[...] Do not look for a copyist for me. Madame Wesendonck has presented me with a golden pen, of indestructible writing power, which has made me again a pedant in calligraphy. These scores will be my most perfect masterpiece in exquisite handwriting! One cannot evade one's destiny. There was a time when Meyerbeer used to admire nothing in my scores so much as the neat script and this admiration has fastened upon me like a curse! I must write neat scores so long as I live on earth!—
You are to have The Rhinegold, but you shall not set eyes on it till it is in the worthy form I contemplate, and I shall make no progress with that till after many leisure hours in the long winter evenings, for I cannot delay over it now—I must set to upon the composition of The Valkyrie which I am gloriously full of.—[...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 263