LEIPSIC IN 1847 AND 1848--MENDELSSOHN'S DEATH
I well remember that first year of my stay in Leipsic, when all our
interests seemed to centre in the friend we were to lose so soon.
At all times I was proud of my godfather, inordinately so, perhaps, when
conversation turned on the great kindness which Goethe had lavished on
his young friend Felix. To know a man who had known Goethe seemed to me
like knowing a man who had known Shakespeare, and I was accordingly
proud of my godfather. It is not surprising that Goethe, the great
dissector of human nature, should, with a few masterly touches, have
portrayed the boy of twelve, and forecast the character of the man. "You
know," he said to his friend Rellstab, "the doctrine of temperaments;
every one has four in his composition, only in different proportions.
Well, this boy, I should say, possesses the smallest possible modicum of
phlegm, and the maximum of the opposite quality." Whatever that
"opposite quality" was which Goethe had in his mind, it was one which
kept Mendelssohn on the alert; it was the very essence of life that he
was drawing on, alas! too prodigally.
Thus, of his own compositions he says in a letter to my father: "How I
am to set about writing a calm and quiet piece (as you advised me to do
last spring) I really do not know. All that passes through my head in
the shape of pianoforte music is about as calm and quiet as Cheapside;
and when I sit down to start improvising ever so quietly, it is of no
use--by degrees I fall back into the old ways."
But if Goethe noted the boy's extreme sensibility, he also appreciated
his sound intellect. "He is so clear-headed about his own subjects," he
says, "that I must learn a great deal from him." And Mendelssohn relates
how, seated at the piano, he familiarises the poet with the work of
Beethoven, how the grand old man is overwhelmed by the beauties and
mysteries revealed, and sits all the while in a dark corner, like a
Jupiter Tonans, with his eyes flashing fire. "I felt," he says, "that
this was the very Goethe of whom people will one day declare that he is
not at all one person, but is made up of several smaller Goethes."
The house we lived in stood in its own grounds, and very picturesque
they were; some parts delightfully kept, others still more delightfully
neglected. Wild tangles blocked disused paths; weeds and creepers
climbed up the legs of classical statues, and wound round their arms
when they had any. There was a Kiosk too, a little museum in which had
been collected relics of the great battle which had raged furiously in
those grounds. It was dedicated to Prince Poniatowski, who, during the
disastrous retreat of the French army, was drowned with scores of other
fugitives in that rapid little stream, the Elster, which flowed at the
bottom of what was in my days called "Gerhard's Garten," the same stream
in which I now used to take my daily swim.
There were only two houses in that "Garten." In one of them lived the
Herr Legationsrath Gerhard, our landlord, a personal friend of the great
Goethe, and himself a gifted poet, and so good a scholar, that he was
able to make an admirable translation of Burns's poems. The good people
of Leipsic appreciated his talents, but were very angry with him because
he was unmistakably a poet with an eye to business, and he charged five
neugroschen (sixpence) for admission to the historical site and to the
Poniatowski Kiosk.
In the other house we occupied the second floor, and on the first lived
Madame Mendelssohn's sister, Madame Schunck, and her family. The
ground-floor was the private residence of a wealthy wine merchant;
perhaps Schmidt was his name. The latter nearly got us into very serious
trouble in the days when the tide of revolution, set in motion by the
French rising in 1848, had swept all over Germany, and when even the
Leipsickers, usually so peaceful, were up in arms. The standard of
insurrection had been raised throughout the Fatherland, dynasties were
threatened, and thrones shaken. Some of the Saxon patriots had gone to
help their brothers in the Austrian capital, amongst others Robert Blum,
one of the most popular leaders of the democratic party. The barricade
he was defending was taken, and he was made a prisoner. Popular feeling
in Leipsic ran high, and when the news came that he had been tried by
court-martial and shot, it reached fever heat.
Interested as I always was in the doings of man, woman, or child,
especially when they had come together in the name of mischief, I was
naturally anxious to watch as closely as possible the process of
history-making they were about to engage in. So I was to be found where
the crowd was thickest and the mob most threatening.
An indignation meeting was improvised; the more rabid fire-eaters were
hoisted on some handy box, or took possession of a passing cart, from
which they addressed the rioters. The Austrian rule, its Kaiser, and its
leading statesmen, were held up to execration, and a shout was raised,
"To the Consulate!" Sticks and stones appeared on the scene, one knew
not whence, and soon we were on our way to the Consulate, where it did
not take long to smash every window in the house. The arms of Austria
were torn down and carried in triumph to the market-place, where they
were ignominiously strung up to a lamp-post amidst yells of exultation.
The mob had by this time worked itself into a frantic state of
excitement, and was thirsting for action. "What next?" was the cry. "To
Gerhard's Garten," shouted a voice; "let us hang Schmidt next. He
bragged that he would stand a dozen of his best champagne if it were
true that Blum had been shot. We'll drink it to the scoundrel's
health--to his perdition--hang the dog!"
"Save the dog," was naturally my first impulse, and I ran off at full
speed to give warning. I arrived in time to raise an alarm, and the
place was speedily prepared to resist at least a first assault; the
massive iron gates that protected us on the river-side were closed, and
the heavy wooden doors on the land-side were barred and bolted. The
rioters were soon on the spot, and threatened to make matchwood of them
if they were not opened. In true mediæval fashion the old Legationsrath
parleyed with the enemy through a grated opening in the door,
asseverating that the man wanted was not in the house or anywhere on the
premises. He was so successful in his diplomatic efforts that a
compromise was agreed to, and a few of the most clamorous were admitted
to satisfy themselves that the object of their search was not in hiding.
The wine merchant had plenty of time to escape, the crowd, baffled of
its prey, moved on to seek fresh fields of action, and our house escaped
with only a few panes of broken glass. As for myself, I was warmly
complimented on having acted the goose and saved the Capitol.
The next day matters wore a graver aspect, and attempts were made to
raise barricades. During the short conflict which ensued, a friend of
ours, Herr Gontard, was shot through the heart, as from his window he
was pointing a rifle at the insurgents. He was a prominent citizen, and
his death created a profound sensation. When a short time afterwards I
accompanied my father to the house, to inquire after the bereaved
family, we were shown by the servant into the room where his master lay
in the stillness of death, a service which we were expected to
acknowledge by handing him the customary "Trinkgeld," the tip which a
German servant considers his due, whenever his master practises
hospitality. On this occasion it was a weird entertainment we had been
bidden to.
In Dresden the insurrection was of a much more serious character. Civil
war raged fiercely in the streets of that capital, and the Saxon army
proving insufficient to subdue the people, the assistance of the
Prussians was invoked or had to be accepted.
Great was the excitement when the first batch of soldiers passed through
Leipsic, but it led to no demonstration. By this time the restless
spirits knew that the cause of liberty was lost. The new _Zündnadel
Gewehr_ just introduced into the Prussian army, a rifle that was shortly
to prove its superiority in the Danish campaign, seemed a very
strange-looking piece of mechanism to us. What would be the English for
_Zündnadel Gewehr_ I do not know, nor will I ascertain, for I object to
showing an interest in lethal weapons manufactured for fratricidal
purposes.
Richard Wagner's active participation in the revolutionary movement was
at the time severely commented upon by many of his friends, for he had
every reason to be personally grateful to the king, who, it was said,
had acted very liberally towards him, and had generally distinguished
and befriended him. Accounts varied as to the actual part he took in the
fighting, but at any rate he had to flee the country, and took refuge
first in Paris and then in Zurich.
After a prolonged conflict the barricades were taken; from the front
they had been made all but impregnable, so the Prussian troops cut
themselves a road through the party walls of the adjoining houses, and
attacked them in the rear; they did terrible execution, and it was once
more crowned autocracy which scored a victory over struggling democracy.
When all was over, a deputation of so-called loyal subjects waited upon
the King of Prussia to do homage to the victor.
"I wish all my subjects were now here before me, to do justice to my
august sentiments," were the concluding words in his Majesty's answer.
And the royal utterance was suitably quoted beneath a drawing published
shortly afterwards, in which the king stands, fuse in hand, by the
cannon, ready to fire a well-directed charge of grape-shot into the
midst of his faithful subjects.
* * * * *
All this happened some months after Mendelssohn's death, and it was well
he was spared experiences which would have made the most painful
impression on his sensitive nature. Indeed, so impressionable was he,
that even trifling incidents would sometimes visibly affect him, and
then he could make it very trying for those who had the misfortune to
incur his displeasure. He had strong likes and dislikes, and would not
always take the trouble to conceal them; as on one occasion, when he
very pointedly showed his dislike to Miss F., an Irish girl, who was
studying at the Conservatorio in Leipsic. I think he was prejudiced
against her because she had a mass of fluffy reddish hair, which would
break away from the rule of the hairpin and escape in a spirit of
rebellion; just the sort of thing we admire nowadays, but that was
thought positively improper then.
She once appealed to me, when my mother was reading her a homily on the
wicked ways of that hair. "Now, Felix, you who have an artist's eye; is
it really so dreadful?" she asked. To be sure I told her that I, for
one, thought it mighty fine, and she triumphed, but I was ever after
chaffed as the one who had "an artist's eye."
There were tears shed on the evening of the Pupils' concert at the
Gewandhaus. When Miss F.'s turn came, it was found she had forgotten her
music, and Mendelssohn, behind the scenes, was in a rage. There was an
awkward pause whilst the music was being fetched and the audience was
waiting, but my father called up the tuner to officiate and fill the
gap, and so appearances were saved. But Mendelssohn never forgave poor
Miss F.
A passage in a letter to my mother, dated September 3, 1832, I must
transcribe, if only because I think it my duty to quote it as a warning
to such bachelors as may be inclined to make rash vows of celibacy.
Mendelssohn, who was then twenty-three, wrote of his friend Klingemann:
"If Klingemann flirts, he is only doing the correct thing, and wisely
too; what else are we born for? But, if he gets married, I shall just
die with laughter; only fancy Klingemann a married man! But you predict
it, and I know you can always tell by people's faces what they are
going to say or to do. If I wanted bread at dinner, you used to say in
an undertone, 'Some bread for Mr. Mendelssohn;' and perhaps your
matrimonial forecast might be equally true. But on the other hand, I too
am a prophet in matrimonial matters, and maintain exactly the reverse.
Klingemann is, and will ever be, a Knight of the Order of Bachelors, and
so shall I. Who knows but we may both wish to marry thirty years hence!
But then, no girl will care to have us. Pray, cut this prophecy out of
the letter before you burn it, and keep it carefully; in thirty years we
shall know whether it proves correct or not."
Klingemann married in 1845, and Mendelssohn became engaged to Cécile
Jeanrenaud in September 1836, just four years after his prophecy.
He writes in a very different strain shortly after his marriage:--
"All that is good," he says, "has become doubly dear to me; all that is
bad, easier to put up with. Your wife must not visit my sins on Cécile;
on the contrary she must be ready to like her, and to love her a little
when she becomes acquainted with her. And truly my dear Cécile deserves
it, and I think I need not make any appeal to your wife, but simply
introduce her and say, 'This is Cécile'--the rest will follow
naturally." He was right; they met the same year and became friends.
Cécile was in many respects a contrast to her husband; she was calm and
reserved, where he was lively and excitable. Hers was a deeply
emotional nature, but she rarely showed outwardly what moved or
impressed her, whereas his emotions would ever rise to the surface,
generally to overflow and find expression in words.
My father, after first meeting her in Berlin, says: "Felix's wife is
very charming, very unassuming and childlike. Her mouth and nose are
like Sontag's. Her way of speaking is pleasing and simple; her German is
quite that of the Frankforter. She said naïvely at dinner, 'I speak too
slowly for my Felix, and he so quickly that I don't always understand
him.'"
I remember thinking her exceedingly beautiful. Her appearance reminded
me of a certain picture of Germania by Kaulbach; but she was not the
typical fair-haired German; she was dark, and wore her hair not in
classical waves, but according to the fashion of the day, in many
ringlets.
The daily intercourse between the Mendelssohns and the Moscheles was a
source of real happiness to both. They were constantly meeting to make
or to discuss music, to take long walks together, or short ones along
the Grimmaische Strasse to the Conservatorio. The work there was
particularly congenial to my father's taste; after the many years of
feverish activity he had spent in London, Leipsic was truly a haven of
rest to him, and he could well say, "I am beginning to realise my dream
of emancipation from professional slavery."
Following the example of the parents, the children of the two families
soon fraternised too. I recollect a very lively children's party at our
house. Mendelssohn came in and joined in the games; then he went to the
piano and set us all a dancing as only the rhythm of his improvisation
could. When he ended, we clamoured for more. Give any child a
Mendelssohn finger and no wonder it wants the ten. We got another
splendid waltz that glided into a gallop, but when that too came to an
end, we insatiable little tyrants would not let him get up from the
piano.
"Well," he said, "if all the little girls will go down on their knees
and beg and pray of me, I may be induced to give you one more dance." A
circle was soon formed around him, and they had to beg hard, harder, and
hardest, before he allowed himself to be softened.
David, the violinist, also belonged to the intimate circle of our
friends. He had come to London in 1839 with a warm introduction from
Mendelssohn, and had soon endeared himself to all of us. He was a
musician of the good old kind, practising and loving music for its own
sake; he was a man of high culture, ever entertaining and genial, and
took special delight in smoking innumerable cigars with his friends. In
one respect he was much like my father and Mendelssohn. He could not
understand how anybody could get through twenty-four hours without
playing some Sonata or Trio. I recollect he was quite indignant on one
occasion when he was in London and was staying with Sterndale Bennett.
"Would you believe it?" he said. "I have been in the house now for more
than a week, and we have not once sat down to make music." Poor
Sterndale Bennett, who had probably been giving his eight or ten
lessons a day in London or Brighton!
Rietz, too, the conductor of the Gewandhaus Concerts, was a friend and a
_music-maker_ in the German sense--a musician of the highest order, and
a brilliant virtuoso on the violoncello.
For Mendelssohn's birthday, the 3rd of February, we had been getting up
theatricals, and great excitement prevailed amongst old and young, for
all were to take part in them. I feel pretty sure that my mother had
planned it all, for, amongst a good many other things, she was the
family poet and playwright. The performance began with a scene acted in
the Frankfort dialect by Madame Mendelssohn and her sister, Madame
Schunck; then followed a charade in four parts--"Gewandhaus," the name
of the famous concert hall, was the word to be illustrated.
For the first syllable, "Ge," Joachim, then sixteen years old, appeared
in an eccentric wig, and played a wild Fantasia _à la_ Paganini on the
Ge-Saite, the G string. Then the stirring scene from "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream," when Pyramus and Thisbe make love through the
chink in the wall, stood for "Wand," the German for wall. The lion, I
need not say, roared well.
To illustrate the third syllable "Haus," my mother had written a little
domestic scene, to be acted by herself and her husband. When the curtain
rose, she was discovered knitting a blue stocking, and soliloquising on
the foibles of female authoresses; whereupon enter the cook. The cook
was my father, and his bearing on this his first appearance in the
part, his female attire, as well as his realistic get-up, so tickled
Mendelssohn's fancy, that he broke into a fit of Homeric laughter;
Homeric, with this reserve, that that historical outburst was not
produced in a wickerwork chair, and therefore cannot have been as
effective as Mendelssohn's. Under his weight the chair rocked to and
fro, and creaked till one thought it must break its bonds. But it held
out, and gradually found its balance; it was not till then that the cook
was allowed to proceed with her part.
Finally "Gewandhaus," the complete word, was represented by all the
juvenile members of the company; each of us had to blow or play some
instrument of a primitive character. Joachim led with a toy violin, and
I wielded the bâton, and did my best to take off the characteristic ways
of my illustrious godfather. Some of my imitative faculty must have
survived the dead-man period of my early days, for the wickerwork once
more shook with the sympathetic laughter of its occupant, and it reached
a climax when Joachim made some pointed remarks in imitation of the
master.
After the performance actors and public gathered round a festive board.
In the centre of the supper-table stood the birthday cake, around which
burned thirty-seven candles, one for each year, according to the good
old German fashion. My mother had written a few words descriptive of the
year each represented--from the cradle to the piano and the conductor's
desk--from his first attempt at composition, to "St. Paul," "Elijah,"
and the opera to come. In the centre stood the Light of Life, that,
alas! was so soon to fail. We little dreamt that it was his last
birthday we were celebrating.
The sounds of mirth, as the chords of harmony, were ere long to be
silenced. A few months later Mendelssohn's dearly beloved sister, Fanny
Hensel, suddenly died. It was a heavy blow from which he never quite
recovered, for the brother and sister were bound together by the closest
ties of affection, and the most striking artistic affinities. He spent
the summer in Switzerland, but returned enfeebled in health and
depressed in spirits. "His step is less elastic than before," says my
father, "but to see him at the piano, or to hear him talk about art and
artists, he is all life and fire."
The evening of the 8th of October was the last I was to spend at
Mendelssohn's house. He, my father, Rietz, and David had been playing
much classical music. In the course of an animated conversation which
followed, some knotty art question arose and led to a lively discussion.
Each of the authorities present was warmly defending his own opinion,
and there seemed little prospect of an immediate agreement, when
Mendelssohn, suddenly interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence,
turned on his heel and startled me with the unexpected question--
"What is the Aoristus primus of [Greek: typtô], Felix?" I was at that
time a schoolboy in my fifteenth year, and so, quickly recovering from
my surprise, I gave the correct answer.
"Good," said he, and off we went to supper, the knotty point being thus
promptly settled.
* * * * *
I well remember the 9th of October of that year. From our windows we saw
Mendelssohn walking slowly and languidly through the garden towards our
house. As he came in, my mother inquired after his health, and he
answered, "_Grau in grau_" (Grey on grey). My father suggested a walk in
the Rosenthal, that beautiful park, in those days scarcely touched by
the hand of the landscape gardener. Mendelssohn acquiesced listlessly.
"Will you take me too?" asked my mother. "What do you say? shall we take
her?" broke in Mendelssohn in his old genial manner. Well, she was
taken, and so was I, or, at any rate, I went. The walk seemed to do him
good; he brightened up, and was soon engaged in lively conversation. My
mother said, "You have not told us enough about your last stay in
London," and that started him talking of our mutual friends there. Then
he gave us a graphic account of his visit to the Queen.
It will be remembered how, on a previous occasion, he had spent a
delightful hour in Buckingham Palace, and was charmed with the Queen's
singing of some of his songs, and struck with Prince Albert's musical
talents. How, between them, the three had set to work to pick up the
sheets of music which the wind had blown all over the room, before they
settled down to the organ and the piano, and how Mendelssohn carried out
the parrot in his cage, to the amazement of the royal servants. The
pleasant incident of his last visit, which he related to us as we walked
along the Rosenthal, was this. He had been once more making music with
the Queen, and had been genuinely delighted with her rendering of his
songs. As he was about to leave, she said--
"Now, Dr. Mendelssohn, you have given me so much pleasure; is there
nothing I can do to give you pleasure?" To be sure, he answered, that he
was more than amply rewarded by her Majesty's gracious reception, and by
what would be a lasting remembrance of the interest she had shown in his
music; but when she insisted, he said--
"Well, to speak the truth, I have a wish, and one that only your Majesty
can grant."
"It is granted," she interposed.
And then he told her that nothing could give him greater pleasure than
to see the nurseries and all the domestic arrangements connected with
the royal children. The most consummate courtier could not have
expressed a wish better calculated to please the Queen. She most
cordially responded, and herself conducted him through the nurseries.
Nor was the matter treated lightly; she had to show him the contents of
the wardrobes and give him particulars of the service, and for the time
being the two were not in the relative position of gracious sovereign
and obedient servant, but rather of an experienced materfamilias and an
enlightened paterfamilias, comparing notes, and giving one another
points on the management of their respective children.
Mendelssohn left us about one o'clock in the most cheerful mood. The
same afternoon he was taken ill in Madame Frege's house. He had gone
there to persuade her to sing in his "Elijah," which had as yet only
been performed in England, and was now to be heard in Leipsic; he also
wanted her advice and help in putting together a new book of his songs.
I pass over the anxiety of the next weeks, the partial recovery, to be
followed only by relapse and aggravated symptoms.
From the 1st of November we knew that the worst was to be feared. My
parents were not often away from the house of sickness. In the morning
of the fatal day, at four o'clock, I went to the Königstrasse to get the
latest news; I had to return hopeless through the dark and foggy night.
Later in the day I was again for some hours in the house, but was not
allowed to see the dying man. From two o'clock in the afternoon, the
hour when another paralytic stroke was dreaded, he gradually began to
sink. Cécile, his brother Paul, David, Schleinitz, and my father were
present, when at twenty-four minutes past nine he expired with a deep
sigh.
The next day Cécile wrote to my mother asking her to order the mourning
for the children; she would let her know when she could see her. Some
days elapsed, the funeral service had been held and the remains had been
transferred to Berlin, when she wrote again asking my mother to come and
to bring me. We went. Outwardly we found her calm and resigned, but one
could read in her countenance that she was mortally wounded. She talked
of him she had lost and showed us a deathbed drawing that his
brother-in-law Hensel had made. For a time his manuscripts remained
untouched; the door of his study she kept locked.
"Not a pin, not a paper," she wrote, "could I bring myself to move from
its place. That room must remain for a short time my sanctuary; those
things, that music, my secret treasure."
It was with feelings of deep emotion that I entered the room when,
shortly afterwards, she opened its door for me. I had asked and obtained
permission to make a water-colour drawing of that study, whilst all yet
stood as the master had left it. On the right was the little
old-fashioned piano on which he composed so many of his great works;
near the window the writing-desk he used to stand at. On the walls
water-colours by his own hand--Swiss landscapes and others. On the left
the busts of Goethe and Bach, placed on the bookcases which contained
his valuable musical library.
Whilst I was painting, Cécile came and went. Not a sigh, not a murmur
escaped her lips.
She died just four years after her husband.
[Illustration]