n a letter to Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn's sex-quality is finely revealed, when he says that his friends are advising him to marry, and he is on the lookout for a wife.
Ye gods! there is something strangely creepy about the thought of a man going out in cold blood to seek a wife. Only two kinds of men search for a wife; one is the Turk, and the other is his antithesis, who is advised to marry for hygienic, prudential or sociologic reasons. John Ruskin was "advised" to marry and the matter was duly arranged for him. In a week he awoke to the hideousness of the condition. Six years elapsed before John Millais and Chief Justice Coleridge collaborated to set him free, but the cicatrix remained.
The great books are those the authors had to write to get rid of; the only immortal songs are those sung because the singers could not help it. The best-loved wife is the woman who married because her lover had to marry her to get rid of her; the children that are born because they had to be are the ones that stock the race; and the love that can not help itself is the only love that uplifts and inspires.
Felix Mendelssohn, the slight, joyous, girlish youth, should have preserved his Cecilia-like virginity. He should have left marriage to those who were capable of nothing else; this would not have meant that he turn ascetic, for the ascetic is a voluptuary in disguise. He should simply have been married to his work. The wonder is, though, that once the thought of marriage was forced upon him, he did not marry a Hittite who delighted in pork-chops and tomato-sauce, ordered Guinness Stout in public places, and disciplined him as a genius should be disciplined.
Fate was kind, however, and the lady of his choice was nearly as esthetic in face and form, as gentle and spirituelle as himself. She never humiliated him by cackle, nor led him a merry chase after society's baubles. Her only wish was to please him and to do her wifely duty. They pooled their weaknesses, and it need not be stated that this, the only love in the life of Mendelssohn, made not the slightest impress on his art, save to subdue it. The passing years brought domestic responsibilities, and the every-day trials of life chafed his soul, until the wasted body, grown tired before its time, refused to go on, and death set the spirit free.
endelssohn made five visits to England, where his success was even greater than it was at home. He learned to express himself well in English, but always spoke with the precision and care that marks the educated foreigner. So the result was that he spoke really better "English" than the English. The ease with which the Hebrew learns a language has often been noted and commented upon. Mendelssohn preferred German, but was not at a loss to carry on a conversation in French, Italian or English.
His nature was especially cosmopolitan, and like the true aristocrat that he was, he was also a democrat, and at home in any society.