[10] E flat (with orchestra), Op. 29.
[11] Well known as the most crowded street in London.
[12] “Ali Baba.”
[13] For the text of “St. Paul.”
[14] Cantor (leader of a choir), a term Mendelssohn often applied to his sister Fanny.
[15] A number of birthdays occurred at this particular period in the family.
[16] Mendelssohn had made an expedition through part of Germany for the benefit of the theatre, in order to engage singers.
[17] Professor Heyse, Mendelssohn’s teacher.
[18] The mode, however, in which Mendelssohn treated this affair of the theatre was by no means approved of by his father; on the contrary, some time afterwards he wrote to him as follows:—
“I must once more resume the subject of the dramatic career, as I feel very anxious about it on your account. You have not, according to my judgment, either in a productive or administrative point of view, had sufficient experience to decide with certainty that your disinclination towards it proceeds from anything innate in your talents or character. I know no dramatic composer, except Beethoven, who has not written a number of operas, now totally forgotten, before attaining the right object at the right moment, and gaining a place for himself. You have only made one public effort, which was partly frustrated by the text, and, in fact, was neither very successful nor the reverse. Subsequently you were too fastidious about the words, and did not succeed in finding the right man, and perhaps did not seek him in a right manner; I cannot but think that, by more diligent inquiries and more moderate pretensions, you would at length attain your object. With regard to the administrative career, however, it gives rise to another series of reflections which I wish to impress on you. Those who have the opportunity and the inclination, to become more closely and intimately acquainted with you, as well as all those to whom you have the opportunity and the inclination to reveal yourself more fully, cannot fail to love and respect you. But this is really far from being sufficient to enable a man to enter on life with active efficacy; on the contrary, when you advance in years, and opportunity and inclination fail, both in others and yourself, it is much more likely to lead to isolation and misanthropy. Even what we consider faults will be respected, or at least treated with forbearance, when once firmly and thoroughly established in the world, while the individual himself disappears. He has least of all arrived at the ideal of virtue, who exacts it most inexorably from others. The most stern moral principle is a citadel, with outworks, in defence of which we are unwilling to expend our strength, in order to maintain ourselves with greater certainty in our stronghold, which indeed ought only to be surrendered with life itself. Hitherto it is undeniable that you have never been able to divest yourself of a tendency to austerity and irascibility, to suddenly grasping an object, and as suddenly relinquishing it, and thus creating for yourself many obstacles in a practical point of view. For example, I must confess, that though I approved of your withdrawing from any active participation in the management of details in the Düsseldorf theatre, I by no means did so of the manner in which you accomplished your object, as you undertook it voluntarily, and, to speak candidly, rather heedlessly. From the beginning you, most wisely, declined any positive compact, but only agreed to undertake the studying and conducting of particular operas, and, in accordance with this resolution, very properly insisted on another music director being appointed. When you came here some time ago with the commission to engage Krethi and Plethi, I did not at all like the idea; I thought, however, that as you were coming here at all events, you could not through politeness decline this service. But on your return to Düsseldorf, after wisely refusing to undertake another journey for the purpose of making engagements for the theatre, instead of persevering in your duties in this sense, and getting rid of all odiosa, you allowed yourself to be overwhelmed by them; and as they naturally became most obnoxious to you, instead of quietly striving to remedy them, and thus gradually to get rid of them, you at one leap extricated yourself, and by so doing you undeniably subjected yourself to the imputation of fickleness and unsteadiness, and made a decided enemy of a man whom at all events policy should have taught you not to displease; and most probably offended and lost the friendliness of many members of the Comité also, among whom there are, no doubt, most respectable people. If I view this matter incorrectly, then teach me a better mode of judging.”