Frankfurt, March 7, 1845.
My dear Friend,—It really was too kind of you to sit down and have a talk with me on paper, in the good old style. Now I will just leave everything to take care of itself till I have returned your chat and thanked you for your never-varying kindness to me. What you say of musicians and their doings in England, is certainly far from satisfactory; but where are doings ever satisfactory? Our inner life it is that is worth living; but then that is a very different thing to our outer doings,—something very much better. Conducting and getting up public performances is all very well in its way; but the result, even for the public, does not go far. A little better, a little worse, what does it matter? How soon it is forgotten! And what is it but our inner life, our calm and peaceful moments, that act and react on all this, that impel us and lead us onwards, taking all that public business in tow, and dragging it here and there, whichever way it should go?
That is the language of a Philistine (you will say), of a domestic animal, or a snail. And yet there is some truth in it; and one book of your “Studies” has had more influence on the public and on art than I don’t know how many morning and evening concerts in I don’t know how many years.
Do you see what I am driving at? I should so much like to get that four-hand Sonata of yours, or some four-hand Studies, or, for that, some two-hand ones, or whatever else you might send. But, to be sure, your season is beginning; and how little time is left you for composing and for your own
28. Incidents of a Concert at Frankfurt. A Pen Drawing by Mendelssohn. ([See page 246].)