To Fanny Hensel, Berlin.
Düsseldorf, November 14th, 1834.
My dear Fanny,
May every happiness attend you on this day, and in the year about to commence, and may you love me as well as ever. I should like this year also to have sent you some piece or other, underneath which I could have written November 14th, but the “weeks of the life of an Intendant” have swallowed up everything, and I am only slowly becoming myself again. A few days ago I sketched the overture of “St. Paul,” and thought I should at least contrive to get it finished, but it is still a long way behind. If we could only be together now, in the evening, at all events; for when candles are lighted I feel a much greater longing to be at home than in the morning; and now here are candles, and the days from November 11th and December 11th, up to Christmas and the New Year,[15] are certainly not the best to be far from home, even if the evenings were not so long. But we must be very busy, and next summer set off on our travels again, and visit each other. My wish at this moment is, that the time were come!
I wonder what you are doing this evening? Music and society? or the Government newspaper read aloud? (in which, I am told, Hensel’s school is much extolled, and considered in many respects preferable to ours here!)
But, my birthday child! we are not likely to agree on this occasion in our opinions about pictures; for one of the most repugnant to my feelings that I ever saw was that of S——. When a work of art aspires to represent factitious misery, like the famine in the wilderness, I take no interest in it, if ever so well painted—which this is not. The whole thing seems to me nothing but a variation on Lessing’s “Royal Pair,” only this time with dead horses. The tone of art in it is very commonplace, and even if decked out twenty times over with bright colours, that does not make it better! I don’t at all approve, either, of your taking the opportunity of hearing Lafont to speak of the revolution in the violin since Paganini, for I don’t admit that any such thing exists in art, but only in people themselves; and I think that very same style would have displeased you in Lafont, if you had heard him before Paganini’s appearance, so you must not, on the other hand, do less justice to his good qualities after hearing the other. I was lately shown a couple of new French musical papers, where they allude incessantly to a révolution du goût and a musical transition, which has been taking place for some years past, in which I am supposed to play a fine part; this is the sort of thing I do detest. Then I think that I must be industrious, and work hard, “above all, hate no man and leave the future to God,”—finish the oratorio completely by March, compose a new A minor symphony and a pianoforte concerto, and then set off again on my travels and visit No. 3, Leipziger Strasse. My second concert took place yesterday, and afterwards a fashionable soirée, with no end of Excellencies and fine titles. The day after to-morrow I am again to conduct “Oberon,” and shall drive on the orchestra full cry, like an evil spirit. I have fallen into a very splenetic tone, by no means in keeping with a birthday tone, but I now resume the latter, and wish you all possible good fortune; and may 1835 prove a happy year to you, and may you, and all at home, thoroughly enjoy the day.—Your
Felix.