Dear Flying Dutchman of Bayreuth!
As your ship has again come to anchor, I take advantage of this rarely favourable state of things to invite myself and my wife to dinner on your ship (namely, at your house) to-morrow, Thursday, at one o'clock. We beg you also to ask Master Wölffel to join us after dinner (shall we say—at two o'clock) with his plans for our house. If our coming inconveniences you, I beg of you to let me have a word from you in order that I may keep a proper distance.
With the most cordial greetings from house to house,
Yours faithfully,
Richard Wagner.
(Also soon to be Ship's Captain.)
Source: The Story of Bayreuth as Told in the Bayreuth Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Caroline V. Kerr (Small, Maynard and Company, 1912), No. 32