“little else to do but to give a daily lesson to an apprentice and to blow a Corale from the Markt Thurm; so that nearly all his time could be given to practice and receiving instruction from his father. There was no doubt but that he would soon become a good violin player, for his natural genius was such that nothing could spoil it.”
1761-1764. Early Recollections.
Although the absent brother William kept up regular correspondence with Hanover, many of his letters were written in English and addressed to Jacob, on such subjects as the Theory of Music, in which the family in general could not participate. Year after year went by, and William showed no inclination to leave England, to which country he was becoming more and more attached; the poor father, who felt his strength steadily declining, became painfully eager for his return. On the 2nd April, 1764, they were thrown into “a tumult of joy” by his appearance among them. The visit was a very brief one, offering no hope of any intention to settle in Hanover; the father was well aware that he at least could not look forward to another meeting on earth, while to the poor little unnoticed girl, this visit and its attendant circumstances stood out in her memory as fraught with anguish, which even her unskilled pen succeeds in representing as a grief almost too deep for words.
“Of the joys and pleasures which all felt at this long-wished-for meeting with my—let me say my dearest brother, but a small portion could fall to my share; for with my constant attendance at church and school, besides the time I was employed in doing the drudgery of the scullery, it was but seldom I could make one in the group when the family were assembled together.
“In the first week some of the orchestra were invited to a concert, at which some of my brother William’s compositions, overtures, &c., and some of my eldest brother Jacob’s were performed, to the great delight of my dear father, who hoped and expected that they would be turned to some profit by publishing them, but there was no printer who bid high enough.
“Sunday the 8th was the—to me—eventful day of my confirmation, and I left home not a little proud and encouraged by my dear brother William’s approbation of my appearance in my new gown.”
Not only was she disappointed in her fervent hope that the longed-for brother would not come at the very time when she was obliged to be much from home, but several of the precious days of his stay were spent in a visit to the Griesbachs at Coppenbrügge, and the Sunday fixed for his departure was the very day on which she was to receive her first communion.
1764-1767. Early Recollections.
“The church was crowded and the door open: the Hamburger Postwagen passed at eleven, bearing away my dear brother, from whom I had been obliged to part at 8 o’clock. It was within a dozen yards from the open door; the postilion giving a smettering blast on his horn. Its effect on my shattered nerves, I will not attempt to describe, nor what I felt for days and weeks after. I wish it were possible to say what I wish to say, without feeling anew that feverish wretchedness which accompanied my walk in the afternoon with some of my school companions, in my black silk dress and bouquet of artificial flowers—the same which had served my sister on her bridal day. I could think of nothing but that on my return I should find nobody but my disconsolate father and mother, for Alexander’s engagements allowed him to be with us only at certain hours, and Jacob was seldom at home except to dress and take his meals.”
From the state of hopeless lethargy in which the poor sister describes herself as going mechanically about her daily tasks after that memorable day, she was roused by a calamity which affected all alike. The father had a paralytic seizure the August following, by which he lost the use of his right side almost entirely, and although he so far recovered as to be able still to receive pupils in his own house, he never regained his former skill on the violin, and was reduced to a sad state of suffering and infirmity; a few months later he was pronounced to be in a confirmed dropsy. Changes of abode, not always for the better; anxieties, on account of Alexander’s prospects and Jacob’s vagaries; disappointment, at seeing his daughter grow up without the education he had hoped to give her; were the circumstances under which the worn-out sufferer struggled through the last three years of his life, copying music at every spare moment, assisting at a Concert only a few weeks before his death, and giving lessons until he was obliged to keep wholly to his bed. He was released from his sufferings at the comparatively early age of sixty-one on the 22nd March, 1767, leaving to his children little more than the heritage of his good example, unblemished character, and those musical talents which he had so carefully educated, and by which he probably hoped the more gifted of his sons would attain to eminence.