Dearest Old Fellow,
I write again at once:
Firstly: to congratulate Ernestine.
Secondly: to ask you to see to the copy of the Rheingold being immediately completed, so that I may at last get back the original score. But you must make Wölfel write post-haste, so that, if possible, I may have my score here by the end of May: I will write to you then about the copy.
Best thanks for Henniger-Modes. People think now that I am coining money: ah! if they only knew!
I endure here like a passover lamb; but it does not suit me, and I hope this will be the last time I shall come to London. I have nothing to seek here, and the Jews may conduct their silly concerts for them. Besides, much scandal is made of and about me. I shall see the Ney. Otherwise everything as before!
Greetings to Heine and your folk. Keep stout and hearty as ever, you Herr-Gotts-Tausend-Sakramenter!
I shall not last so well nor so long!
Adieu!
Your crazy
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. 134