To his Family.
Leipzig, November 5th, 1838.
I have felt unequal to resume the train of my musical compositions since the measles. You cannot conceive the chaos that accumulates round me, when I am obliged neither to write, nor to go out, for three weeks. At last, here I am, correcting the parts of my three violin quartetts, which are to appear this winter, but I never can contrive to complete them, owing to so many letters, and affairs, and other odiosa. The Shaws are here, who don’t know one word of German, and not many words of French, and yet they live with thorough, downright Leipzigers, who only speak their Leipzig vernacular; and Bennett, with two young English musicians, and six new symphonies, and letters, and passing strangers, and rehearsals, and Heaven knows what all the other things are, which swallow up the day, leaving no more trace than if it had never existed. Truly the most delightful of all things is to be enabled to store up precious and enduring memorials of past days, to tell that these days were; and the most hateful of all things is, when time passes on, and we pass with it, and yet grasp nothing.
I am reading Lessing just now frequently, with true enjoyment and gratitude. At the end of the most fatiguing day, this famous fellow makes me feel quite fresh again; though Germany fares rather badly when you read his letters to his grandfather, or to Nicolai, Gleim, and Eckert; and yet Lessing wrote in German, and in such German, too, that it cannot be well translated!
To Professor Schirmer, Düsseldorf,
(now director of the carlsruhe academy.)
Berlin, November 21st, 1838.
So I am said to be a saint! If this is intended to convey what I conceive to be the meaning of the word, and what your expressions lead me to think you also understand by it, then I can only say that, alas! I am not so, though every day of my life I strive with greater earnestness, according to my ability, more and more to resemble this character. I know indeed that I can never hope to be altogether a saint, but if I ever approach to one, it will be well. If people, however, understand by the word ‘saint’ a Pietist, one of those who lay their hands on their laps, and expect that Providence will do their work for them, and who, instead of striving in their vocation to press on towards perfection, talk of a heavenly calling being incompatible with an earthly one, and are incapable of loving with their whole hearts any human being, or anything on earth,—then, God be praised! such a one I am not, and hope never to become, so long as I live; and though I am sincerely desirous to live piously, and really to be so, I hope this does not necessarily entail the other character. It is singular that people should select precisely this time to say such a thing, when I am in the enjoyment of so much happiness, both through my inner and outer life, and my new domestic ties, as well as busy work, that I really never know how sufficiently to show my thankfulness. And, as you wish me to follow the path which leads to rest and peace, believe me, I never expected to live in the rest and peace which have now fallen to my lot. I offer you a thousand thanks for your good wishes, and beg you not to be uneasy on either of these points.
It is pleasant to learn what you write to me of yourself and your works, and that you also are persuaded that what people usually call honour and fame are but doubtful advantages, while another species of honour, of a more elevated and spiritual nature, is as essential as it is rare. The truth of this is best seen in the case of those who possess all possible worldly distinctions, without deriving from them one moment of real pleasure, but only causing them the more greedily to crave after them; and this fact was first made quite evident to me in Paris. I rejoice that you are not one of those who speak in a contemptuous strain of French painters, for I have always received great pleasure from the good ones of the present day, and I cannot believe in the sincerity of those persons who, at sight of one your pictures, fall into ecstasies, and yet presume from the height of their throne to look down on one of Horace Vernet’s. What I mean is, that if one beautiful object pleases the eye, another cannot fail also to inspire sympathy; at least, so it is with myself.