Dear, Good Fischer!
How are you? I am just back from a mountain health-resort, where my wife (in wretched weather) has been taking whey. I am only now really home again, and thinking about work and business. First of all, I am anxious that the interrupted copy of my Rheingold should be finished, and to-day I send you the remainder with the few prepared sheets, troubling you with the request to hand over the matter to Wölfel as quickly as possible. I have only one remark to make: Liszt will pay me a visit in October, and he might like to play through the score with me; so Wölfel must have finished by the end of September, that I may have my score back by the beginning of October. Otherwise I should have to interrupt him once again! Very well!
Besides this I have nothing new to tell you about myself — except that the King can't help granting me an amnesty shortly.
I must one day write a tremendous letter to Heinemann, and that's the awkward part of it, and why I never do it. In fact, I have not much to say to him, except that I would willingly be with him again and have a good roast together; we should find a grand store, I warrant you.
I must put aside my joking to tell you that my Peps died on the tenth day after my return from London; for this event has deeply affected myself and Minna. I weep still when I think of the day the dear beast died.
Now I will set hard to work again; but not overtask myself. For this year I shall be content to finish completely the Walküre. Only in the spring shall I set to work on the Junge Siegfried.
What do the gentlemen in Dresden think when they hear of nothing but the Tannhäuser in Munich? Do they rub their hands for joy at preventing me from ever attending such performances? I presume so!
Now please excuse this confused scrawl: it is the sixth letter I have written to-day!!! A thousand greetings to your family and the Heinerei, and remain good to your celebrated brother,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 137