To my delight, my entirely good Mutz, I found your letter on my arrival at Lucerne; but your having brought back such an agreeable, exhilarating impression from Berlin would have still more delighted me if the Frommann hadn't at the same time written me that she really found you quite agitated still, and with feverish hands. No doubt good Pusinelli knows what he is doing, if he wouldn't consent, for instance, to this journey to Berlin. But you always were a bad, refractory patient, and often have given me trouble in this respect before; learn better now, deny yourself even an expected pleasure so soon as it involves a possible interference with your improvement; and once you've decided to make your lot depend upon your confidence (in this case, in Pusinelli), repose that confidence implicitly and endeavour to circumvent nothing. Live for your health now, your health — and nothing but your health. Whatever you can wish besides, is now assured you; a bright and pleasant evening is prepared your life, if you only will support me through your health. But I therefore ask you to be good and docile. I forgive your Berlin this time; but since it has made you more agitated again, you must now keep very quiet.
Obey me also as regards your Schandau lodgings; a pleasant, well-equipped and thoroughly convenient home does much for outward rest. Rainy days come, when one feels it painful to be cooped in narrow shabby walls. I admit my own foible for roomy, nice surroundings, and that I deny myself nothing to indulge it; but I consequently wish you also to deny yourself nothing. The means are in your hand, practise no false economy; you can make up for it by cutting presents down a little (with which you're partial to the open hand). Above all, never do aught except what promises some sort of ease to you, some service to your comfort. Remember that, there's a good girl, and tell yourself:
"The wise things which these children say be graven in my heart for aye."
— And so I'm back beside my favourite lake; it seemed quite like old times, to be looking at Flüelen, Seelisberg and Brunnen again, in fine weather and glorious light. Only St. Gotthardt behaved rudely. After my great joy at sight of the splendid blossoming of the fruit-trees in Italy, Father Gotthardt put himself into a grizzly mist-coat stuffed with flakes of snow (which kept falling out), and pommelled me quite violently in the infamous sleigh on to which they jammed me with an Italian tailor. A pretty tale, this snow-passage through wind and weather, on an open sledge reaching only as high as one's ankles. A charming cold is breaking out with me to-day: hatishoo! —
I looked for lodgings yesterday, and found it much harder to fulfil my wish than I expected. The choice of pensions isn't large, and everywhere I learnt to my horror that orders had already been booked for the middle of May. Nobody would let me have the big chamber I fancied, since it was the dining and reception room in every case; beyond that, nothing but bedrooms anywhere. So at last I found it most convenient to come to an arrangement with the landlord of the Schweizerhof. He has a fine dépendance with a glorious view, a building where no visitor is taken in before the end of June; so I can be entirely alone there for the next quarter, occupy a splendid salon with balcony, get my meals and attendance from the hotel, and the whole thing together will after all cost little more than at a pension, even if they would have given it me there, though of course it's not precisely cheap. I'm expecting the piano tomorrow or the day after, and hope by Sunday to be seated at my work, for which I'm very well disposed, as all else is shaping fairly well for once.
Here it occurs to me that I really must beg you to go to Herr Advokat Schmidt — get his address from Pusinelli — and ask him what sort of a — he is? These people will drive me crazy. You write me that all the music was packed up and sent to Härtels directly after my letter to Schmidt; but they write me that, in spite of my latest assurances, they still have no notification from Dresden (!!!). Moreover, Härtels offer the most advantageous conditions, and are certain to let one screw them up to 2000 Rthlr; but the thing must be clinched at once, for Härtels naturally consider that the business may simply exhaust itself in time. If you're not afraid of its exciting you, I beg you to try and procure me a definite explanation and definite answer. Otherwise nothing particular has happened with me. I ought to be receiving a declaration from the Paris director soon; from America probably not till the middle of April. I am prepared for everything, and merely determined to do my utmost, without giving myself away or engaging in anything quite repugnant to me, to ensure us a future free of care and altogether independent of the favour of any prince or other person whatsoever. —
I was a couple of days at Milan, went to see splendid pictures and other works of art, and clambered all over the colossal white-marble cathedral, gigantic and sumptuous to weariness. 100,000 Austrian soldiers, all quartered in Milan, formed my body-guard; let them go nutting behind me as they will, not one of them shall come to Lucerne. The Swiss air is doing me good, and with all my heart I should like you to breathe it again. That, too, will come! — For the present make use of the summer, good use of it; 'tis yours entirely, you have no other duty than to make it pleasant to you and take care of yourself. Let me soon hear good news again, and rejoice with your heart's calm
Thy good St. Gotthardt-Husband.
How I miss Fipsel!! My resisting all temptations to obtain myself a dog, may shew you the sort of man I am! — Greet Nette, and let her also lack nothing. Does she go on tending you well and kindly? — Ask Jacquot if his name is Kakkarakak??
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 2 (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), No. 166