CHAPTER I

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Fragments of an Autobiography

DEDICATED TO MY WIFE

[Illustration: Charlotte Moscheles]

Fragments

of an

Autobiography

BY

FELIX MOSCHELES

AUTHOR OF "IN BOHEMIA WITH DU MAURIER," ETC.

London

JAMES NISBET & CO., LTD.

21 BERNERS STREET

1899

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

I have often found it hard to read a preface; much harder do I find it

to-day to write one. If I do so, it is because it gives me an

opportunity of owning that I have strung these my reminiscences together

most unceremoniously and unsystematically. They are to be taken only as

"Fragments of an Autobiography," very much on the same lines as the

first volume which recorded my adventures in Bohemia with Du Maurier. If

the reader, thus duly forewarned, elects to follow me over the uneven

road, he will, I trust, not mind a little jolting. If, however, he

judges that the gaps and omissions in my life-story are unjustifiable,

he must not be surprised should I attempt to set things right in a third

volume. I should be all the more inclined to do so as there are some

other fragments and segments waiting to be pieced together which are

connected with the brightest days of my life.

The writing of the present chapters has often been a source of genuine

pleasure to me, for I say with Bolingbroke in _Richard II_.: "I count

myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good

friends."

And now that I have come to a full stop, I am left in that pleasant

frame of mind in which I would fain believe in the proverbial kindness

of the reader--that deity from times immemorial appealed to by the

preface-writer,--a frame of mind unduly optimistic perhaps, but which

emboldens me to hope that I may find some new friends amongst those who

will care to read what I have to say about the old ones.

F. M.

LONDON, _February 1899_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

EARLY IMPRESSIONS 1

CHAPTER II

WILL YOU SIT FOR ME, FRIDA? 58

CHAPTER III

LEIPSIC IN 1847 AND 1848--MENDELSSOHN'S DEATH 92

CHAPTER IV

MY FIRST COMMISSION 110

CHAPTER V

CLAUDE RAOUL DUPONT 116

CHAPTER VI

A TRIP TO AMERICA IN 1883 208

CHAPTER VII

GROVER CLEVELAND "VIEWED" 234

CHAPTER VIII

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 246

CHAPTER IX

ROSSINI 271

CHAPTER X

PARIS AFTER THE COMMUNE 300

CHAPTER XI

SOME INCIDENTS OF ROBERT BROWNING'S VISITS TO THE STUDIO 317

FRAGMENTS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

I well remember the terrors of a certain night when the wind was howling

and the rain was beating down in torrents over the arid plains of the

Lüneburger Haide; between them they had blown or blotted out the

flickering lights of a heavy, lumbering travelling carriage such as one

used to hire in the so-called good old times. The horses were plunging

in the mire, the postillion was swearing, and a very small boy was

howling. That boy was I, and the incident marks my first entrance into

that conscious life which registers events in our memories. Not that I

exactly remember what happened, and how we got out of the ankle-deep

mud, and finally reached our destination; but I have no doubt that my

father and the "brother-in-law," as the German postillion was addressed

in those days, had to get the wheels out of the ruts as best they could

without assistance, for there was no traveller, weary or otherwise, of

the regulation first-chapter pattern, to come to the rescue.

No--I remember but little of it, but I have lived it all over again

every time I have heard the dramatic strains of Schubert's Erl-king.

Great artists, gifted with the power of song, have depicted the whole

scene to me in thrilling accents; dear old Rubinstein, the friend, alas,

I lost all too soon--grand old Rubinstein, the master whose magic touch

swept the keyboard as the hurricane sweeps the plain--could conjure up

visions of a misty past in my mind. "My father, my father," I could have

cried, as the Erl-king of Pianists pursued the doomed child with his

giant strides and unrelenting touch, alternately letting loose the

elements to rage in maddening tumult, and drawing uncanny whispers from

his weird instrument.

Whatever I may have been prompted to cry when under the spell of

Rubinstein's art, I do not think I invoked my father's aid on that night

upon the heath; it was more likely "My mother, my mother," I called, and

she just protected me, and so, fortunately for me, it all ended happily,

and: "In her arms the child was _not_ dead," but cried itself to sleep,

and was put back into the little hammock that was slung across from side

to side of our old-fashioned vehicle, and that temporarily replaced my

cradle in 3 Chester Place, Regent's Park, London, the house I was born

in.

My father was on a concert tour in Germany, reaping laurels and golden

harvests, such as were rarely heard of in those days. From his wife he

never parted if he could help it, even for a short time, and by way of

an encumbrance he had on this occasion taken, besides the necessary

luggage, us children--I think there were three of us then--and a little

dumb keyboard on which he used to exercise his fingers to keep them up

to concert pitch when pianos were out of reach. I hadn't seen any of

those little finger-trainers for years, when I came across one on Robert

Browning's writing-table; he always kept it by his side, and I wondered

whether he used it to stimulate the fingers that had to keep pace with

the poet's ever-flowing thoughts. But my earliest recollections are

connected, not with dumb keyboards, but with very full-sounding and

eloquent ones. My father was ever happiest when at the piano or

composing. He was interested, oh yes, much interested in the sister

arts, in science and politics, but he had a way of disappearing after a

while when such matters were being discussed, or of getting lost when we

had set out conscientiously to do museums or churches in Venice or

Antwerp, or to visit crypts, shrines, bones of ancestors, and other

historical relics above and below ground. We knew we should find him at

home at the piano, or pen in hand composing, that is, if he had not

perchance been stopped on the way by the sounds of music in some

attractive shape. It was quite enough for him to hear such sounds

proceeding from an open window, to make for the door, ring the bell, and

ask for the "Maestro" or the "Herr Kapellmeister." He would introduce

himself, and presently be making friends on a sound musical basis with

his colleague. It would sometimes lead to a continental hug of the

warmest description, when the surprised native would discover that his

visitor was _the_ pianist.

Sometimes my father did not wait for that finishing touch, as when on

one occasion he invaded the room of an ill-fated lover of music. It was

at Tetschen, on a journey through Saxony and Bohemia; we arrived one

evening at the little hotel of that place, tired and hungry, and

thinking only of supper and a good night's rest. Scarcely had we settled

down to the former, when, separated from us only by a wooden partition,

a neighbour commenced operations on the piano, slowly and carefully

unwinding one bar after the other of that most brilliant of pieces,

Weber's "Invitation à la Valse." "Dass dich das Mäuserle beisse!"

exclaims my father, in terrible earnest. "May the little mouse bite

you!" That was a favourite expression of his, when he found himself

suddenly impelled to denounce somebody or something, and, as he

accentuated it, it always seemed amply to replace those naughty words

which are not admissible in daily life, and may only be used--and that,

to be sure, for our benefit--on Sundays by the exponents of the

Christian dogma.

The servant-girl was summoned, and she explained that the neighbour

usually began at that time, and was in the habit of playing several

hours. "Dass dich das Mäuserle" muttered my father with suppressed rage;

"Dass dich" ... and with that he rushed out of the room. What would

happen? We were about to tremble, when a meek, respectful knock at the

neighbour's door happily reassured us. "Herein"--Come in. Enter my

father suavely apologising for the interruption--we hear it all through

the thin partition. He, too, is a lover of music; may he as such be

allowed to listen for a while. Much pleased, the other offers him a

chair and resumes his performance; my father listens patiently, and

waits till the last bars are reached. "Delightful!" we hear him say, "a

beautiful piece, is it not? I once learnt it too; may I try your piano?"

And with that he pounces on the shaky old instrument, galvanising it

into new life, as he starts off at a furious rate, and gives vent to his

pent-up feelings in cascades of octaves and breakneck passages; never

had he played that most brilliant of pieces more brilliantly.

"Good-night," he said as he struck the last chord; "allow me once more

to apologise." "Ach! thus I shall never be able to play it," answered

the neighbour with a deep sigh, and he closed the piano, and spent the

rest of the evening a sadder but a quieter man.

But it was not often my father was allowed an opportunity of watching

over his own comforts. That was a duty my mother would not willingly

share with him or with anybody else; quite apart from the affection she

lavished on the husband, there was the tribute of respect she paid to

the artist. His was a privileged position, she held, and his path should

be kept clear of all annoyance. Petty troubles, at any rate, should not

approach him, nor the serious ones either if it was within her power to

shield him from them; if not, she would contrive to take the larger

share of the burden upon herself.

From our earliest days, we children were trained to be on our best

behaviour when our father came home, whatever our next best might have

been previously. We were mostly happy little listeners when he was at

the piano, and if he stopped too long for our juvenile faculties of

enjoyment, why, our happiness gradually took the shape of respect for

the musical function. It even turned into something akin to awe when he

was composing. At such times I would not have whistled within his

hearing to save my life. A wholesome fear of the Mäuserles that would

assuredly sweep down upon me, if I disturbed the peace, would, I

daresay, in a great measure account for my praiseworthy attitude, but,

apart from any such practical considerations, it was the mystery

connected with the evolution of the beautiful in art, which, from the

first, held me in subjection.

The whooping-cough with which one of us children started, rapidly

communicating it to the others, was also regulated in its outbursts with

due regard to my father's peace. Whilst the fit was on us, it was a

source of particular enjoyment to my sisters and myself, but we never

freely indulged in it when my father was near. At other times we would

come together, and wait for one another till the spirit moved us to

whoop. Then I would wield the bâton in imitation of my betters at the

conductor's desk, and we would have our solos and ensemble-pieces, our

ritardandos and prestissimos, producing unexpected effects, and with

the limited means at our disposal, making what I recollect as a very

attractive and interesting performance. Edifying as it should have been

to a parent, my mother could at first not see it in that light, but she

had finally to give in, and to acknowledge that it was a bad cough that

whooped no good.

I was an only son--an elder brother died some years before I was

born--and it was but natural that my mother should look with indulgence

on my delinquencies. I must sometimes have tried her and those around me

sorely, as, for instance, when I hanged my little sister's favourite

doll Anna Maria, from a knob of the chest of drawers, there to remain

until she be dead.

Clara--that was my sister's name--was of a warm temperament, and fought

for the release of her wax baby with all the passionate energy of the

maternal instinct. I had to give way and cut down the victim, and then,

all other means to pacify her having failed, I appealed to her

imagination, and persuaded her to play at my having killed her in the

battle we had just fought; it would be such a surprise for mamma. Ever

sharp and quick as she was, she at once saw the far-reaching

possibilities of my scheme, and allowed herself to be wrapped up in a

bedsheet, as in a shroud, and to be laid out stiff and rigid as a

corpse. I pulled down the blinds and shut the shutters; then I lit a

candle which I placed by her side; when all was ready, I hid in a

cupboard and set up a dismal wail that soon brought my mother to the

spot. The effect upon her was all I could have desired, perhaps more

so, for the first surprise once over, she expressed her disapproval of

my conduct in terms suitable to the occasion, and thus quite spoilt the

pleasure I had taken in the whole thing.

My mother was a remarkable woman,--a "lovely" woman, to use the word as

the Americans do when they want a single epithet to describe alike the

beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul, a word that shall tell of

the brightness of the intellect and suggest the qualities of the heart.

There are those who think that when it comes to the selection of

epithets applicable to a mother, however distinguished or worthy she may

have been, the son is not the person to entrust with that selection.

Perhaps they are right, and if in this case they care to do so, they

must look round for corroborative evidence in her books. It is just

their fault if they have never read them, or if they have never heard of

her as Felix Mendelssohn's grandmother, a character in which she

appeared with great advantage to the grandson when she was twenty-four,

and he as a young man of nineteen paid his first visit to England. And

it is just their loss if they never saw the jet-black plaits as she wore

them coiled around her head when she was young, or the mass of silky,

snow-white hair of her later days that, when set free, would cascade

over and far below the shoulders that bore the weight of fourscore

years. On her face Time had left its mark. Every line, every wrinkle

gave character and expression to her features, and bore testimony to the

truly beautiful life she had led. The picture reproduced on the first

page of these reminiscences I painted when she was in her 83rd year.

But the story of my mother's life must be written in another volume. For

the present I return to earlier recollections.

When I was ten years old, I was dubbed a big boy, too big to be tied to

his mother's apron-strings, and I was sent to King's College to rough it

with other boys. Opportunities were not wanting for the roughing it. On

one occasion a boy called me a German sausage, and I retorted by

punching his head; and on another I met a University College boy, called

him a stinkermalee, and got my head punched in return. What the

appellation precisely meant, I didn't know, nor do I now, but it was

then the particular term, opprobrious and insulting, we King's College

boys had adopted to express our unbounded contempt for the hated rivals

in Gower Street.

I was generally allowed to walk to school and back by myself, for it

formed part of the scheme of education mapped out for me by my parents,

that I should start fair and see life for myself. My way lay through St.

Giles's and the Seven Dials, and there I did see life and did hear

English too, English as she was spoke in those parts, perhaps as she is

to this day; but as I pass that way now, I don't come across it; the

hand of Time has been moving across the Seven Dials, and all the old

landmarks are gone. Where in these degenerate times can a schoolboy hope

to see a bear, a real big brown bear, in a cage just in front of a

barber's shop? only a penny-shave place to be sure, but bold in its

advertisement, a notice in sprawling big characters proclaiming the

superiority of the establishment's bear's grease over any other grease,

whatever its kind might be. Where is the schoolboy to-day who can

realise the pleasurable excitement of approaching such a caged bear in a

public thoroughfare close enough to test the beast's good nature under

circumstances of provocation, and his own adroitness in making good his

retreat in case of retaliation?

In the streets and alleys of St. Giles's I was first initiated into the

horrors of warfare, especially into the kind of warfare considered quite

legitimate in those days. A quarrel first;--passions roused--words

leading to blows. Coats off, fists clenched, and there, whilst two

savages were trying the issue as to which could knock the other into a

jelly, or, if luck would have it, into a coffin, we, the enlightened

public, formed a ring and stood round, nominally to see fair-play, but

virtually to back one or the other of the combatants, goading both on to

fight like devils, and finally rejoicing over the survival of the

fittest.

That kind of thing has been stopped in St. Giles's, but the devil

doesn't mind; there is so much legitimate warfare, slaughter and

massacre nowadays on a larger scale, that he is said to admit himself

that he gets over and above the share he originally claimed; and as for

the ring, why, that has grown apace; thanks to scientific progress, it

is iron-bound now with telegraphic wires, and is known by the euphonious

name of "the Concert of Europe."

How good man is, and how tender in his concern for his brother! More

than once I saw him pick up the battered jelly and carry it with

fraternal solicitude to the neighbouring chemist. How good we all are,

stitching at Red Cross badges, chartering ambulances, and sending the

hat round at the Mansion House and elsewhere to save the surviving

fittest from starvation!

The question of woman's rights--and wrongs--was also occasionally raised

and illustrated for my benefit in one or the other of the Seven Dials,

the object lesson sometimes delaying me and getting me into trouble for

being late at the _hic-hæc-hoc_ business in the Strand. I particularly

recollect a female fiend rushing after her wretched husband, who fled

down the street from her, and from the blood-stained poker she savagely

brandished.

But there were quieter corners too, not far from the lairs of the

vicious, a dear old printshop for one, just by St. Giles' Church. The

most tempting pictures were displayed in the windows: coloured prints of

stage-coaches, cockatoos, prize-fighters, and racehorses; lovely female

types, as originally published in Heath's Book of Beauty; there were

fashion-plates next to Bartolozzi's, not in fashion, and I daresay many

an undiscovered treasure besides. I used to spend my pennies on views of

London, little steel-plate engravings, printed on a sort of shiny

cardboard. Was it my innate love for London that made them so

attractive, or my equally innate love of architecture? Probably both. I

always was, and am still a cockney at heart, and as for the building

craze, that has been on me from that day to this. Certainly no boy ever

had such a collection of bricks as I had, and such a table to build on,

specially constructed with drawers and divisions for all sizes and forms

of my materials.

"I'm going to be an architect," I informed the old Duke of Cambridge on

a gala occasion when he rode up to our house. "Right you are, my boy,"

said the Duke. "You'll be too late to build me a house, but you can

build me a mausoleum." I've been planning mausoleums ever since, but

unfortunately, not being an architect, I never have had a commission in

that line. The Duke, who was an enthusiastic lover of music, had come on

that occasion specially interested to hear Bach's Concerto in G minor,

which my father played from a copy of the original manuscript he had

received from his friend Professor Fischhof, of Vienna.

But to return from Royalty to the plebeian quarter of St. Giles, I must

state that whatever of my pocket-money may have been invested in views

of London, it was not that printshop, but the Lowther Arcade, which

usually wrecked my finances. I could not resist the temptation which

that short cut from the Strand to Catherine Street offered; my money

went to the purchase of most fascinating articles, unfortunately at best

of a twopenny-halfpenny character, things of beauty irresistibly

suggesting themselves as presents for my sisters, things no girl should

be without, wax angels under glass globes, bottle imps, china

shepherdesses, or jumping frogs, the latter to be sprung upon the

recipient unexpectedly. I brought them home and confided to my mother

what bargains I had got. Unhappily the angels, frogs, imps, and the

rest, however effective at first, were not long lived, or they proved

themselves otherwise disappointing; so they were soon forgotten. Not so

their cost.

My mother had carefully kept account of my wasteful expenditure for some

weeks, and one day she confronted me with the sum total it had reached.

It actually came within measurable distance of half-a-crown, an amount I

had as yet never been able to call my own. I was overwhelmed by such

proofs of my recklessness, and henceforth resisted the wiles of the

Lowther Arcade. So the lesson was not lost on me; it sank deep into my

heart, whence I have on more than one occasion been able to bring it to

the surface. But I am bound to confess that I never was radically cured.

I have periodical relapses when the old craving comes upon me, and the

taste for beautifully fashioned angels, for china and for glass, and I

revel in a bargain, and exult when I have picked up something every girl

ought to have. Whilst the glorious fit is on, I am privileged to forget

all I learnt in the sum-total lesson.

My experiences in the Lowther Arcade were soon to be suddenly

interrupted, and for a long time it was even doubtful whether I should

ever again be able to put in an appearance in that place or anywhere

else. I caught the scarlet fever, not in the slums as it might be

thought, but at school, where a regular epidemic had broken out. Our

class-rooms in King's College were down in the basement, and those who

knew said that the outbreak was due to the fact that the filth-laden

river came right up to the feet of the grand old building, and washed

them dirty day and night; other wiseacres contended that it was more

likely to be the churchyard of St. Mary-le-Grand just opposite which had

done the mischief. As far as I can remember, nobody mentioned the

drains, which in those days had not yet come into notice and fashion,

and could do their level best for the multiplication of bacilli without

being hampered by meddlesome sanitary inspectors. Well, whatever may

have been the malignant source which poisoned me, it had done its work

thoroughly, and developed my scarlet fever in its most virulent form. It

was a terrible time I went through. I was at death's door, but

fortunately that sombre portal remained closed, and I was not bidden to

cross the grim threshold.

No, I was destined to live and to fight the battle of life with whatever

fighting powers I might possess. Later on I was to wrestle more than

once with the grim immortal who only spares each of us mortals till his

hour-glass tells him it is time to use his scythe. And if I wrestled

well and am here to tell the tale, it is because by my side watched day

and night that best of nurses, my mother.

I was never what is called a good patient, and to this day I am very

much averse to sending for the doctor. I quite feel he indeed is a

friend in need, and I do not wish to disparage his power for good, or to

underrate his skill and judgment, but as a rule I make a point of not

calling him in till I know what I want him to say. I think that doctors

nowadays are more agreeable than they were formerly; the great and

fashionable doctors, I mean. A man, to be up to date, had to be brief,

brusque, and bumptious. He seemed to have learnt his stronger English

from Dr. Johnson, and generally to have been trained in a Johnsonian

atmosphere. He had to say smart things that could be quoted and hawked

about, and to enunciate wise saws in imitation of the master whose

sayings are so unmercifully inflicted on us to this day. He was in a

hurry; he drove up in a big yellow carriage, and before the horses could

pull up, his tiger had sprung from the footboard, and was giving the

most tremendous double-knock, one evidently meant to awaken the dead, in

case medical assistance had come too late.

To pass muster, the doctor's natural kindness had to be concealed

beneath an outer coating of apparent roughness. Sometimes it was the

roughness that was concealed only by a transparent veneer of amiability.

Certain it is that in those days no doctor could look at a boy's tongue

without at once declaring that he stood in immediate need of a black

dose, and if that vile compound did not exceed every other mixture in

nastiness, he did not believe it would be efficacious. He revelled in

blue pills, and was happiest when he could pull out a little lancet and

bleed you, or send round a man with a complete set of sharp blades, to

do the thing wholesale, jerking them into some part of your precious

self, and pumping a given number of ounces out of it and into his

cupping-glasses.

All this is very ungrateful of me, for Dr. Stone was the best and

kindest of men--and very undutiful, for he was my godfather (Felix Stone

is my full name). To be sure he had a big yellow carriage, and a tiger

whose main ambition in life it seemed to be to knock his master's

patients up. To be sure Dr. Stone came coated with a veneer of

roughness, but it was skin-deep; true, he gave me as many black doses

and blue pills as he thought my robust constitution could stand, but in

addition to these he made me many beautiful presents--a silver mug

emblazoned with our family crest and the motto "Labore," a splendid

family Bible of about my own weight and size, a costly edition of

Byron's "Childe Harold" and ditto of Milton's "Paradise Lost and

Regained," and a number of other things doubly delightful and gratifying

to my juvenile mind, because they always came at least three or four

years before I knew how to use them.

My good godfather had ushered me into this world, from which

unfortunately he was himself called away before he had had many

opportunities of performing the duties he had undertaken when he pledged

himself to see to it that I should "renounce the devil and all his

works."

When after many weeks of hard fighting with the scarlet enemy, and after

having passed through various relapses and complications, I emerged from

the sick-room, I was taken to Brighton for a complete change of air.

There I soon found new life and strength. Dear old Brighton! I was to

find new life and strength there once more, thirty years later, when I

met the young lady who said she would--when I asked her to marry me.

My next station was Hamburg. I was sent there to get the benefit of a

thorough change of air, and to improve my German. It was shortly after

the terrible conflagration which had laid low a great part of the city.

The jagged walls, springing in fantastic forms from immense piles of

crumbling masonry and charred timber, had a weird fascination for me. I

was deeply in sympathy with my beloved friend Architecture, and deplored

the fate that had overtaken some of the best buildings, but at the same

time I was lost in admiration of the beauties, now picturesque, now

awe-inspiring, which the caprice of the destructive element had stamped

on crazy walls and tangled masses of wreckage.

I have since been similarly impressed; in Pompeii first, and again in

Paris, after the Commune; only to be sure the former scene of

devastation I saw neatly put in order and made presentable for the

visitor, whereas the latter was yet smoking and all besmirched with the

blood of the sorely visited Parisians.

My father had given a concert for the benefit of the sufferers in

Hamburg, and was able to contribute a sum of £643 to the relief fund

raised.

On my arrival I was received with open arms by my relatives. My

grandfather, Adolf Embden, had been staying with us more than once, and

he was particularly partial to his grandson, because he had a marked

predilection for England and everything that was English. He knew more

about British politics than most men born and bred in the country; he

read all the big speeches delivered in Parliament, identified himself

with the Whigs, and was a fervent disciple of Cobden and Bright. He did

his best to train me in the way I should go, and his methods were quite

congenial to my taste. We often took long walks together, and his

peripatetic teachings are pleasantly blended in my mind with the

half-way house at the corner of the Jungfernsteg and the Alster Bassin,

then occupied by Giosti Giovanoli, the confectioner. He trained me just

once too often, but that was in London, in a shop near Oxford Circus,

and it was a Bath bun that made me restless. That shop was painted green

and gold, and to this day I would not eat on green and gold premises if

I were starving.

In Hamburg I was welcomed, too, by uncles and aunts, first and second

cousins, male and female, and by a strong contingent of grandaunts. I am

aware that most people have quite as many relatives of their own as they

need for home consumption, and that being so, they are not pleasantly

disposed towards the family history of their friends. So I mean to use

my relatives sparingly, and only to bring them in where they are

associated with things I well remember. My mother has penned most

characteristic sketches of many of those worthy personalities in a MS.

she has entitled "Early Recollections," and the grandaunts hold a

prominent place in those papers; but for the reason just given, I

refrain from transcribing her graphic descriptions of their doings. I

would, however, record my own boyish impressions, to the effect that

one or two of my grandaunts were a caution to rattle-snakes. I have

learned since to see that they were nothing of the kind, but just old

ladies of marked originality. It took some time before I could get to

like being loved by them; I preferred making faces behind their backs, a

pastime which I was joined in by a cousin about my own age. Cousin Carl

got into trouble oftener than I did, and had more reason to regret it,

for in one of the drawers of an old-fashioned mahogany secretary his

father kept an orthodox cane which he would produce on special

occasions--such were the unchallenged methods of training in those days.

My uncle was the best of men, anxious only to chastise for the good of

the young delinquent, whom he tenderly loved, but he might have saved

himself the trouble, for poor Cousin Carl was never to reap the benefit

of his training. He had at no time been robust, and was not to live

long. That winter of 1842 was looking about for victims. The fearful

mornings, when we had to get up in the dark, and wash by the flicker of

a tallow candle--wash, that is if we succeeded in hacking up the ice in

the jug, and in finding some water at the bottom of it--those fearful

mornings proved too much for him. Poor Carl's faces, as he made them

behind people's backs, grew longer and longer, his cough grew hollower

and hollower, and he soon went to rest where there are no canes and no

tallow dips, and all is peace, and even one's grandaunts are seraphs.

The sad event did not, however, take place during my stay in Hamburg. I

spent some six or eight months with my uncle and aunt. She, my Tante

Jaques, was my mother's only sister, and was deeply attached to her; on

me she lavished unvarying kindness and affection. My cousins, all older

than myself, were delighted to have the "little Englishman" in the

house, and the friendship we struck up then has lasted through life.

One of the grandaunts was a sister of Heinrich Heine, the poet. She had

married into the Embden family, and so Heinrich was a sort of cousin of

my mother's. They saw a good deal of one another when my mother was in

her teens, and he was a dreamy youth whom she and the other girls of the

family circle delighted to chaff. His frequent headaches they not

incorrectly ascribed to his mode of living; to be sure, they said, he

looked pale and interesting, but that was only because he had eaten too

much at yesterday's dinner party. "Now, what is the matter with you

again to-day?" said my mother as he sat down opposite her one morning

and watched her shelling peas. "How pale you are! it's that head again,

I suppose?" "Yes, Lottchen, I am ill; it is the head again." "That is

what you are always saying, but I'm sure it is not as bad as you make it

out to be. Come now, am I not right?" "O Lottchen," he said, "you do not

know how I suffer;" and as he sat there musing, she had not the heart

further to chaff him. When the next volume of his poems appeared shortly

afterwards, she knew what had passed through his mind on that occasion,

and perhaps on others when she had shown him friendly sympathy.

He writes:--

"When past thy house at morning

I take my way, to see

Thy face, child, at the window

Is deep delight to me.

Thy dark-brown eyes seem asking

As my sad, pale looks they scan,

Who art thou, and what ails thee,

Thou strange and woe-worn man!

'I am a German poet,

Through Germany widely known;

When they name the names that are famous,

With them they will name my own.

'And what I ail, oh many,

Dear little one, ail the same.

When they name the worst of sorrows,

Mine, too, they are sure to name.'"

Sometimes he was in livelier moods, as one day, when he, my grandfather,

and my mother were walking through the fields together, and were joined

by a remarkably dull doctor of philology, whose company was particularly

distasteful to Heine. Pointing to half-a-dozen cows and oxen that were

grazing close by, he said in an undertone: "I say, Lottchen, now there

are seven doctors on the meadow."

Salomon Heine, the poet's uncle, was a millionaire who spent his money

right royally and philanthropically; a man who owed his fortune to his

own exertions, and who, when he had made a million of marks for each of

his children--I forget how many he had--devoted the next million he

amassed to the foundation of a hospital. He was a delightful specimen

of an uncle, too, for he would spend his money philonepotically as well

as philanthropically. The nephew was ever ready to dive into the uncle's

purse; equally ready to make literary capital out of him and his

friends. Gumpel, another rich banker--we know him as Gumpelino--was his

pet aversion, and specially suggestive to him as a butt for his satire.

Gumpel, too, was a self-made man, a fact of which, however, he did not

like to be reminded, quite unlike old Heine, who loved to bring up the

subject to the annoyance of his friend, shouting across the table

stories of the early days when they came to Hamburg with their bundles

slung across their shoulders. To his nephew he was ever indulgent; he

was proud of his rising popularity, and as a rule was not appealed to in

vain when the young genius had got into money troubles. On one occasion,

though, he lost patience when he had given him a round sum wherewith to

defray the expenses of a journey to Norderney, a summer resort on the

coast of the North Sea. Instead of devoting the money to the purpose of

improving his health, he managed in one night to roll the round sum into

other people's pockets at the gaming tables. This time the uncle was

indignant, and Heinrich would probably never have gone to Norderney, and

consequently never have written the "Nordsee-Lieder," had not the

well-known firm of Hoffman & Campe come to the rescue with the necessary

funds, in consideration of which they stipulated he should write a

volume of songs for them.

In Hamburg I was sent to the Johanneum, a large public school. It was

rather hard, after having been called a German sausage in England, to be

derided as an English "Rossbiff" or "Shonebool," which was meant for

John Bull. The whole class roared with laughter when I rose for the

first time to decline [Greek: hê Mohysa], pronouncing the defunct Greek

language as it was spoken in King's College, and the jeers of that whole

class so galled and stung me that I wished I could kill all German boys

at a stroke, or at least maim those despicable ones within my reach for

life. It was well I could not act upon the impulse, for many a German

boy of that day was to be a staunch friend to me in after life. I had my

troubles in those Teutonic school-days, and I thought the proceedings

monotonous, but still there was pleasurable excitement to be had

occasionally, as when old Hummel came along--a half-witted water-carrier

whom every bad boy in Hamburg knew and hooted. Three words we would

shout in his face, three words that meant absolutely nothing, but that

sounded worse than any bad language I had ever heard. He was a shaky old

man, and the water-pails suspended from his shoulders prevented his

running after us, and so we could indulge with impunity in the

exhilarating sport of mocking him to the fullest extent our wicked

little human hearts desired.

I have also a pleasant recollection of caterpillar-hunting; we were

spending the summer near Hamburg in a rustic retreat, and a regular

plague of these insects made life a burden to some members of the

family. They were larger than ordinary caterpillars and more hairy, and

they were so numerous that much thought and care had to be bestowed on

the methods of protecting ourselves against them; for they did not

confine themselves to the garden, they made no difference between

vegetable produce and grand-aunts, and would mistake the best bonnets of

those worthies for cabbage leaves. There was even a rumour that one of

these slimy crawlers had been crushed out of existence by my

grandest-aunt, who chanced to be the heaviest one too. How that

caterpillar found its way between that lady's bed-sheets, and whether it

did so with or without assistance, was fortunately never ascertained,

and as discreet silence has been maintained on the subject for years, it

is not for me to solve the mystery to-day.

After an absence of some six or eight months I returned to London, to

that 3 Chester Place so full of memories, personal and artistic.

There were quite as many infant prodigies in those days as there are

now; little exotic plants, forced in artistic hothouses, artificially

developed, and prematurely produced in drawing-rooms and concert halls;

glittering little shooting-stars, nine-days' wonders, to be soon

forgotten, and ere long to be buried.

But then, there were also wonder-children, as the Germans call them, who

thrived and lived, and who seemed to combine in themselves all the

qualities that had belonged to the little victims of forced training.

Such a one was Joachim. He first appeared in public when he was seven;

five years later be played in Leipsic at Madame Viardot's concert; and

when he was not yet fourteen he gathered his first laurels in London at

the Philharmonic. That year--it was 1844--Mendelssohn was in England,

and mightily interested in the young violinist. One evening, after

singing at our house, Mendelssohn wanted to take him to a musical party;

a pair of gloves were deemed necessary to make him presentable, and we

two boys were sent out to get them; we had a walk, and a talk besides,

and I remember thinking what a nice sort of sensible boy he was; no

nonsense about him and no affectation; not like the other clever ones I

knew. The gloves we bought in a little shop in Albany Street, Regent's

Park, and as these were the first pair of English gloves that Joseph

wore, I duly record the historical fact for the benefit of all those who

have at one time or the other been under the spell of the fingers we

fitted that evening.

When two years later we met in Leipsic, it so happened that I was

suddenly fired with the desire to play the violin too. My friend Joseph

was quite ready to teach me, and we started operations, but two or three

lessons were sufficient to convince him and me, that mine was an unholy

desire, which, if gratified, would give me the power of inflicting much

suffering on my fellow-creatures, and which therefore was calculated to

lead me into trouble. So we gave it up, and Joachim has had to rely on

other pupils for his reputation as a teacher.

Liszt too had been a juvenile phenomenon, but had long arrived at full

maturity at the time I first remember him. I was then about ten, and he

some twenty years older. I think I never knew anybody so calculated to

fascinate man, woman, or child. He generally spoke in French, which I

did not understand, but I had to listen to every word. His voice alone

held me spell-bound; it rose and fell like a big wave, and I could tell

that something unusual was going on; that voice was evidently scattering

thought as the big wave scatters spray, and those clear-cut features of

his were each in turn accentuating and emphasising his words. His grand

leonine mane fascinated me as it started from the lofty forehead, and

bounded Niagara-like with one leap to the nape of the neck.

My early recollections of his playing are rather limited. As a boy I was

mainly impressed by his long chord-grasping fingers, contrasting as they

did with my father's small, velvety hand. To _see_ him play was quite as

much as I could do, without particularly attending to what he played, to

watch his hands fly up from one set of notes and pounce down on another,

and generally to lie in wait for the outward manifestations of his

genius. Later on I grew accustomed to the grand young man's ways, and

just knelt at his shrine as everybody else did.

My father was not the least outspoken of his admirers. In the early days

he mentions him as "that rare art-phenomenon," and tells how "he played

Hummel's Septet with the most perfect execution, storming occasionally

like a Titan, but still in the main free from extravagance." Later on,

at the Musical Festival held in Bonn, he describes him as "the absolute

monarch, by virtue of his princely gifts, outshining all else."

Half a century ago playing _à quatre mains_ was much more popular than

it is now; more pieces were written and more pianoforte arrangements

were made for two performers. The full-fledged pianist of to-day thinks

he is quite able to do the work of two, and sees no reason why he should

share the keyboard with another; so he prefers to keep the whole

function in his own hands. Formerly he was satisfied to give a concert;

the very word implied concerted action of several artists; now he

announces the one-man show called a Recital, in which he stars and

shines by himself. He scorns assistance, for he wishes it to be

understood that he can get through the most formidable programme without

breaking down, and that he can rely on his ironclad instrument to hold

out with him and lead him triumphantly to the finale.

Well, the great virtuosi of my early days certainly loved playing

together, and many are the instances of such joint performances, both in

private and in public, which I recollect. How my father enjoyed playing

with Liszt he records when he says: "It was a genuine treat to draw

sparks from the piano as we dashed along together. When we are harnessed

together in a duet we make a very good pair; Apollo drives us without a

whip."

If, as my father assumes, Apollo was really the driver on occasions of

that kind, I feel sure that his favourite team must have been

Mendelssohn and Moscheles; they certainly enjoyed being in harness

together, sometimes playing, and sometimes improvising. Occasionally the

humour of the moment would lead them to compose together, as when one

evening they planned a piece for two performers to be played by them

three days later at a concert my father had announced. The Gipsies'

March from Weber's "Preziosa" being chosen as a subject for variations,

a general scheme was agreed upon, and the parts were distributed. "I

will write a variation in minor and growl in the bass," said

Mendelssohn. "Will you do a brilliant one in major in the treble?" It

was settled that the Introduction and first and second variations should

fall to Mendelssohn's lot, the third and fourth to my father's. The

finale they shared in, Mendelssohn starting with an allegro movement,

and my father following with a "più-lento." Two days later they had a

hurried rehearsal, and on the following day they played the concertante

variations, "composed expressly for this occasion," as the programme had

it, "and performed on Erard's new patent-action grand pianoforte."

Nobody noticed that the piece had been only sketched, and that each of

the performers was allowed to improvise in his own solo, till at certain

passages agreed upon, both met again in due harmony. The _Morning Post_

of the day tells us that "the subject was treated in the most profound

and effective manner by each, and executed so brilliantly that the most

rapturous plaudits were elicited from the delighted company."

Mendelssohn himself in a letter gives a graphic account of a rehearsal

held at Clementi's pianoforte factory, when the two friends played his

"Double Concerto in E."

"It was great fun," he says; "no one can have an idea how Moscheles and

I coquetted together on the piano--how the one constantly imitated the

other, and how sweet we were. Moscheles plays the last movement with

wonderful brilliancy; the runs drop from his fingers like magic. When it

was over, all said it was a pity that we had made no cadenza; so I at

once hit upon a passage in the first part of the last Tutti, where the

orchestra has a pause, and Moscheles had, _nolens volens_, to comply,

and compose a grand cadenza. We now deliberated amid a thousand jokes

whether the small last solo should remain in its place, since, of

course, the people would applaud the cadenza. 'We must have a bit of

Tutti between the cadenza and the solo,' said I. 'How long are they to

clap their hands?' asked Moscheles. 'Ten minutes, I daresay,' said I.

Moscheles beat me down to five. I promised to supply a Tutti; and so we

took the measure, embroidered, turned and padded, put in sleeves _à la_

Mameluke, and at last, with our tailoring, produced a brilliant

concerto. We shall have another rehearsal to-day; it will be quite a

picnic, for Moscheles brings the cadenza and I the Tutti."

That golden thread of "great fun," as he calls it, goes through the

history of Mendelssohn's life. It intertwined itself with the sensitive

fibres of his nature, thus becoming an element of strength, a factor

that illuminated his path and spread bright sunshine wherever he went.

In fact I always thought one of the most delightful traits of his

character was a certain naïveté, which enabled him to appreciate the

humour of a situation, and thoroughly to enjoy it with his friends. He

would turn some trivial incident to the happiest account, and in his own

peculiarly genial way, make it the starting-point for a standing joke,

or a winged word, to be handed down from generation to generation in the

families of his friends.

Amongst the many drawings of his we treasure in the family is one

humorously illustrating my father's works. It takes the shape of an

arabesque, artistically framing some lines written for the occasion of

his birthday by Klingemann. A second verse was composed for a subsequent

birthday.

When in later years, and with a view to publication, I ventured to ask

Robert Browning for an English version of those lines, he, with his

usual kindness, sent me the following letter:--

"29 DE VERE GARDENS,

_Nov. 30, '87_.

"MY DEAR MOSCHELES,--Pray forgive my delay in doing the little

piece of business with which you entrusted me: an unexpected claim

on my mornings interfered with it till just now. Will this answer

your purpose anyhow?--

"'Hail to the man who upwards strives

Ever in happy unconcern:

Whom neither blame nor praise contrives

From his own nature's path to turn.

On, and still on, the journey went,

Yet has he kept us all in view,

Working in age with youth's intent,

In living--fresh, in loving--true.'

"Were my version but as true to the original as your father's life

was to his noble ideal, it would be good indeed. As it is, accept

the best of yours truly ever,

ROBERT BROWNING."

Having started on my recollections of Mendelssohn, I am somewhat

perplexed to know how many or how few of them I should record here. So

much has been published about him, first by my mother in "The Life of

Moscheles,"[1] where she has used my father's diaries and

correspondence, and then by myself, when I translated and edited

Mendelssohn's letters to my parents,[2] that perhaps I ought not to run

the risk of telling what is already known. But, on the other hand,

Mendelssohn plays so prominent a part in my early recollections, that I

cannot write these without attempting to portray the principal figure,

my father's most intimate friend and my very dear godfather.

I shall, at any rate, have to exercise due discretion and care, for

Mendelssohn, and what he said and did, was such a constant theme of

conversation in our family, that I grew up knowing my parents' friend

nearly as well as they did themselves, and I may consider myself

fortunate if, in recording my earliest impressions, I do not find myself

remembering things that happened before I was born.

The very first letter which connects me with Mendelssohn is the one in

which he congratulates my parents on the arrival of a son and heir. He

heads it with a pen-and-ink drawing, representing a diminutive baby in a

cradle, surrounded by all the instruments of the orchestra.

"Here they are, dear Moscheles," he says, "wind instruments and fiddles,

for the son and heir must not be kept waiting till I come--he must have

a cradle song, with drums and trumpets and janissary music; fiddles

alone are not nearly lively enough. May every happiness and joy and

blessing attend the little stranger; may he be prosperous, may he do

well whatever he does, and may it fare well with him in the world!

"So he is to be called Felix, is he? How nice and kind of you to make

him my godchild, _in formâ_! The first present his godfather makes him

is the above entire orchestra; it is to accompany him through life--the

trumpets when he wishes to become famous, the flutes when he falls in

love, the cymbals when he grows a beard; the pianoforte explains itself,

and should people ever play him false, as will happen to the best of us,

there stand the kettle-drums and the big-drum in the background.

"Dear me! I am ever so happy when I think of your happiness, and of the

time when I shall have my full share of it. By the end of April, at the

latest, I intend to be in London, and then we will duly name the boy,

and introduce him to the world at large. It will be grand!"

In a later letter he announces himself as arriving in June, "ready to

act as a godfather, to play, conduct, and even to be a genius."

He came, and I was duly christened Felix Stone Moscheles in St. Pancras

Church. Barry Cornwall wrote some lines commemorative of the occasion.

Alluding to the date of my birth, he begins:--

1. (_February_).

Speak low! the days are dear,

Sing load! _A child is born!_

Music, the maid, is watching near,

To hide him in her bosom dear,

From sights and sounds forlorn.

Happy be his infant days!

Happy be his after ways!

Happy manhood! Happy age!

Happy all his pilgrimage.

2. (_June_).

Breathe soft! the days grow mild,

_The child hath gained a name!_

Now sweet maid, Music! whisper wild

Thy blessings on the new-named child,

And lead him straight to fame.

"_Felix_" should be "_happy_" ever,

And his life be like a river,

Sweetness, freshness, always bringing,

And ever, ever, ever singing!

Well, the "sweet maid, Music" never led the new-named one "straight to

fame," nor did the child ever get there by any circuitous route, but

Felix was certainly "happy ever."

In this, my case, there certainly must have been something in a name,

for my good godfather endowed me with my full share of happiness.

In later years Berlioz wrote that well-known line of Horace's in my

album:--

"Donec eris Felix, multos numerabis amicos."

(As long as you are happy you will number many friends.) And when I

reflect how much friendship I have enjoyed from the day of my

christening to the present hour, I feel certain that the name was of

good augury, and that Horace and Mendelssohn were right.

If the complete orchestra was the first godfather's present, the little

album was the second. It measures only six inches by four, but that

small compass holds much that is of interest. The book is full now; it

required about half a century to cover its pages, for they contain only

the autographs of such celebrities as were my personal friends.

Mendelssohn had appropriately inaugurated it with a composition, the

"Wiegenlied" (slumber-song), now so popular.

There are also two drawings by him, one of 3 Chester Place, Regent's

Park, and another of the Park close at hand. Mendelssohn must have sat

out of doors to make these very faithful transcripts of nature, and I

sometimes wonder how the street-boys of those days took it. Looking at

those contributions, one cannot help being struck by the care which he

bestowed on everything he did. His handwriting was always neat and

clear, with just enough of flourish and swing to give it originality.

His musical manuscripts vie in precision with the products of the

engraver's art, and again there is a marked analogy between his style of

drawing and the way in which he forms the letters of the alphabet, or

the notes of the scales. As one peruses his manuscripts, one finds

oneself admiring the artistic aspect of his well-balanced bars, and on

the other hand, the harmonious treatment of his drawings recalls the

appearance his pen gives to his scores. In the view he took of the

Regent's Park, the leaves, so delicately and yet so firmly pencilled,

seem to sway and rustle in unison with the sprightly melody of the

scherzo in the "Midsummer-Night's Dream," and just as that melody is

discreetly accompanied by the orchestra, so in the drawing, the houses,

the old Colosseum in the background, and the trees in the

middle-distance, are, one and all, made to keep their places, and

deferentially to play second fiddle to the rustling leaves.

In due course of time, and after full enjoyment of the Slumber Song, I

got out of my cradle and on to my legs, and it is from that stage in my

development that I really date my recollections of my godfather. Some

are hazy, others distinct. I am often surprised when I realise that he

was short of stature; to me, the small boy, he appeared very tall. I

looked upon him as my own special godfather, in whom I had a sort of

vested interest, and I showed my annoyance when I was not allowed to

monopolise him, or at least to remain near him. Being put to bed was at

best a hateful process; how much more so, then, when I was just happily

installed on my godfather's knee; occasions of that kind are connected

in my mind with vociferous protests, followed by ignominious expulsion.

There were, however, happier times soon to follow, times which recall to

me our exploits in the Park. He could throw my ball farther than anybody

else; and he could run faster too, but then, to be sure, for all that,

_I_ could catch him. There were pitched battles with snowballs, and

there was that memorable occasion when I got my first black eye. I

remember it came straight from the bat, but--to tell the truth--I was

never quite sure that Mendelssohn was in any way connected with that

historical event, correctly located though it is, in the Regent's Park.

Our indoor sports must have been pretty lively too, for on one occasion

my mother records how "in the evening Felix junior had such a tremendous

romp with his godfather, that the whole house shook." And she adds: "One

can scarcely realise that the man who would presently be improvising in

his grandest style, was the Felix senior, the king of games and romps."

One of my achievements, when I was a little boy in a black velvet

blouse, was the impersonation of what we called "the dead man"; the

dying man would have been more correct. From my earliest days I

evidently pitied the soldier dying a violent death on the battlefield.

Since then I have learnt to extend my commiseration to the tax-payer,

and to the many innocent victims of a barbarous and iniquitous system.

Well, the dying man in the blouse was stretched full length--say some

three feet--on the Brussels carpet. Mendelssohn or my father were at

the piano improvising a running accompaniment to my performance, and

between us we illustrated musically and dramatically the throes and

spasms of the expiring hero. I was much offended once, because they told

me I acted just like a little monkey; I did not know then, but I am

quite sure now, that behind my back they said in a very different tone,

admiring and affectionate: "He is _such_ a little monkey."

That black velvet blouse I particularly remember, because John Horsley,

now the veteran R. A., then but a rising artist, painted me in it; and

also because Hensel, Mendelssohn's brother-in-law, made a sketch of it

in my album, at my particular request, representing me on horseback.

What honours that garment might not further have attained I do not know,

had I not once for all checked its career by climbing over some freshly

painted green railings in the Park, and thus irreparably spoiling it.

The dead-man improvisations remind me of the marvellous way in which my

father and godfather would improvise together, playing _à quatre mains_,

or alternately, and pouring forth a never-failing stream of musical

ideas. I have spoken of it before, but it was in a preface, and who

reads a preface? So I may perhaps once more be allowed to describe it. A

subject started, it was caught up as if it were a shuttlecock; now one

of the players would seem to toss it up on high, or to keep it balanced

in mid-octaves with delicate touch. Then the other would take it in

hand, start it on classical lines, and develop it with profound

erudition, until perhaps the two joining together in new and brilliant

forms, would triumphantly carry it off to other spheres of sound. Four

hands there might be, but only one soul, so it seemed, as they would

catch with lightning speed at each other's ideas, each trying to

introduce subjects from the works of the other.

It was exciting to watch how the amicable contest would wax hot,

culminating occasionally in an outburst of merriment, when some

conflicting harmonies met in terrible collision. I see Mendelssohn's air

of triumph when he had succeeded in twisting a subject from a

composition of his own into a Moscheles theme, while the latter was

obliged to second him in the bass. But not for long. "Stop a minute,"

said the next few chords that my father struck. "There I have you, you

have taken the bait." Soon they would be again fraternising in perfect

harmonies, gradually leading up to the brilliant finale that sounded as

if it had been so written, revised and corrected, and were now being

interpreted from the score by two masters.

Besides my godfather there were many of my father's friends who were

kindly disposed towards me. Malibran is one of those I associate with my

earliest days. Perhaps I remember her, perhaps I but fancy I do, for I

was only three or four years old when she died. But I have impressions

of her sitting on the floor and painting pretty pictures for us

children; a certain black silk bag, from the depths of which she

produced paint-box, brushes, and other beautiful and mysterious things,

had an irresistible charm for us, as had also her big dark eyes, and

that wonderful mouth of hers, which she showed us could easily hold an

orange. And then she would sing to us Spanish songs by her father,

Manuel Garcia, and other celebrities. In my album she wrote, "Nei giorni

tuoi felici ricordati di Marie de Beriot," and the flourish appended to

the signature takes the shape of an apocryphal bird. For my father's

album, one of the completest of its kind, she composed an Allegretto, a

song which I believe has never been published.

The words, probably by herself, run thus:--

"Il est parti sans voir sa fiancée

Lorsque le bal était prêt à s'ouvrir;

Si pour une autre il m'avait délaissée,

Malheur à moi, je n'ai plus qu'à mourir."

It is dated July 16, 1836: she died on the 23rd of September following.

Thalberg was also a children's man. He was not much of a romp, but

always full of jokes, musical and otherwise. Interested as I was in the

outward appearance of my home pianists, I was duly impressed by

Thalberg's rigid appearance at the piano, contrasting as it did with the

lively ways of Liszt and others. He had trained himself to this truly

military bearing by practising his most difficult passages whilst he

smoked a long Turkish chibouk, the cup of which rested on the ground.

Another source of wonder, not unmixed with awe, was the bulky frame of

Lablache, the great singer. It was indeed a basso profondo which emerged

from the depths of his ponderous figure. The beauty of his voice, the

perfection of his style, and his unconventional deportment on the stage,

I learnt to appreciate in later years. I particularly recollect him as

Bartolo in Rossini's "Barbiere," on an occasion when Sontag and Mario

took the other leading parts. As a small boy I just liked to walk round

him, and thought the hackney-coach driver, as they called the cabby

then, was not far wrong when he inquired whether his fare expected to be

conveyed in one lot.

One of the friends of those early days was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His

father was giving my elder sisters Italian lessons, and that led to most

friendly intercourse with him and his two sons. I mention Gabriel's name

with a twinge of regret, for the chief records of that intercourse, a

number of drawings by his hand, are irretrievably lost. There were--I

see them still--knights in armour, fair ladies, and graceful pages, bold

pen-and-ink drawings, illustrating a story that ran through several

numbers of our own special paper the "Weekly Critic." What, or by whom

the story was, I do not recollect, probably by Chorley, who was a

frequent contributor to that weekly publication of ours. The drawings in

no way foreshadowed Gabriel's later manner; they were just what an

imaginative young fellow of seventeen or eighteen would draw, but I feel

sure there were no beautiful peculiarities or other poetical deviations

from the natural in this his early work. I often wonder where the

"Weekly Critic" is in hiding. If this should meet the eye of anybody who

knows, I trust he will come forward and receive my blessing in exchange

for the drawings which we will give to an expectant world.

When I was about twelve I made my first appearance on the stage under

peculiar circumstances. My father had announced a concert in Baden,

where we were spending the summer, he the centre of a musical circle, I

a schoolboy enjoying my holidays, and specially devoted to the climbing

of trees and the picking of blackberries. The impresario of the Court

Theatre in Carlsruhe (he seemed to me a sort of Grand Mogul) had

graciously permitted the stars of his Opera to sing at that concert of

my father's. At the eleventh hour, however, there was a hitch, and the

stars were needed to shine on their own Grand-Ducal boards. In the hope

that matters might yet be settled in his favour, my father sent me to

him with urgent messages. On my arrival I made straight for the theatre,

and entering by an unguarded back door, I soon found myself in a maze of

dark passages. The sounds of music guided me to the stage, where a

rehearsal of the "Vier Haymons-Kinder" was going on, and from the wings

I found my way into a rustic arbour destined for the trysting-place of

the lovers in the particular scene which was being rehearsed; there I

was biding my time when I was discovered by the lady who had come to

meet the tenor. The performance was abruptly stopped; the lady was no

other than the great prima donna and our old friend Madame Haizinger.

Rushing at me with a cry of dramatic exultation, she seized me and

carried me triumphantly on to the middle of the stage. "Here," she

cried, holding me up to the assembled company, my arms and legs

dangling in mid-air--"here, ladies and gentlemen, you see Felix, the son

of my old friend Moscheles." The Grand Mogul sat at a table covered with

papers to my left, and happily looked upon the interruption and the

rapturous outburst as nothing uncommon. As soon as I was replaced on my

feet, I delivered my messages, but my influence as a diplomatic agent

was not proof against untoward circumstances, and I failed in my

mission.

That same Court Theatre was destined soon to become the prey of flames;

it was the scene of a terrible catastrophe when many lives were lost.

I was soon to see more of Carlsruhe. Chiefly with a view to improving my

German, I was put to school there. Now Carlsruhe was in those days one

of the dullest places rational man ever condescended to inhabit. I think

it was Heine who said that the dogs came up to you in the street and

begged as a favour that you would tread on their toes, just to relieve

them of the intolerable monotony of their lives. How it is to-day I

don't know; probably they now have music-halls and motor cars, jingoes

and pickpockets, but in my time all was slow, sure, and safe. The

Grand-Duke sat in his palace like a royal spider in his web; all the

streets radiated fan-like from the centre he occupied. In the forest, at

the back of the palace, the avenues were cut out so as to form a

counterpart to the city, one and all converging towards the abode of the

Ruler. A fine spacious market-place there was, however, with a town-hall

and a church and a monument to a departed Markgraf, round which

clustered on certain days quaint old apple-women whom we school-boys

patronised to the fullest extent of our limited means. We were close at

hand, for the "Gymnasium" was happily situated in this most attractive

part of the town. For all that, it took me some time before I could get

accustomed to my new home.

Professor Schummelig, to whose care I was entrusted, was good in his

way; I give him a fictitious name, as I have to record that he could

also be bad in his way. I don't think he made my lessons more tedious or

my tasks more irksome than any other ordinary German professor would

have done; but he was pedantic and I was imaginative, so we did not

always give one another satisfaction. We had one or two grand rows, in

which the wrongs cannot have been all on my side, for, as soon as

convenient, he granted me a free pardon, in consideration of which I was

required not to mention the unpleasant incident in my letters to my

parents (my father paid a hundred florins per quarter). I acquiesced,

and so we were soon on good terms again.

But I always felt he was an egoist. He would carve the daily little

piece of boiled beef just so as to give himself the particular portion

which I coveted. The bread, too, was under his control: he would never

take much of it at a time, but he would just cut himself little titbits,

crisp corners, and knotty excrescences, until the loaf took the

appearance of a dismantled wreck. He also squinted, not with that broad

outside squint, ever ready to see both sides, to embrace all things,

but with a narrow selfish inside squint which slid down his nose, and

from there watched the focussing and absorption of the titbits with keen

interest and an irritating show of gratified tastes.

And not only was the professor's field of vision thus distressingly

limited, but there was also some moral obliquity in his composition. He

mistook certain piles of fire-logs, which had been stocked for the use

of the public school, for his own private property. When this was

discovered, the authorities, happily for the professor, winked at his

delinquencies with an eye to avoiding a scandal--a course they might be

well justified in taking, as Justice herself is admitted to be blind.

There were two female servants to minister to our wants--two female

drudges, I should say. In lieu of their real names they had been dubbed

"Die grosse Biene" and "Die kleine Biene"--the great bee and the little

bee--with a view, I suppose, to encouraging them in the delusion that

they were not born white slaves, one large and the other small, but busy

bees whose nature it was to improve the shining hour, whether it shone

by the light of the day or the oil of the night.

The German language, as spoken in the Fatherland, its irregularities,

vagaries, and varieties, gave me much trouble. In Hamburg I had learnt

to pronounce the words "stehen" and "stossen" with a sharp and incisive

_st_; in the south, all the stiffness and stubbornness was taken out of

it, and I had to say "schtehe" and "schtosse." Then the words

themselves changed, and "laufen" stood for "gehen," "springen" for

"laufen." This surprised me, as I did not know then that the Southerner

generally calls running what the Northerner calls walking.

Titles, too, puzzled me, especially when applied to ladies. The first

time I heard the "Frau Professorin" mentioned, I looked so blank, not to

say shocked, that I evoked general mirth. (It is surprising how well one

remembers the occasions when one was laughed at.) But the "Frau

Professorin" seemed a strange creature to me in those days, and I little

thought that for many a year I was to hear my own mother called by that

title.

I had my first skirmishes with the French language too, and I certainly

thought I was being made a fool of when I was told there was no word in

French for our verb, "to stand." I had learnt the German "stehen" and

the ditto "schtehe," and I had conjugated every tense of the Latin

"stare," and now I refused to believe that the French language could

have a _locus standi_ amongst civilised nations without an equivalent

for those words. I did not know then how much civilisation can put up

with, and it took me a long while to overcome my mistrust of a language

so evidently unsound at its base.

We all know to what wearisome length an average schoolmaster can draw

out a single hour, and my teachers were no exception to the rule. Time

went slowly, as did all things fifty years ago in Carlsruhe.

What a blessed relief it was then when a holiday came round! Perhaps it

was when we were liberated in honour of our glorious Grand-Duke's

birthday, perhaps when we were to join in the commemoration of some

great deed or greater misdeed of one of his ancestors, or perhaps--best

of all--when once or twice Mother Earth was clad in so much loveliness,

that it was just impossible to keep masters and boys indoors, dissecting

dead languages and putting historical bones together. Nature herself

seemed to proclaim a free pardon for us prisoners and for our warders:

off we went all together to the woods.

How we ran and shouted when we got into those avenues of trees behind

the Grand-Ducal Palace, how madly we raced, how heroically we fought the

boys we hated, and how solemnly we swore eternal friendship with the

ones we loved! We climbed trees, cut sticks, and did what little harm we

could to exuberant prolific Nature; we chased butterflies and deprived

spiders of their legitimate prey, and then--selfish little lords of

creation that we were--we settled down where the grass grew thickest, to

discuss large haunches of bread and red-cheeked apples, and to crack

nuts and jokes in true schoolboy fashion.

The masters forgot for the while that they were German professors, with

spectacles on their noses and Latin quotations on their lips. They were

just human, and felt themselves as much at home in the woods as we did,

gratefully inhaling the same balmy air, and greedily swallowing the same

glittering dust. They knew something, too, to tell us about God's

creation, and in those blessed hours taught us wonderful and beautiful

things that stirred our little souls, and made us glad to live and

wonder and worship.

Oscar--I have forgotten his surname--was not a professor, and did not

even wear spectacles, but he was a sort of monitor, had long silky

eyelashes, and he certainly was in love. He never told me so, but I am

sure he was, and remembering him and his eyelashes as I do, I can easily

reconstruct the simple story of his love. She was a Gretchen, a sweet

German maiden, blue-eyed and golden-haired. They first met at a

Kränzchen where their feet waltzed to the same step and their hearts

beat to the same tune. Then on two ever-to-be-remembered Sunday

afternoons they took coffee together in the "Restauration zum blauen

Stern," and on the second occasion, as they were going home through the

pine-woods, he said something to her she had never heard before; her

answer was inaudible, but I know she left her hand where he wanted it to

remain, and the good old moon did the rest. They soon received the

paternal and maternal blessings, and now they were happy in the

knowledge that in six or eight years nothing would stand between them

and their fondest hopes, when he probably would have passed his

examinations and have secured his first appointment.

I must have caught the loving mood from Oscar, or else some wood-nymphs

or sprites must have been trying their hands on me, or perhaps I was

only tired and lagged behind. Certain it is that a new sort of feeling

came over me, a semi-conscious yearning for an unknown quantity that was

waiting for me somewhere; and as I lay on my back under the trees, my

imagination shot upwards, starting from the gnarled roots by my side,

along the mast-like perpendiculars the pines, past jolly little

squirrels, patches of moss and garlands of creepers, right to the top

where the sky's blue eyes were winking at me. Nature was whispering some

secret and I was dreaming my first Midsummer-Day's Dream.

All around there was humming and buzzing, piping and singing; mysterious

sounds, joyous notes, and pensive ditties. Some bird with a flute-like

voice sang a pretty little musical phrase, just a bar of five or six

notes, and kept on repeating it at intervals. Another little bird, deep

down in the forest, answered it--birds of a feather flirt together--only

there were so many chirping chatterboxes about, enjoying themselves in

their way, that the warbling flirtation was carried on under

difficulties. For all that, the flute-like voice never tired of saying

its say, and putting its question, pleased as it evidently was with its

mate's reply. I dare say it knew a good deal better than I did at the

time what it was all about, and what was the grand and glorious answer

inexhaustible Nature held in store for it.

For my part, I gazed upward at the patches of ultramarine, and longed

for them, but it was not till years afterwards that they vouchsafed to

come down. Then, when they took the shape of a pair of real blue eyes,

it all dawned upon me, and I knew what Nature had been whispering, and

understood that stately pine-forests, jolly little squirrels, and

loving little birds, were only created to guide and direct good little

boys to realms of joy and happiness.

* * * * *

Whilst I was sitting on school-forms puzzling over nouns and verbs, or

lying on the grass communing with the birds, things were happening in my

London home that were once more to lead to a change in my surroundings.

Another pleasant day-dream, one that my father and his friend

Mendelssohn had for some time past been indulging in, was about to be

realised. The frequent correspondence between them, delightful as it

was, the exchange of views, musical and personal, and the occasional

meetings in England or Germany, had only more saliently brought out the

points in favour of a long-cherished scheme which should enable them to

live and work together in the same town.

Mendelssohn had for some time been planning the formation of a School of

Music in Leipsic, and his letters of this period are full of the warmest

and most eloquent appeals to my father to give up his position in

England, and to take up his residence in Leipsic. The outcome of it was,

that the Conservatorio in that city was founded, and that my father was

offered a professorship. In answer to his assumption that Mendelssohn

would act as director, the latter answers: "I am not, and never shall be

the director of the school. I stand in precisely the same kind of

position that it is hoped you may occupy. The duties of my department

are the reading of compositions, &c., and as I was one of the founders

of the school, and am acquainted with its weak points, I lend a hand

here and there until we are more firmly established."

In the summer of 1846 my father migrated to Leipsic. He gave up his

brilliant position in London, and, actuated by the love of his art and

his desire to be in daily touch with Mendelssohn, he had no hesitation

in accepting a salary of 800 thalers (£120) per annum. In a letter to a

relative he speaks of the dear and kind friends he leaves behind.

"Parting from them individually," he says, "and indeed from the English

nation generally, will cost us a bitter pang, for twenty-four years of

unswerving kindness have laid upon us obligations which we can only pay

with life-long gratitude."

And Mendelssohn wrote: "How could I tell you what it is to me, when I

think you are really coming, that you are going to live here for good,

you and yours, and that what seemed a castle in the air is about to

become a tangible reality; that we shall be together, not merely to run

through the dissipations of a season, but to enjoy an intimate and

uninterrupted intercourse! I shall have a few houses painted rose-colour

as soon as you really are within our walls. But it needs not that; your

arrival alone will give the whole place a new complexion."

Not by such words only, but most practically did Mendelssohn show his

friendship. With the precision of a courier and the foresight of a

brother, he goes into the minutest details of the cost of living in the

German city: "A flat, consisting of seven or eight rooms, with kitchen

and appurtenances, varies from 300 to 350 thalers (£45 to £50). For that

sum it should be cheerful; and, as regards the situation, should leave

nothing to be desired. Servants would cost 100 to 110 thalers per annum

(£15 to £16, 10s.), all depending, to be sure, on what you would

require. Male servants are not much in demand here, their wages varying

from 3 to 12 thalers per month (9s. to £1, 16s.). A good cook gets 40

thalers a year (£6), a housemaid 32 (£5). If you add to these a

lady's-maid who could sew and make dresses, you would reach about the

above-mentioned figure. Wood--that is fuel for kitchen, stoves, &c.--is

dear, and may amount to 150 or 200 thalers (£22, 10s. to £18) for a

family of five with servants. Rates and taxes are next to nothing; eight

or ten thalers a year would cover all."

Those were indeed the good old times, when the Fatherland was not yet

weighed down by blood-and-iron taxes. The most gifted member of the

International Arbitration and Peace Association could not speak more

eloquently than do those figures. A family of five with servants; 24s.

to 30s. a year would cover all rates and taxes!

Soon, then, the suitable flat was found and my father migrated to

Leipsic, entered on his new duties at the Conservatorio, and became a

good citizen and ratepayer. The "intimate and uninterrupted intercourse"

became a reality, and there was scarcely a day when the Mendelssohns and

Moscheles did not meet. They could not do without me, however (remember

I was an only son, and a well-beloved godson), so I was recalled and

soon left Carlsruhe, I am afraid, with a wicked sense of ingratitude for

all the care bestowed on me by Professor Schummelig and my other

teachers.

It was terribly cold that winter, and travelling was fraught with

difficulties, if not with dangers. Our diligence was a heavy one, and

when it got stuck fast in the drifting snow, as it did more than once,

the passengers had to get out, whether it was by day or by night, and

literally put their shoulders to the wheel. It was only thanks to a very

kind and provident "conducteur," that my much-tried little spark of

vitality was preserved. He kept a never-to-be-forgotten straw-plaited

brandy flask suspended from his neck by a green cord, and when my

spirits flagged, his did good office.

It was midnight a day or two before Christmas when we arrived at the

"Post" in Leipsic. My luggage was put on a diminutive sledge and dragged

along the snow-bound street, I running by its side to keep body and soul

together. Nobody knows till he has tried it how hot a run in the bitter

cold can make one, particularly when one's heart beats at the thought of

a welcome, and one's mind is all ablaze with the brilliant images of

those one loves. There I was at last in the new home and folded in the

old embrace.

Once settled, the question soon arose what was to be done with me next,

and a decision was come to, to send me for a short time to the Bau

Schule (School of Architecture). Those wooden bricks of my early

boyhood, and the table with the many compartments, had gone the way of

all good bricks and tables, but my love for architecture remained, and I

now sometimes regret that I was not to continue my studies in that

direction till I had had the regular classical education; but so it was.

By the time I had learnt how to stretch a sheet of paper on a

drawing-board, and how to handle the compasses and T-square, and just

when I was getting to know something about the price of tiles and the

mixing of mortar, I left the Bau Schule, and was entered at the Thomas

Schule. That was a famous old institution. The whole upper storey of the

school was occupied by a number of free pupils, the "Thomaner"

choir-boys. They were celebrated throughout Germany as the best singers

of sacred music, trained as they had originally been by no less a master

than Johann Sebastian Bach, the famous "Cantor." His rooms in that

building were now occupied by his successor, Hauptmann, who knew how to

maintain the highest standard of excellence in his pupils. He was a man

of learning and an erudite musician, and as such, one of the pillars of

strength on which rested Leipsic's reputation, that city standing quite

unrivalled as the centre towards which all musical aspirants gravitated.

He spoke little; but when he did, it was to say much. His criticisms

could be severe, as when a new orchestral piece was being rehearsed, he

said, "That sounds quite Mendelssohnian, it must be by Sterndale

Bennett."

His boys sang on many occasions--at church, at weddings, funerals, or

birthdays. I made great friends with some of them, and formed a regular

class to teach them English; but although they were very willing pupils,

I did not obtain as brilliant results in my line, as my predecessor,

Johann Sebastian Bach, had achieved in his.

Herr Magister Hohlfeld, the Professor of Mathematics, was a wonderful

old man--how old no one knew. He was a figure that belonged to the

middle of the last century. Clad in a long grey cloth coat, which

reached to his feet, he looked a curious relic of bygone times; cares

and calculations, worldly and scientific, had worked deep furrows all

over his lofty forehead, and had left their impress on every feature. A

rich crop of white hair fell over his shoulders; his hands on his back,

and his head slightly bent down, he would solemnly address the boards he

was treading, as he paced up and down between the two lines of

school-benches; it was given to few of us to catch the words of

mathematical wisdom that fell from his lips.

"The Frenchman" was another figure I look back to with interest. Not

that there was anything remarkable in his appearance, but that, when

judiciously roused to anger, he would never fail to make a fool of

himself. He was not a Frenchman, but a German born and bred, who taught

French, and happily for us he was so constituted, that it was a real

pleasure, unchecked by any fear of possible consequences, to take

advantage of his weaknesses. We did so, exercising our indiscretion

whenever we had a chance. A good opportunity presented itself during the

cherry season. We paved the particular part of the class-room he was in

the habit of promenading, with bad intentions in the shape of

cherry-stones. After the first few steps he had taken, he stopped short,

indignantly apostrophising us. "I tell you, boys, it's just a piece of

impudence when the master treads on cherry-stones." We thought so, too,

and howled with delight. At that time I had a beautiful big dog named

Hector, and one afternoon I thought it might prove effective if I

entered the class-room with him when the French lesson had begun. I did

so, to the terror of "the Frenchman," on whom Hector had at once made a

friendly rush. The dog was expelled, and then I was severely taken to

task. "Ah," said the Professor, "you think you can take liberties with

me, but I tell you, sir, you can't take liberties with such a big dog."

But it must not be thought that I was always worrying poor innocent

Magisters, and rejoicing in their discomfiture; some of my teachers I

think of with gratitude. There was Stallbaum, the rector himself a great

man of learning: he took great pains to cram us with our full share of

Latin and Greek, and to make us periodically contribute to the wealth of

the classical literature handed down to us, by writing essays and

composing verses in the dead languages.

The love of fighting was early instilled into us by the works of Homer,

Herodotus, Julius Cæsar, and other historians; and if, as some think, my

pugnacious instincts have not been satisfactorily developed, it was not

the fault of the Rector. But he taught me to revere that grandest and

most powerful of tragedians, Sophocles.

Nor must I forget to mention the lasting impression that Ovid's

"Metamorphoses" made on me. The gods of mythology have ever remained

dear to me; they are so accessible, so free and easy as they come down

from Olympus quite unceremoniously, to roam about and make love; you

meet them in the woods and on the waters, above ground and below ground,

sometimes enjoying themselves at your expense, but mostly showing you,

by their example, how you should enjoy life. To be sure the methods of a

Jupiter or a Venus are quite inapplicable to the social restrictions,

and generally to the changed conditions of the present day, but they

were dear old gods and goddesses all the same, who condescended to be

human, and sanctified our frailties. I, for one, am grateful to them,

for they taught me the love of poetry and the poetry of love.

My first drawing-master, Herr Brauer, was a good old soul too: I owe him

one of the foremost pleasures of my life, the exercise of my profession

as a painter. His own work, although very clever in its way, was

niggling and minute, but his ideas and teachings were broad, and whilst

encouraging a taste for form which had made the study of architecture so

attractive to me, he knew how to awaken a love of colour, that was

eventually to lead me to the sister art.

The old masters, too, had their full share in making me long to paint.

There was a certain picture by Murillo, a Madonna and Child, in the

Schletter Collection which afterwards formed the nucleus of the Leipsic

Picture Gallery; that picture so filled my imagination that I was fired

by the desire to go forth and do likewise.

I have since frequently found that that kind of _auch'io_ feeling is by

no means confined to those in whom it would be justifiable. In a

masterpiece the artist betrays no effort; all looks so easy that one

fancies it _is_ easy. The lines of the composition flow so naturally,

the colours strike so complete a chord, that one is deluded into the

belief that it could not be otherwise, and that it is just what one

would have done oneself had one been in the painter's place. So I was

gradually settling in my mind that, as soon as I had passed my

Abiturienten Examen (equivalent to our matriculation), I would, without

much delay, begin to paint like the old masters.

Of Mendelssohn and the many friends, musical and otherwise, who made my

stay, and later on my visits to Leipsic, interesting, I must speak

afterwards. But an incident which has left a lasting impression on my

mind, finds its place here, as being connected partly with my

school-days and partly with my art studies.