Best thanks to all Righteouses and Righteousesses!
My good wife rejoiced me with a splendid garden-treat on my birthday!
But: business! Unger has never come, though I telegraphed him twice about important prospects. I suppose I shall have to give him up as well, already.
Forgive me! Your little questions about so-and-so, whether he might attend rehearsals? . . . and so on, often demand answers that do not come so easy to me, — for I'm much more bothered than you seem to think. The preliminary lessons, not rehearsals, of this year are intended purely for the thing, not for the listener: from the 1st to the 15th August, however, there will be orchestral rehearsals, for position, seating, sound, first reading. Who happens to be there, and behaves himself discreetly, will perhaps find something to hear in the end; but special permits will not go out.
What difficulties I still have before me! If the Righteous would only realise that, and not be always congratulating me in advance on my "successes"!
Many hearty greetings.
Your
R. Wagner.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 63