This really has been so utterly wretched and lifeless a year again that there is scarcely anything in it I care to remember. I suppose I ought to have answered Emilie's letter when I was in London, but when one answers a letter one must write about something and what could I write about from London which wasn't better unwritten about? And this London seems to have pursued me the whole year through. When I returned, my little old dog Peps welcomed me with another week of life, just to show me he had been waiting for me, but then he died. We spent two whole days by the poor faithful beast's basket; he was always getting up to drag himself to the chair where I work and didn't see me standing close to him. I carried him down in a box and buried him in a meadow. That was another shrewd blow for me! Then at Seelisberg we had nothing but bad weather and dull company. Fortunately I had one day of rejoicing over Julie!
Scarcely had I settled down to work a little in Zurich when the roses upon the thorns of my existence began to bloom, fading often, but budding again as often, and I had, like a good gardener, to give them almost three months of uninterrupted attention. And I have still not managed to put my big child The Valkyrie to sleep. There you have a rich year of a rich life, the only benefit of which has been to make it plain to me afresh that the whole purpose of life is to become a weariness. Still, I have to mention Karl's arrival in Zurich as something good which has happened to me. I am glad that he has succeeded at last in escaping from his political homelessness, and I shall be still better pleased if he likes it here for a time, as I shall then have him near me. In the year since last I saw him he seems to me to have altered greatly for the better; he makes the same impression on all here who used to know him. Even though he will probably always remain something of an oddity, he will have the right to do so, as he really is something out of the ordinary.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 295