Pray accept my thanks for the great proof of confidence you show me, by the purport of your esteemed letter of the 12th of this month. Believe me, I thoroughly appreciate it, and can indeed feel how important to you must be the development and future destiny of a child so beloved and so talented. My sole wish is, like your own, that those steps should be taken, best calculated to reward his assiduity and to cultivate his talents. As an artist, I consider this to be my duty, but, in this case, it would cause me peculiar pleasure from its recalling an early and happy period of my life.
But I should unworthily respond to your confidence, did I not communicate frankly to you the many and great scruples which prevent my immediately accepting your proposal. In the first place, I am convinced, from repeated experience, that I am totally deficient in the talent requisite for a practical teacher, and for giving regular progressive instruction; whether it be that I take too little pleasure in tuition, or have not sufficient patience for it, I cannot tell, but in short, I do not succeed in it. Occasionally, indeed, young people have stayed with me, but any improvement they have derived was solely from our studying music together, from unreserved intercourse, or casual conversation on various subjects, and also from discussions; and none of these things are compatible with actual teaching. Now the question is, whether in such early youth, a consecutive, unremitting, strict course of discipline, be not of more value than all the rest? It also appears to me that the estrangement of your son from the paternal roof just at his age, forms a second, and not less important objection. Where the rudiments of education are not wholly wanting (and the talents of your wife alone are a security against this), then I consider that the vicinity of his parents, and the prosecution of the usual elements of study, the acquirement of languages, and the various branches of scholarship and science, are of more value to the boy than a one-sided, even though more perfect cultivation of his genius. In any event such genius is sure to force its way to the light, and to shape its course accordingly, and in riper years will submit to no other permanent vocation, so that the early acquired treasures of interest, and the hours enjoyed in early youth under the roof of a parent, become doubly dear.
I speak in this strain from my own experience, for I can well remember that in my fifteenth year, there was a question as to my studying with Cherubini in Paris, and I know how grateful I was to my father at the time, and often since, that he at last gave up the idea, and kept me with himself. It would of course be very different if there were no means in Bonn, of obtaining good and solid instruction in thorough-bass and the piano; but this I cannot believe, and whether that instruction be rather better or more intellectual (provided indeed it be not positively objectionable), is of less moment when compared with the advantages of a longer stay in his own home. Further, my life hitherto has been so unsettled, that no summer has passed without my taking considerable journeys, and next year I shall probably be absent from here for five or six months; this change of associations would only be prejudicial to youthful talent. The young man therefore must either remain here alone all summer or travel with me, and neither of these are advisable for him.
I state all these disadvantages, because I am myself so well aware of them, and fully estimate the importance of the subject. If you do not participate in my views on mature consideration, and are still of opinion that I alone can assist your boy in the attainment of his wish, then I repeat that in any case (irrespective of this) I should esteem it my duty to be useful and serviceable, so far as my ability goes, to a youthful genius, and to contribute to his development by the exercise of my own powers; but even in this event, a personal interview is indispensable, if only for a few hours, in order to arrange everything clearly, and until then I cannot give an unqualified consent.
Were you to bring the lad to me at Easter, I fear I should have already set off on my summer excursion. Indeed, the only period when I am certain to be in Leipzig, is from autumn till Easter. I quite agree with Madame Naumann, that it is most essential to cultivate pianoforte-playing at present as much as possible, and not to fail in studying Cramer’s exercises assiduously and steadily; but along with this daily training on the piano, two hours a week devoted to thorough-bass might be useful, as such a variety would be a pleasant change, rather than an interruption. The latter study indeed ought to be pursued in an easy and almost playful manner, and chiefly the practical part, that of deciphering and playing figured bass; these are the main points, and can be entirely mastered in a short time; but the sooner it is begun, the sooner is it got quit of, and this is always a relief with such dry things. And now once more accept my thanks for the trust you have reposed in me, which I thought I could only adequately respond to by entire sincerity.—I am, your faithful
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
To I. Moscheles, London.
Leipzig, November 30th, 1839.
My dear Friend,
Your letter from Paris delighted me exceedingly, although the proceedings you describe are not very gratifying. The state of matters there must be very curious. I own that I always felt a kind of repugnance towards it, and this impression has not been diminished by all we have recently heard from thence. Nowhere do variety and outward consideration play so prominent a part as there, and what makes the case still worse is, that they not only coquet with orders and decorations, but with artistic inspiration and soul. The very great inward poverty which this betrays, along with the outward glitter of grandeur and worldly importance which such misères assume, is truly revolting to me, even when I merely read of them in a letter. I infinitely prefer our German homeliness and torpor and tobacco-pipes, though, indeed, I can’t say much in their favour since the recent events in Hanover, in which I am deeply interested, though I grieve to say they do not exhibit our Fatherland in a pleasing aspect; so that neither here nor there is life at present very enjoyable: therefore we ought the more heartily to thank God, that within the domain of art there lies a world far removed from all besides; solitary, yet replete with life, where refuge is to be found, and where we can feel that it is well with us.