“I wish I could describe how happy I am to find myself here again, where everything is so congenial to my taste, and how glad to meet with so much kindness from my old friends. With Klingemann, Rosen, and Moscheles I feel as much at home as if we had never been separated. They are the centre to which I am constantly gravitating. We meet every day, and I feel thoroughly happy to be with such good and earnest people and such true friends, in whose company I can show myself just as I am, without reserve. The kindness of Moscheles and his wife to me is really touching, and I value it in proportion to my warm and ever-growing attachment to them both.”
During this stay in London he played for the first time his G minor Concerto at the Philharmonic. In Moscheles’s concert he conducted his Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which he had carefully revised, and the Overture to “The Isles of Fingal,” recently written at Rome.
Moscheles’s birthday was on the 30th of May, and Mendelssohn’s congratulations on the occasion of his anniversary took the shape of a drawing humorously illustrating some of his friend’s works. “The writing,” he says, “is in Emily’s hand; the poem, by Klingemann; the design invented, and the ink-blots executed, by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.” In his design we find “the young Berliner” (meaning himself) practising a piece that Moscheles had dedicated to him. Further on, “Respect” for the drums, that for once in the way are in tune; the “Blue Devils,” that stand for melancholy; “The Last Rose of Summer,” on which Moscheles had written Variations; the “Demons” refer to one of Moscheles’s “Studies.” Next, Moscheles is conducting his Symphony. The Scotchman with his bagpipes illustrates the “Anticipations of Scotland,” a piece dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. The stirring theme of the “Alexander Variations” is supposed to bring about the Fall of Paris; and finally, the popular song “Au Clair de la Lune” comes in as being the theme of some brilliant Variations. In the centre of the paper we read:—
3. Mons to Moscheles on the Latter’s Birthday. ([See page 20].)
“Hail to the man who upward strives
Ever in happy unconcern;
Whom neither blame nor praise contrives
From his own nature’s path to turn.”[5]
Mendelssohn spent two months in London, during which time many notes passed between him and the Moscheleses relating to their respective plans and engagements. We translate one of these as showing his attachment to his old master, Professor Zelter, and the simple feeling that prompted him to turn to his friends in his bereavement.