“A powerful Fugue next breaks in triumphantly, the majestic tone of the organ resounds, and a double set of kettledrums marks the rhythm, much as a throbbing pulse marks the course of the life-blood through a man’s veins. Then follows a Chorale of such dignity, that involuntarily the whole audience rose from their seats as is usually done only during the ‘Hallelujah.’ Afterwards, when the hall was emptied, he played for three quarters of an hour on the organ, before a small circle of friends, just as if he had neither been hearing nor conducting music, but as if his day’s work was only then beginning.”
After a short stay in London, Mendelssohn, Moscheles, and Chorley started together for Leipzig. On the eve of his departure Mendelssohn made a pen-and-ink sketch in Mrs. Moscheles’s album, full of pleasant allusions to their stay in Birmingham. On the left he draws the Stork Hotel, in which they had taken up their quarters; and next to it a pair of scissors which he had presented to Mrs. Moscheles, and which are drawn stalking vaingloriously along and towering over the Town Hall, of Festival memories. Then comes the Bread-and-Butter Pudding, his favorite dish, the recipe of which he was carrying home with him.
Further on, the cravat which Mrs. Moscheles had given him. He was in the habit of protesting that he had never been able to master the art of adjusting his cravat, and that not until Mrs. Moscheles pronounced the magic words, “Pin it up,” was a flood of light thrown on the subject. Above the cravat the steamer stands in readiness for the morrow; below, the mail-coach and the luggage,—amongst the latter, a certain umbrella belonging to Moscheles, which Mendelssohn had unfortunately lost, is conspicuous.[44]
They started on the 3d of October; and their adventures by sea and land are recorded in a humorous letter penned by the trio of friends, Mendelssohn adding a little sketch of the pitching boat he had every reason to remember.[45]
During his ten days’ stay in Leipzig, Moscheles writes frequent letters to his wife. The following note of invitation Mendelssohn enclosed in one of them:—
22. An Album Sketch by Mendelssohn. ([See page 210].)