This letter was begun three days ago, and I have not yet been able to
finish it. Ries has left again. We played Beethoven’s grand Sonata in A
minor, dedicated to Kreutzer, at his concert, and that by heart, which
was great fun. I do not know whether I told Moscheles that the scores of
my three overtures, “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Meeresstille,” and
“Isles of Fingal,” will appear in a few days at Breitkopf & Härtel’s,
which makes me unspeakably proud. As soon as they are to be had, they
shall be presented to you, and I only wish I could have again dedicated
them to you, my dear Moscheles; but as that wouldn’t do, my friends at
home wished me to inscribe them to the Crown Prince, who has shown
himself extremely gracious to me this last autumn. For my own part, I
was thinking of the Philharmonic, and so it is undecided. A knotty
point, you see.
And do you know, dear Mrs. Moscheles, that Varnhagen is going to be
married again,--six months after his inconsolable book about his
wife,--and that to my cousin Marianna Saaling. A young musician has just
been here with an atrocious Fugue for me to look through; also another
native genius who feels an impulse to write Chorales, enough to make one
turn yellow with impatience; and yet he has written Chorales ever since
I came here, the last always worse than the one before it; and as we go
on being vexed with one another, there are some lovely scenes, he not
being able to understand that I still find his compositions bad, and I
that he has not improved them. I am, however, the very type of a good
Cantor, and preach so much to the point that it is great fun to hear me.
The lilies of the valley are out; how pleased I should be to send
Serena some! But even without them, may she live and prosper, and Emily
and Felix as well. And how about Emily’s tune? Now there is an end to my
paper; indeed, I have talked nonsense enough.
Ever yours,