Dearest and most honoured friend,
I see that I myself must mediate in this matter in order to express my opinion to you as a man between women.
To judge from all that I have been able to gather from various reports, you enjoyed your stay with us and it sounds to have done you good. But I have heard little good concerning the effects of your subsequent changes of address. “O Zeus, why did you create women!” Eteocles exclaims in Aeschylus. In Rome they seem to be raving mad, and elsewhere they are more stubborn than yielding. — Very well then! You do not want to remain in Rome during the coming spring? Excellent! You want to set off next summer for the performances of Parsifal which will take place in August, at a time when neither of us will have time for the other, since the whirlwind of events will snatch us from all our friends even before the beginning of July (because of the rehearsals). We are planning to be back in Bayreuth by the 15th of May at the latest; but we invite you to move into Wahnfried before then; all the servants will already be on hand to wait on you. Joukowsky, too, has offered to place a self-contained apartment at your disposal in his house. And as for female company, your needs will be met, from May onwards, by our numerous daughters. - But - something else! We shall be passing through Rome in mid-April with the single and express purpose of dragging you away from there and abducting you in our saloon carriage; we shall then slowly make our way northwards, and sign a lease in Venice for a splendid and - for you, too, - a spacious apartment which we shall then move into from Bayreuth at the start of the harsh winter season, in order to present another festival the following year in Upper Franconia. Take your choice! But try not to go to Schahnameh (or whatever that place is called in the Auvergne)! “O Zeus” &c.
Be good! It would be best if you could join us straightaway - I can send you Schnappauf!
Yours,
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 490