And now, when — how? But so be it! Love me, and let us not wait for a Protestant heaven: it is bound to be very boring! - My love! My love! Never stop loving me! A thousand - from your
Richard Wagner.
(You need to be quick in sending me these things - by post!). (And our good Benedictus?!)
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 453