I have been looking forward to your letter with great uneasiness, dear Hans! I have had very disturbing reports of the health of your good wife. [...] Cosima's temperament is the worst enemy of her health. She is of very distinguished antecedents and is therefore difficult to look after! I am glad to hear of the proposed cure in the Tyrol. [...] Give Cosima my warmest greetings, and tell her how fond I am of her and how very glad she would make me if I were to hear that she was really good and sensible—which she seems to find difficult at times!—
As to my latest adventure, I should have been more intimately affected by it if I had been personally more deeply involved in the performance of my work [Tannhäuser]. But I was many miles away, and what went on on the stage and in the orchestra seemed actually to be no concern of mine. [...]
Mme. Kalergis, to whom I at once gave full power to arrange a St. Petersburg engagement for me, has demonstrated the absurdity of my idea and suggests Vienna. In order to discover just what I can count on for the future, I asked Pourtalès to lay a Tiergarten plan before Mme. Frommann's Queen. He did so willingly, and is sorry to announce that there is nothing to be done in that direction. You can imagine, then, how very much pleased I was with your Karlsruhe news. It really is the first good chance that has befallen me. And it comes through you and therefore by a road that leaves no possibility of misunderstanding. That is so important. Your General-Music-Director scheme is altogether magnificent, and the fact that for it you have thrown away your chance of a kapellmeistership outdoes Orestes and Pylades. What am I to say to such friendship and such ingenuity! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 486