“‘Out with the vowels! The hea-thens. Who made the heavens and the wa-ters.’
“No. 5. ‘Rather err on the side of vigor than on the side of drowsiness.’
“No. 8. ‘From the very beginning the music must sound fresh—not only towards the end.’
“No. 20. ‘I want to hear Tone,—what one might call Music.’”
Mendelssohn’s last birthday, the 3d of February, 1847, was celebrated by his friends in Gerhard’s Garten. Old and young had made festive preparations for the occasion; in the Moscheleses’ drawing-room a stage had been erected, and every scrap of domestic talent was enlisted to entertain the hero of the day. Cécile Mendelssohn and her sister, Mrs. Schunck, opened the proceedings with a comic dialogue between two lady’s-maids, spoken in the Frankfurt dialect. Then the word “Ge-wand-haus” was enacted as a charade. Joachim, adorned with an eccentric wig, appeared as Paganini, and executed a brilliant improvisation on the G-string (in German, Ge-Saite). The scene between Pyramus and Thisbe in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” followed and stood for Wand (wall). To illustrate the syllable Haus (house), Mrs. Moscheles had written a little domestic scene; and when, in the course of this, Moscheles, dressed as a cook, made his appearance, Mendelssohn burst into a truly Homeric fit of laughter. He was sitting in a large wicker-work arm-chair; and as, in the fulness of his enjoyment, he rocked to and fro, the chair joined in, bending and creaking in sympathetic rhythms. It was not till after a long interval that the cook could get a hearing. As a finale, the whole word was represented by the combined juvenile forces of the two families, each of the children being provided with some instrument, and Felix Moscheles wielding the conductor’s baton. Joachim led with a toy-violin. Of however doubtful a nature this musical treat may have been to Mendelssohn, he certainly entered most fully into the spirit of the thing, and appreciated every allusion to the real Gewandhaus; especially when Joachim made certain remarks in imitation of the master himself, Mendelssohn started off again, and the endurance of the sympathetic arm-chair was put to the utmost test.
After the performance, actors and public adjourned to the first floor, occupied by the Schuncks. In the centre of the supper-table stood the birthday cake, around which burned thirty-seven candles. At the foot of each, Mrs. Moscheles had written a few words descriptive of the year it represented,—from the cradle to the piano and the conductor’s desk; from his first attempt at composition to “Saint Paul,” “Elijah,” and the “Opera in spe.” In the centre stood the “Light of Life,” that was so soon to fail!
In the month of April of this year Mendelssohn visited England for the last time. He conducted three performances of “Elijah” in Exeter Hall, and was again active at the Philharmonic Concerts. On his return from England, the news reached him of the death of his sister Fanny Hensel. To her he had been linked throughout life by the closest musical sympathy and affinity, and it was thought he never quite recovered from the shock caused by her sudden death, rendered doubly painful by its occurring during his absence from Berlin, and at one of her own musical matinées.
At this time Moscheles and his wife, who were making a short visit in England, received the following letter from Mendelssohn:—
Baden-Baden, June 9, 1847.