My dear friend,
Your silence surprises me, but I hope that this feeling will soon be dispelled.
For today, parenthetically, a request.
From the family letters sent me as a Christmas gift, I see that there is a chronological error in my biography. In case the first sheets have not been struck off, I beg of you to correct the chronological data throughout the manuscript, as well as certain typographical mistakes which still cling but will be easily found by going through the proof again.
Please do not be vexed with me about this!
As the one left behind, I should have preferred to have kept silent until you—the one who went away—had been heard from. But now that the family chronology has taken the matter in hand, I will further inform you that everything at Tribschen is at sixes and sevens. Coughs, colds, catarrh—or however it is spelled—have prostrated all of us. At last my work on the Norns has been resumed, and the king has let himself be heard from in his customary erratic manner. It is possible that Rheingold and Walküre will be given in Munich this year, but it is scarcely probable that this will be done in accordance with my wishes. So much for this matter.
My investiture from the Berlin Academy has arrived and I have instructed Jacob to admit no one who does not inquire for the "Foreign Member in Ordinary, R. W." This is my newest title!
But now not another word, for I am beginning to have my suspicions about you.
Source: The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence, ed. Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, trans. Caroline V. Kerr (Boni and Liveright, 1921), No. 5