BROWNING AND MOSCHELES
You will look in vain now for the old brown-brick bungalow that stood,
for the most part concealed by trees and shrubs, within the railings of
the park-like enclosure halfway down Sloane Street, on the left-hand
side, as you go from Knightsbridge. It stood there till the end of the
eighties. If you walked there in the days of my early acquaintance
with it, or glided through Sloane Street in a hansom, the chances were
that the bungalow would still escape your glance, sheltered as it was
by foliage. But from the top of any 'bus you could make it out
readily, and you would wonder, as most 'bus fares did, what lucky or
eccentric fellow lived within the very plain walls and had all that
Cadogan enclosure as a back garden. Probably your neighbour on the
'bus top would tell you, 'bus neighbours being at all times well
stocked with misinformation, that the favoured dwelling was the home of
the gardener of the enclosure. But it was not. It was the home of my
delightful friend, Felix Moscheles, and there you could find Robert
Browning almost any Sunday afternoon when he was in London.
{43}
Felix Stone Moscheles was the son of Ignaz Moscheles, composer and
pianist, whose intimate friendship with Mendelssohn is revealed in the
latter's published correspondence. Felix was born in London February
8, 1833, at Number 3 Chester Place, Regent's Park, and Mendelssohn
acted as his godfather at the christening in St. Pancras Church. Felix
died at Tunbridge Wells, December 22, 1917. He was as kind a man as
ever lived. He was an artist by profession, fond of music and
musicians, as you might expect him to be; he spoke several languages
fluently and with equal charm--English, French, German, Esperanto, and
I know not what else--and he was passionately attached to movements for
world peace. We know that nothing made for the peace of the world down
to mid-1914; that while Germany had been deceiving it, the world had
lulled itself to sleep with "drowsy syrups" and ecstatic daydreams. I
think the awakening killed my dear old friend. That is not surprising.
He was over eighty-one when the war broke out, and almost eighty-five
when he died. Down to 1913, when I saw him last, I used to say that he
was the youngest man of my acquaintance. He had the optimism of youth,
its buoyant spirit, its gallant outlook.
When I first knew Moscheles he was only fifty-five or fifty-six, and he
was passing cakes to the ladies, while his wife poured tea, and a
stoutish man in a grey checked suit, and with grey moustache and
chin-beard, was talking something which seemed like philosophy, and was
certainly not {44} poetry, to a mixed group in a cosy corner. It was
one of the happy points about Moscheles' Sunday afternoons that if you
cared to continue talking with another caller and the other caller
cared to continue to listen, or to talk with you, you were not routed
up to exchange commonplaces about the weather with somebody else who
needed to be assured that it rained, or that the sun was shining. You
could flit from group to group, and find a place where you fitted, and
the host or hostess would contrive, if you were unknown, to make you
known to some one without interrupting some one else's story, so that
no one was left adorning the wall.
The stoutish, grey man in the grey checked suit was Robert Browning
whose afternoon-tea manner was quite simple, as unaffected as that of a
bank-chairman contemplating dividends or deposits. He was not in the
least a posing poet. He had been a great friend of Moscheles for a
long time, and the latter spoke of him as "my literary godfather."
Moscheles, at this time, was preparing for publication "Felix
Mendelssohn's letters to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles." I had
something to do with persuading him to write "In Bohemia with George Du
Maurier." I had been looking in his studio through a mass of autograph
letters and sketches relating to his years in Paris as an art student,
the "Trilby" years, and, as Du Maurier's book and the play adapted from
it were the rage of the time, Felix was encouraged to write around the
letters he had, and Du Maurier's early sketches, and about the
characters in the romance of the hour, and to {45} send some of the
chapters to the _Century Magazine_, and afterward to produce the whole
as a book.
Moscheles was brought up among celebrities, and was surrounded by the
famous all his life. Mendelssohn, Joachim, Malibran, Lablache were, in
his boyhood, family friends. He attracted distinguished persons as
long as he lived. When he was thirteen the family moved from London to
Leipzig, at Mendelssohn's instigation. Mendelssohn was eager that his
friend, Moscheles' father, should become a professor in the
Conservatoire which he was founding at Leipzig. And so the move was
made, Ignaz Moscheles relinquishing his London career and its worldly
advantages in order to live near his friend. Felix, who at ten had
begun his education at King's College, London, had, at thirteen, to
find it in Germany. But not for long; when he was seventeen,
determined to become an artist, he began studying drawing and painting
in Paris, at the Atelier Gleyre. Having seen something of the troubles
of Germany in 1848, he was now to see the troubles of France which led
to and followed the flight of Louis Philippe, and attended the _coup
d'etat_.
It was during the Atelier Gleyre period that he met George du Maurier
and had the amusing experiences he described afterwards in the book to
which I have alluded. From Paris he went to Antwerp, where he studied
under Van Lorino at De Keyser's Academy, and where he had as fellow
students Laurens Alma-Tadema, Maris, and Heyermans. I don't know when
he returned to London {46} to settle down, but when he did so he began
a career that was to be rich in friendships, helpful to all, and
productive in portraiture.
As a portrait painter he was at his best, I think. As long ago as
1862, in his studio at Cadogan Gardens, he painted a portrait of
Mazzini which, after Mazzini's death, he offered to present to Italy.
But official Italy at that time was not desiring portraits of Mazzini
and the offer was declined. Now, after the painter's death, the
portrait goes to a museum at Milan. In 1882, Moscheles visited
America, accompanying his friends Henry Irving and Ellen Terry on their
first journey over the Atlantic. He painted Grover Cleveland, during
the week when Cleveland was first elected to the Presidency, and talked
with him of the subjects which absorbed the artist,--International
Arbitration and Universal Peace. His portrait of Browning went to the
Armour Institute, Chicago. Other portraits of his which were quite
remarkable, which linger in the memory, were of his mother, Charlotte
Moscheles, Rubinstein, H. M. Stanley, Gounod, Sarasate, Tom Mann,
Israels, Stepniak, George Jacob Holyoake (at the age of eighty); he
made beautiful water colours of Venice, of Spain, of Sicily, of Cairo,
of Tunis, of Algerian subjects; and later was quite fascinated by his
scheme of painting a series of "Pictures with a Purpose."
But the "Pictures with a Purpose" did not, I think, attract persons
less purposeful than the painter. They were socialistic pictures,
reforming, philanthropic, propagandist, as if the painter were {47}
preaching by paint and canvas. I think his oral preaching was
preferred.
I have mentioned the old brown-brick bungalow where Moscheles lived in
Cadogan Gardens, where I first knew him, and first saw Robert Browning.
Moscheles had lived there for I know not how many years, but when his
lease expired, in the early nineties, the bungalow expired too. The
march of "improvement" was coming down Sloane Street, and the bungalow
was doomed. It disappeared from the gaze of surrounding and jealous
neighbours who might have keys to the gardens but could not live in
those pleasant demesnes. In the Elm Park Road, near the borders of
Chelsea and Fulham, Moscheles found a house with an unusually large
garden. He transformed the house and built a studio which he connected
with it, and there one went to so many melodious evenings and artistic
afternoons that through the years of recollection I seem to behold him
hospitably dispensing tea and bread and butter, attended by swarms of
musicians who were, or were to become, famous; by poets and painters
who had found, or still were seeking, celebrity; by dreamers who were
going to free Russia; or zealous gentlemen, like Baron d'Estournelles
de Constant, who were not only labouring for the Hague Conferences but
for the Parliament of Man.
It was there that Mark Hambourg first played when he came to London. I
remember the occasion well enough, but not the music, for I cannot
forget that phenomenally ugly youngster. He was then {48} only a boy.
But the music rippled and thundered from his fingers, while that
amazing head with its torrential hair cast shivering shadows over the
magical keyboard. The unprepossessing youth was then unknown. He
became known soon enough and he ran quickly to the fame that waits upon
pianists of remarkable gifts.
Moscheles was a citizen of the world, which he regarded as his native
country, so it was natural enough that he should take a lively interest
in Esperanto in the days when people thought it a fad, and he became,
as he remained, President of the London Esperanto Club. He was
constantly corresponding with congenial folk in remote countries with
the object of spreading the merits of Esperanto as an auxiliary
language for international intercourse. "Even now," he said a
generation ago, "I can go anywhere with it, and by its aid find
somebody who will make me feel at home." He was a tireless
propagandist. I would venture to say that he loved "propaganding" more
than art. At any rate he could seldom avoid diluting his painting with
propaganda in the contented Victorian era when little wars were fought
every six months and trouble looked for between whiles. How easy it
seemed in those days, when most of us were credulous, to achieve
Liberty by lecturing!
Partly through his zeal for Esperanto and partly through his passion
for a "Free Russia", he was particularly keen to meet Stepniak. I had
known the latter for some years, having as long ago as 1885 or 1886
written an article about him for the _New {49} York Tribune_. The
meeting with Moscheles was brought about one night at a "Smoke Talk" in
my home in Cheyne Walk, and from that moment the two men became fast
friends, remaining so until Stepniak's tragic death. Whether Stepniak
had or had not killed an official in Russia I don't know, and I do not
care much. If he had killed him I dare say the man deserved it, for,
of all the plundering and oppressive gangs of officialdom, the Russians
of that era had about the worst; they robbed like desperados and they
ruled their land with lies, torture, and corruption. In a country
capable of producing the "Revolution" of 1917 and the later Bolshevism,
anything was possible in the mid-eighties,--anything except the shadow
of freedom. The tall dark Russian with the thin beard and the thin
squeaky voice was a striking contrast to Moscheles, who was grey, and
rather short than tall, and whose quiet geniality was the bloom on a
trustful, generous character that invited confidence. Stepniak used to
say that he never became quite accustomed to the liberty of English
life. The opposite character of Russian habits had bitten too deeply
into him. I remember that when he first came to London he would look
around furtively when in the street, and if we stopped at a corner to
talk he would ask: "Will the police allow this? In Russia they would
not after dark." If he had lived to see London during the Great War he
might have felt much more at home.
No one was ever bored at the Moscheles' afternoons. How could one be
bored when host and {50} hostess gave no thought to themselves but all
their thought to their guests? Even the Swami I met there did not
depress my spirits as many Swamis have done. I forget his name. I
have met regiments of them in one country and another. Mostly they
blazed, not with humility but importance. He, I say, had a worldly
air, as if he were an Anglican bishop. He had also a sense of humour
which was not entirely subdued as he listened to an American lady
expounding the doctrine of "Votes for Women." "Madame," said he, "may
I ask a question?"
The lady looked assent.
"Your husband: does he share these views?"
"Not yet," she replied.
"Ah," said the Swami. And there were gusts of laughter.
"I may add," said the lady, "that I am not yet married."
Then the laughter came in shrieks, and the Swami smiled. But this, of
course, was a generation before the suffragettes were brandishing
hatchets like the Redmen, and burning churches and slashing paintings
like the Huns.
But I have alluded to Browning, and have done so because whenever I
think of Moscheles, I always think of him in association with Browning.
Their friendship was very intimate, and that is one fact which shows
the kind of man Moscheles was. After that glimpse and
how-d'ye-do-good-bye at the old brown-brick bungalow which the Earl of
Cadogan was so glad to destroy when the chance arrived to do so, it had
been arranged by Moscheles and the {51} poet that we should meet again
with another friend of the three at a little lunch of four. But fate,
or, to be precise, politics, which may be another name for fate,
decided otherwise, and I had to go far afield to chronicle the results.
Never again did that little company come together unless it were at
Browning's open grave, on the midday of the dying year. The reaper
Death had mown quickly.
When the scene shifted to Westminster Abbey, I waited at the cloister
doors till I could pass to a seat in the Poets' Corner. While waiting
at the door, I heard from the pressing throng behind me the voice of an
Irish writer whom I had known and had lost from sight five years
before. While looking for the familiar face that belonged to the
delicious brogue, there came the sound of a great key turning an
ancient lock, and then the door swung open. "Come," said another
friend, and we went in, getting separated before we had gone far, but
taking seats near the draped grave.
Browning's son was chief mourner. The poet had died in his son's home,
the Palazzo Rezzonico, in Venice. And now, this day at Westminster was
the last day of 1889. The great bell of the Abbey began tolling; its
deep notes floated down from its tower as they sought lodgment in the
hearts of the assembling throng, and with every stroke some face
appeared that all England, or the world, knew well. After thirty years
I can recall many of the faces that the grey light of the dull day,
softened by the colouring of the Abbey windows, fell upon. There were
tiers of people. Even the openings in {52} the triforium revealed
them, and by the great western doors they were packed, though they
could catch but glimpses of the chancel, and most of them not that.
Huxley's was the first face I saw. I had first seen it in the same
place, almost on the same spot, years before, at Darwin's funeral. Max
Muller and George Meredith were near him now. One thought that England
sent her celebrated living men that day to meet the famous multitudes
whose bodies have been laid away beneath the Abbey pavement for
centuries upon centuries. There were Lord Wolseley and the Lord Chief
Justice, Lord (then Professor) Bryce, Frederic Harrison, Holman Hunt,
Henry Irving, Sidney Colvin, Whistler and Poynter and Alma-Tadema and
Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord Avebury).
London was covered with a thickening fog. You could scarcely see the
Abbey from Dean's Yard. Within the Abbey the arches aloft dissolved in
mist, a mist of copper and pale gold where the light glanced through
rose windows. Slipping into one's memory came Mrs. Browning's lines:
"--view the city perish in the mist
Like Pharaoh's armaments in the deep Red Sea,
The chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host
Sucked down and choked to silence."
Candles from the choir places, and long-chained lamps, sent their soft,
yellow gleams eerily through the veil which seemed to hang above us.
And as the high noon drew near my glances fell upon the historians
Kinglake, Lecky, and Froude. Would {53} any one of the three ever
write of this scene in England's history, I wondered? Bret Harte,
Burne-Jones, George du Maurier, Leslie Stephen, William Black,
Bancroft, and John Hare, and the publishers Blackwood, Macmillan,
Murray, and Spottiswoode, ambassadors and ministers, the heads of
universities, of learned societies, were shown to their places, singly
or in groups, or took positions where they could find them, standing
against the monuments. And when no more people could find space, the
Abbey clock struck twelve, and the great west doors swung open, and
down the long central aisle came the funeral train. Then arose the
choral music which for one hundred and seventy years has risen at every
burial within the Abbey, the burial office composed and played by Croft
and Purcell when they were organists at Westminster.
Sir Frederick Bridge is playing it now, as Robert Browning, all there
is of him on earth, is carried on his bier through the dense throng, to
pause a while at the foot of the chancel steps beneath the central
lantern. Choir and clergy precede him. On either side of him walk
Hallam Tennyson, Doctor Butler (of Trinity College, Cambridge), Sir
James Fitzjames Stephen, Sir Theodore Martin, Archdean Farrar,
Professor Masson, Professor Jowett (master of Balliol), Sir Frederick
Leighton, Sir James Paget, Sir George Grove, George Murray Smith
(Browning's publisher), and Professor Knight (of the University of St.
Andrews). Then as the service proceeds (the Archbishop of Canterbury
is here, Dean Vaughan, and others eminent in the {54} Church) the
choristers sing a "Meditation" which Sir Frederick Bridge has composed
to Mrs. Browning's poem:
"What would we give to our beloved?
The hero's heart to be unmoved,
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
The monarch's crown to light the brows?
'He giveth His beloved sleep.'
"O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And 'giveth His beloved sleep.'
"His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slopes men sow and reap,
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
'He giveth His beloved sleep.'"
The organ and the choir paused; all sounds died away. God struck a
silence through us all. It fell upon a throng that faced the world's
loss as if suddenly confronted by the flight of the soul for whose
absence all mourned. And just then there fell a shaft of sunlight,
golden, magical, touching the bier, and then it faded slowly away. To
many, very many among the silent company, the loss by this death was a
personal one; to all it had more than a touch of that. It must be so
when a great poet dies. What I remember as vividly as all else {55}
was the great number of young faces in the Abbey, as if the rising
generation did reverence to him who had passed.
By and by the last hymn had been sung, the Dean had pronounced the
benediction, and Bridge, at the great organ, made the old Abbey thrill
to its inmost stones with the vibrating tones of the Dead March from
"Saul." Now the coffin had been lowered into its grave at the foot of
Chaucer's tomb. Before us and at each hand were monuments, tablets,
inlaid stones, marking the burial places of Spenser, Dryden, Gay, of
Butler and Casaubon, Ben Jonson, Addison and Cowley, Prior, Macaulay
and Grote; of Handel, Campbell, Sheridan, and Garrick. I stood on the
grave of Dickens. And the throng passed slowly, reverently gazing into
the dark grave where Browning's body had been laid as the old year was
dying. Pealing through nave and transepts and the chapels of Kings,
above the altar and the tombs of soldiers, sailors, statesmen--the
brood who had made England and sung of her--the rumbling and trumpeting
of the Dead March. Might not Shakespeare and Milton, Doctor Johnson,
and Goldsmith and Gray have come to the Poets' Corner that day at noon
to join the company, and to greet, from their own memorials, this other
man who had helped to make England? It seemed quite probable as we
passed from that real world into the world of fog, and the closing door
of the Poets' Corner shut in behind us the now tremulous notes of the
organ.
How often have I heard Sir Frederick stir the {56} slumbering majesty,
beauty, and solemnity that lie within the Abbey organ, stir them to
living wonder on occasions like this? More times than I can easily
recall. In capitals and churches and cathedrals, in many parts of the
world, that March from "Saul" has awakened memories within me. My
earliest memory of music concerns itself with a military band, marching
slowly, slowly down a hill, troops following with reversed arms, a gun
carriage carrying something that was not a gun, covered with a flag;
horses whose riders moved very slowly; coaches that young eyes saw as
beyond number; and then a hole-in-the-ground. Men carried something on
their shoulders from the gun carriage and lowered it into the hole;
other men fired guns at the sky. A hawk flew full circle in the blue.
And some one said, "My boy, take a last look where your father lies."
Then the Dead March rolled and moaned again, and fixed itself on one of
the pins of memory.
The solemn notes always bring back those moments, as a vision in which
a small boy made his first acquaintance with Death. But they have
never seemed to humble and exalt, moan and triumph and sob and
victoriously march to the rhythm of the winds, so charged with majesty,
as when Sir Frederick touched the heart of his instrument at the Abbey.
The occasion, the place drenched with memories, the simple ceremony,
the music's magic, and the mystery of it all make of this tribute to
Death one of the rich experiences of living.
{57}