Dear Friend,
It is quite time that I should be heard again. Our last letters have crossed; no matter. As the time of your departure from Dresden is approaching, I have nothing further to communicate to you by writing, excepting what concerns your journey. I think you ought to travel here by the Bavarian railway; that route will bring you here quickest. Travel viâ Ulm to Friedrichshafen on the Lake of Constance; from that place you cross over in the steamer to Romanshorn, and there will I wait for you, unless something — Heaven knows what — goes wrong with me. So tell me exactly when you start, and when you reach Romanshorn. One thing more. As you wish to return by the shortest route, you would, after all, do better to come here viâ Frankfurt and Basle, for the other way is, as I have said, the shorter. You would then have the advantage of seeing the Rhine. If you should come this way, I of course would not come to meet you, for the road from Basle to here presents no attractions. I would then wait for you here, and change the territory of arrival into one of departure, inasmuch as I would, when you go away, accompany you to the Lake of Constance, and that would make a very pleasant walking expedition for us. So please say exactly what you will do.
Now what more should I write to you to-day? I think I will reserve it. I have still no news from Härtels. Anyhow, they must wait for all corrections until you return to Dresden. It will be late before it comes out; also my book at Weber's progresses at a very slow pace.
(My "lectures" here consisted of certain passages out of Oper und Drama, which I read quite in private to a number of acquaintances and friends here.)
Now the rest by word of mouth. That is the most sensible of all, and I rejoice at it with all my heart. (I commenced Young Siegfried on the 3rd June, and I shall have finished it in a week.) Farewell! Au revoir!
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 28