Reproduction of an engraving after an oil portrait from life, made by Mendelssohn's brother-in-law. W. Hensel.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY
HE story of his fine life, watched over from the cradle as by fairies, is a poem. The family names are compound. Mendelssohn is German for son of Mendel; Bartholdy is Hebrew for son of Tholdy. One key to his artistic character is the general culture, intellectual and social, of the man, for which the opportunities were granted him from infancy in fuller measure than to any other great musician. Born in prosperity, amid refining influences; taught Greek and Latin classics; familiar with living poets, scholars and philosophers who frequented his father's house; passing a fortnight at the impressible age of eleven in the house of Goethe; imbued with reverence for the character and teaching of his wise Platonic grandfather, the Jew Moses Mendelssohn, the model for Lessing's "Nathan the Wise"; stimulated by the piquant and genial letters of his three gifted aunts (two of whom had turned Catholic), and above all by the tender, wise, exacting and appreciative oversight of his excellent father, to whom the best was only "just good enough," he grew unconsciously into a large and liberal way of thinking. He was at home in the most cultivated circles, "a native there, and to the manner born." What might it not have been to Schubert to have germinated and unfolded under such a genial sun in such a soil! Well was the youth named Felix!