Dear Judith,
Your charming letter was scarcely designed to reassure me! - When you were here for the “Festspiele”, you seemed so radiant and of so robust a constitution that it only increased my pleasure at the prospect of seeing you again. Try, try to get over these attacks of ill health: there is nothing else you need do to please me!
Press on with the affair of the Chinese dress, and send me the man or woman you are using for this purpose! -
The little bottle of rose-water was completely ruined by cold water; and in my clumsiness I dropped the larger bottle as I was trying to arrange it with the alcohol: it broke, and its contents went all over the carpet; what really surprised me, however, was how little effect the smell had, since I would have expected it to have given me 1000 headaches! -
Send me some more of it. -
And don’t forget the Rimmel Bengali rose-powders. - But - above all - be so kind as to let me know immediately and in a word if you have found the lilac satin (Ophelia!), since my decision to buy it depends upon your answer. Dearly beloved! I have finished the 1st act; you shall have a sample of it as soon as I have dealt with a whole host of other matters which I have neglected of late. The full score of the Idyll has arrived; I am sending a copy to my cousin Benedictus - in exchange for the score he has not sent me! - I am now only waiting for the piano arrangement, which is intended for you.
Cosima continues as ever before to be filled with feelings of admiration and gratitude towards you on account of the Japanese dress and all the other things you have chosen for her. Would to God that our traditional quarrels on the subject of poor Parsifal might be over and done with! Believe me, they are not worth the effort.
But - I love to see my address traced by your hand! oh! what - what? - But - that’s the way of the world! - Why - in heaven’s name - did I not find you during the days that followed the failure of Tannhäuser in Paris? - Were you too young at the time? - Let us say nothing! Nothing! - But - let us love! let us love!
Your
Richard
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 462