Bright and enjoyable as were such performances, they were by no means the only ones that impressed me. In my father’s house there used to be a great deal of music-making. “To make music” (Musikmachen) is a German expression that covers a vast area of artistic ground. I should say it meant: “To perform music, for the love of music.” That is certainly how it was understood by the select little circle of musicians which gathered round the piano in London, and later on in the Leipzig home. Their motto was that which stood inscribed over the orchestra in the Gewandhaus: “Res severa est verum gaudium.” High art to them was truly a source of eternal joy. As I write now, I know full well that I was born under a happy constellation; it was a happy name that Mendelssohn had given me, and Berlioz was not wrong when, quoting the line of Horace, he wrote in my album: “Donec eris Felix, multos numerabis amicos” (As long as you are Felix, you will number many friends). But in those days the fact that I was enjoying special privileges scarcely dawned upon me. It was all a matter of course; to be sure, Mendelssohn or Liszt, the Schumanns or Joachim, would come in and make music, and I would listen devoutly enough many a time; but then, again, I could not always follow my inclinations. There were my Latin and Greek exercises to be done by to-morrow; and when such was the case, I might or might not listen to what was going on in the next room, even if it happened that Mendelssohn was playing and singing some new numbers just composed for the “Elijah.”
The mention of my exercises reminds me of an incident truly characteristic of Mendelssohn. It was on the evening of the 8th of October, 1847, memorable to me as being the last I passed in his house. He, Rietz, David, and my father had been playing much classical music. In the course of an animated conversation which followed, some knotty art-question arose and led to a lively discussion. Each of the authorities present was warmly defending his own opinion, and there seemed little prospect of an immediate agreement, when Mendelssohn, suddenly interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence, turned on his heel and startled me with the unexpected question: “What is the aoristus primus of τὑπτω, Felix?” Quickly recovering from my surprise, I gave the answer. “Good!” said he; and off we went to supper, the knotty point being thereby promptly settled.
But the sounds of mirth, as the chords of harmony, were soon to be silenced. On the following day, the 9th of October, Mendelssohn was struck down by the illness that proved fatal. He died on the 4th of November.
Shortly afterwards I spent many an hour in the house that had been his. Cécile Mendelssohn, his widow, carried her heavy burden with dignity and resignation. The door of his study she kept locked. “Not a pen, not a paper,” she says, in a letter to my father, “could I bring myself to move from its place; and daily I admire in him that love of order which, during his lifetime, you have so often noticed. That room must remain, for a short time, my sanctuary,—those things, that music, my secret treasure.”
It was with feelings of deep emotion that I entered that sanctuary, when shortly afterwards Cécile Mendelssohn opened its door for me. I possessed already much love for the study of painting; and now I had asked and obtained permission to make a water-color drawing of that room, while all yet stood as the master and friend had left it. There, on the right, was the little old-fashioned piano, on which he had composed so many of his great works; near the window was the writing-desk he used to stand at. On the walls hung water-colors by his own hand,—Swiss landscapes and others; to the left, on the bookcases containing his valuable musical library, stood the busts of Goethe and Bach; on the writing-table, the pen which but the other day was wet, along with this or that object which I had so recently seen in his hand. And as I sat working, doubts and misgivings arose in my mind. Was it not profanation, I thought, to intrude with my petty attempt at painting, where all was hushed in the silence of death? But I worked on, and my thoughts were lost in my first great sorrow. Cécile Mendelssohn came and went. Not a sigh, not a murmur, escaped her lips.
But enough. I close this hasty sketch, although yet many a color and form arise in my memory to complete it. Sufficient has been said in these pages, if between the lines there stands to read, that in editing and translating the following correspondence I have been performing a pleasant duty and a labor of love, and that I feel happy to share with a larger circle of Mendelssohn’s friends and admirers the possession of those letters which have so long been dear to me.
Felix Moscheles.
London, May, 1888.