[...] You have responded in a most touching and gratifying manner to my wife's efforts to collect scattered manuscripts by surrendering to us so kindly the manuscript of my paper on Opera and Drama, once dedicated by me to your father, that true and devoted friend who was so early taken from us. You also added the originals of certain exceedingly confidential letters to my deceased friend. In exchange you would like a memento of me. I have chosen for the purpose a silver laurel wreath, given to me some time ago by Munich friends, and which I should now like to dedicate to the memory of the friend who died so young.
I could indeed have wished that you would (at my expense, of course) present me with a copy, certified by yourself, of the numerous letters to your late father, the originals of which you would like to keep in honour of his memory. These letters are no doubt of great value to you as establishing the great importance of your father's relations with me at one time, and yet their contents are no less valuable to my own successors, who may also have to study this relationship some day. For the same reason I should also have valued the return of my transcript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The bestowal of my relics on my friends was an expression of my almost passionate care for their survival at a time when I was alone and childless in the world. Fate has now given me a family and a hopeful son to succeed me. When I leave the world I shall leave no one behind me with such a warm interest in every moment of my life and work as this same son. He alone, from his knowledge of the rest of my life, will understand the exact circumstances of the composition of that copy of Beethoven's work and in his hands it will have a living significance, whereas for you and your successors it can only be a curio, perhaps historically valuable. I beg you to return this transcript for my son.
Although penury has been hitherto bitter to me, partly because it rendered me incapable of helping my friends, now that I sell my work for money things are easier. I am now at last in a position to help you to some extent should you be in need. Will you let me know if I can? [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 714