[...] I like to hear from you, particularly when you have something pleasant to tell me. Your letter to Cosima was very beautiful; even to-day she wept over it again. Yes, she is a marvellous creature! Often I feel it must be only a dream that she is mine. We shall descend upon you in the spring. I want to show my wife all that I value in earlier times, people and places. Then, too, it will be time I looked about me in "the world" a little, to see what there is for me to do there. God knows what I had better do. In the meantime I am resting, and marshalling my forces. I am sending you something for Christmas.—
Many greetings to our dear Hermann and to your sons and daughters. My special thanks to Clemens. He really ought to have baptised my son. He is called Helferich Siegfried Richard Wagner. He is beautiful and strong and is to be a surgeon—what else besides is his own affair. What a tremendous joy for me!! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 645