Best Friend,
In a week the rehearsals are to begin for Tannhäuser, which is to be out by the middle of September at latest. I still am not quite ready with the French score: I want to recast one scene entirely (between Venus and Tannhäuser) and compose the Venusberg ballet-scene all over afresh, but cannot arrive at freeing my head from other businesses as yet.
Last week I took a few days' trip to the Rhine, to wait on the Princess of Prussia at Baden-Baden, at the instigation of the embassy, with which I complied the more readily as I believed that a personal interview would best convince me whether I might count on this lady's intelligent assistance for my future German undertakings. She made a good impression on me, expressed herself with animation and insight, and assured me with much warmth of her adherence. But I had received such disheartening accounts of the state of the Berlin Opera quite shortly before, that I didn't feel disposed to go closer, with the Princess, into the details of a performance of my new works at Berlin. The very rapidly-determined trip had this advantage, that it gave me the opportunity of seeing the Rhine for the first time. I went by steamboat from Mannheim to Cologne, and was astonished at myself for being so stimulated by the interesting journey, which I should have scarcely expected at my time of life. The Drachenfels distinctly carried off the palm, with me: it gave the trip a splendid ending. It amused me to find that I was expected at the same time in Wiesbaden, to perform my operas there at once: all the world took it for earnest, as I heard! My God, no! I can wait a little longer now, and am really not in such a hurry to meddle with the German operatic mess. I never went near Wiesbaden, and propose in future to go very little near anywhere else. Of emotion at retreading German soil — alas! — I did not trace the faintest spark: God knows, I must have grown very cold!
I thank your wife most warmly for her description of the rich accession to your picture-gallery.
Now don't be cross with me for bringing these hasty lines to a close, and merely take them as a witness that even in the thick of business, and the most abominable humour, I do not cease to think of you.
Hearty greetings from your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 27