To Fanny Hensel, Berlin.
Soden, August 15th, 1844.
Look again in the music shelves, in the compartment where there is a great deal of loose music lying; among it you will find an open red portfolio, which contains a quantity of my unbound manuscript music—songs, pianoforte pieces, printed and unprinted; there you will positively find the organ piece in A major. It is just possible that I may in so far be mistaken; that it is in a bound music-book which lies in “my compartment,” and in which many similar pieces are bound together. I found the piece, however, in one of the two last winter, and stans pede in uno (Sebastian will explain this) looked through it, marvelled at the odious middle part, and also at the charming commencement (between ourselves, all from modesty). Now, pray search diligently, and send it off to Soden as soon as you find it. I shall laugh heartily if, by describing to you at the distance of Soden where the piece is, you find it. I must tease you about this for the rest of my life.
I am going to make an expedition on foot to Wiesbaden to-morrow, to visit Uncle Joseph; and the day after to Hamburg, also on foot, to attend Döhler’s concert. Prume is to call for me, and we are to go together. I heard Döhler and Piatti in their last concert in London, and clapped and shouted for them; and now I mean to do the same at Hamburg, which will be diverting enough. The day before yesterday I was at Eppstein, where there was a new organ and a church festival, and where the Vocal Associations of Frankfort, Wiesbaden, and Mayence offered to sing, and were present; but a letter came from the Amtmann in Königstein forbidding them to sing, so they set off, and went to Hofheim, (do you know the white chapel, which is visible in the whole country round? Paul will tell you about it,) and there they sang. Towards evening, as I was driving quietly with the ladies and all the children on the high-road through Hofheim, we saw heads innumerable peeping out of the windows of the inn,—all, I suspect, more or less tipsy,—shouting out loud vivats to me. The ladies wished to stop there to have some coffee, but I opposed this strongly, so we ate pound-cake in the carriage.
But I must now tell you of my works; there is little enough to say about them as yet. With the exception of five great organ pieces, and three little songs, nothing is finished; the symphony makes but slow progress; I have resumed a Psalm. If I could only continue to live during half a year as I have done here for a fortnight past, what might I not accomplish? But the regulation and direction of so many concerts, and attending others, is no joke, and nothing is gained by it. I feel always at home among cows and pigs, and like best to be with my equals,—the one is the result of the other, you will say; but to let bad jokes alone, I am not a little pleased with your new songs. Would that I could hear them forthwith! But it will certainly be September before we see each other again, as Madame Bunsen has written that she has been charged to inform me the King does not expect me back in Berlin till the end of September. We have had for some days past such abominable weather, that this is the first day I have been able to cross the threshold since I left Eppstein. My letter, therefore, is not so cheerful as you could desire; but I cannot help it, for the Altkönig looks too stern and gloomy. I must describe to you my journey back from Zweibrücken. My landlord drove me the first stage in his carriage; there the Landrath von Pirmaseus received us with a breakfast, and very fine wine, (this was at eight o’clock in the morning,) and drove us a stage further in his carriage, to a grand old castle in the Vosges, where we dined, and ascended a hill in the afternoon. Cannons were fired there to show the echo, and champagne drunk, and at every fresh toast the cannons were discharged. He then drove us another stage, where the proprietor of St. Johann took us under his charge, and gave us quarters for the night, and good wine; and next morning came another Zweibrückner with his carriage, and after drinking a little more good wine, we drove on to Deidesheim, where Herr Buhl was waiting to receive us in his vaults; but who and what Herr Buhl and his vaults are, it is quite impossible for me to describe to you,—you must come and taste for yourself, I mean the Forster of 1842, which he fabricates. The cellars were lighted up, and there lay all the valuable hogsheads; and the rooms above these cellars were as elegant as possible, adorned with paintings by Spasimo, and the great Roberts, and Winterhalter’s ‘Decameron;’ and a fine new grand pianoforte, by Streicher; and a pretty woman, who in autumn selects the particular grapes in the bunches to be used in making the wine, which—but excuse the rest. Still, those who have not paid a visit to Herr Buhl (or to his brother-in-law, Herr Jordan), do not know what Forster is here below. They insisted on our dining with them, though we ought not to have done so, being expected to dinner at Dürkheim; still, we dined all the same (Richard Boeckh will fully confirm all this, for he was with us the whole time), and when dinner was over, Herr Buhl drove us in his phaeton to Durkheim (three-quarters of a German mile) in twenty minutes, so that we might not arrive too late for dinner; and in Dürkheim we found half the musical festival again assembled, and wreaths, and inscriptions, and ripe grapes; only we could drink no more wine after that of Herr Buhl!
This is the national song of the Palatinate, called “Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz.” It is sung the whole live-long day, blown on horns by postilions, played as a serenade by regimental bands, and used as a march; and, if a native of the Palatinate comes to see you, and you wish to give him pleasure, you must play it to him; but with abandon, and with great expression,—that is, jovially.
Such was my journey back from the Palatinate; and if you find this description somewhat inebriated, I have certainly hit on the right key, for, from nine o’clock in the morning, we were never really quite steady, though I can assure you that until the evening, I invariably displayed great dignity and propriety. (I refer you to Richard Boeckh.) After the performance of “St. Paul,” he suddenly and unexpectedly emerged from among the public, and you may imagine with what joy I recognized my Boccia comrade from the Leipziger Strasse, No. 3,[78] among all the strange faces; and, to use an expression of the Palatinate, I held him fast. As to the performances themselves,—now, I must of course resume my usual sober style, for the other forms too great a contrast to my métier,—but no! I think I must continue my tipsy tone, and tell you that amid a great many deficiencies, we had the best St. Paul and Druid Priest there whom I have yet met with in Germany, namely, a Herr Oberhofer, a singer from Carlsruhe, who was formerly in the capital. I do not know what he may be on the stage, but it is impossible for any one to sing, or to deliver the music which I heard better, with more intelligence, or more impressively, than he did. He made the third in our merry return journey. How the Landrath Pirmaseus was thrown into a brook, how Herr Sternfeld used a sausage to conduct the orchestra, and how, in the first part of the oratorio, the player of the kettle-drum beat it in two, and his remark on the subject, when sitting in the street with the others, at half-past two o’clock in the morning, drinking punch,—all this you must hear from my own lips. Keep the whole of this letter strictly private from Sebastian; but thank him repeatedly from me for his nice letter. Tell him that I care very little about his No. 1, and that he ought not to be in any hurry to come to Untersecunda. When all number ones, and classes, and examinations, come to an end, and when no man living either asks for or gives testimonials, then learning will first begin in good earnest, and all our energies will be called forth, and yet we shall obtain no red certificates; and that would indeed be delightful, and that would indeed be life itself. And thus it is that I care so little about No. 1 of Untertertia, or for No. 1 of the Order of the Red Eagle, or for all the other numbers in the world. Or, if this be too philosophical for you, or too unphilosophical, then keep it from him also; but it forms a part of my creed. May we have a pleasant, happy, speedy meeting!—Your
Felix.