“Yet look at the sensitive, delicate imagery of your writings—for you can sing major when you choose; at your enthusiasm when you let yourself go; at your tender hidden love for your old grandmother, Germany!
“She, too, speaks of you with wistful tenderness; her elder sons are dead and gone; there remains but you, whom she calls, with a smile, her naughty boy.
“It would be easy for you to make splendid travesties of my Brunswick visit, yet such is my fearless confidence in you, that to you I mean to tell everything.
“That ideal family of musicians, the Müllers, received me and arranged my concert. I counted altogether seven of them, brothers, sons, and nephews, and never in all my travels did I see so devoted and impassioned a set of men.
“As soon as they grasped the chief difficulties of my symphonies (which they did at the first rehearsal), their progress between each meeting was simply incredible. On my expressing surprise, I found that they were deceiving me about the time, and that the whole orchestra actually arrived each morning an hour before I did to practise the intricate passages.
“At Zinkeisen’s request we actually dared to try Queen Mab, which I had never hitherto dared do in Germany. ‘We will practise so hard,’ said he, ‘that we must do it.’
“He did not misjudge his colleagues; my dainty little lady in her microscopic car, drawn by humming gnats at full gallop, disported herself with all her tricksey caprices—to the delight of the good Brunswickers.
“You—own brother to fairies and will-o’-the-wisps and their chosen poet laureate—will realise my misgivings; but never did my tiny invisible queen glide more happily and gaily through her world of silent harmonies.
“Then, in contrast, with what magnificent fury did they not seize on the Orgie in Harold.
“There was something absolutely terrifying and supernatural in their diabolic rhythm as they bounded, roared, and clashed. Ah, you poets! No joy is yours equal to the joy of conducting!