In a later letter dated Oct. 2, 1832, Mendelssohn recommends the Hôtel de Rome in Berlin. The particulars he gives of the route he advises are characteristic of the mode of travelling in those days.
The journey from Hamburg to Berlin, he says, would take about thirty-four hours. The rooms to be engaged at a hotel are discussed with as much careful insight as the road to be traversed; and then Mendelssohn concludes as follows:—
Count Redern is—a Count, and has gone to his estates, whence he does not return till the 23d. I have not yet been able to catch Arnim, who acts for him during his absence and has been conducting affairs all the summer, but hope to do so to-morrow, when I shall urge upon him to fix the concert no later than the 12th, as you desire.
And now enough of letters, and a happy meeting to all. Love to the children. They shall have sweets, although Emily[14] does prefer Moritz Schlesinger to me. Excuse these hurried lines.
Yours,
Felix M. B.
Moscheles left Hamburg with his family on the 6th of October, at seven A.M., and arrived the next evening in Berlin, making the journey in thirty-five hours. “Mendelssohn soon joined us at the Hôtel St. Petersburg,” he writes, “and complains of being frequently subject to fits of depression.” No further mention of such moods is, however, made in the diary. On the contrary, the twelve days of the stay in Berlin are marked by the brightest and liveliest incidents, both social and musical. The “Erard” had at last safely reached its destination; and, Pegasus-like, nobly bore the two friends in willing response to their artistic touch. “The fête shall be very grand,” Mendelssohn had written, “and we will have music.” And so it was; only that instead of one fête there were several. The “Hymn of Praise” and some selections from the “Son and Stranger” were performed and admirably rendered by some of the principal singers of the day. Improvisations followed; and no programme was complete without the name of the cherished master, Beethoven.
Moscheles’s concert was a brilliant success, the house crowded, and the public enthusiastic; the third part of the receipts, Moscheles’s share, was three hundred and one thalers. He left Berlin on the 19th of October. “We dined with Felix at Jagor’s,” he says; “and when we wanted to say good-by—he had disappeared! At half-past two we were wending our way through a somewhat English fog towards Leipzig, where we arrived next day at noon.” There, as in Weimar, Frankfurt, and Cologne, Moscheles played in public or at Court.