Pogner. "Und du, mein Kind, du sagst mir nichts?"
Eva. "Ein gutes Kind, gefragt nur sprichts."
So, some children do not understand being asked in the third person.
The old enthusiasm tried to stir. I had a mind to beg you people for an evening's rendezvous at Basle, to read my Meistersinger to you. It came hard to me, to renounce the old custom; yet be it must, and I daresay you will thank me for it! —
I have packed my manuscript up for you, however, and it's just going off to you instead. Mind how you find your way about: it looks dreadful in places, with blots of ink too. It would be amusing to me, to see if you made it all out. At times I had to stop work for laughing, at times for crying. I commend to your notice Herr Sixtus Beckmesser. David, too, will win your favour.
For the rest, don't get misled: all that there is in it, has been made expressly by myself. Merely the eight lines with which Sachs is saluted by the people, in the last scene, are from Sachs' own hymn to Luther; the names of the master-tunes and 'tones' (with exception of a few invented by myself) are also genuine. Taken all round, I am surprised at what I've been able to make of the meagre notes.
To-morrow I go to Mainz, and thence to Biebrich or Wiesbaden, to seek a nest in which to hatch into music the master-egg I've laid.
Should you want to write to me, before you hear from me again, please address aux soins de J. B. Schott's Söhne in Mainz.
God keep you, my Child!
Best greeting from the Master.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 133