Wednesday the 5th, ready to christen, play, conduct, and even to be a “genius.”
All else verbally. So farewell till we meet.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
Mendelssohn came, this time with his father, christened, played, and conducted, and otherwise kept his word. His first present to his godchild was an autograph album, which he inaugurated with the two pencil drawings reproduced here. The first represents the house in which the Moscheleses lived,—No. 3 Chester Place, Regent’s Park. Moscheles himself is supposed to be looking out of the window of his dressing-room. The second is a view taken in the Regent’s Park close to the house. Musically, too, he consecrated the album by a composition, the well-known Cradle Song in B flat, written for the occasion.[20]
In the course of years the pages of the little book have been covered with souvenirs from the pens and pencils of such friends as were not unworthy of inscribing their names next to that of the “genius” godfather; it is doubly valued by its possessor, for the interesting autographs it contains, and for the pleasant echoes of the past which it awakens.
On the occasion of a visit to the Portsmouth Dockyard, Mendelssohn’s father met with an accident, injuring his leg, and at first there seemed some cause for anxiety. This, however, was soon removed, and nothing but patience was required to insure complete recovery. Much music too must have been prescribed, for we find Mendelssohn and Moscheles constantly at the piano in the patient’s room. Amongst other works a collection of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fugues, which Mendelssohn had brought with him, was perused and studied with the greatest interest.
The note upon the next page accompanied a certain Fugue which Mendelssohn had copied out for Moscheles; he is supposed to hold the pen for some of the inmates of the Zoölogical Gardens, which he and Moscheles had visited in the afternoon.