Fragments of an
Autobiography

DEDICATED TO MY WIFE

Fragments
of an
Autobiography

BY

FELIX MOSCHELES

AUTHOR OF "IN BOHEMIA WITH DU MAURIER," ETC.

London
JAMES NISBET & CO., LTD.
21 BERNERS STREET
1899

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

HAVE often found it hard to read a preface; much harder do I find it to-day to write one. If I do so, it is because it gives me an opportunity of owning that I have strung these my reminiscences together most unceremoniously and unsystematically. They are to be taken only as "Fragments of an Autobiography," very much on the same lines as the first volume which recorded my adventures in Bohemia with Du Maurier. If the reader, thus duly forewarned, elects to follow me over the uneven road, he will, I trust, not mind a little jolting. If, however, he judges that the gaps and omissions in my life-story are unjustifiable, he must not be surprised should I attempt to set things right in a third volume. I should be all the more inclined to do so as there are some other fragments and segments waiting to be pieced together which are connected with the brightest days of my life.

The writing of the present chapters has often been a source of genuine pleasure to me, for I say with Bolingbroke in Richard II.: "I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends."

And now that I have come to a full stop, I am left in that pleasant frame of mind in which I would fain believe in the proverbial kindness of the reader—that deity from times immemorial appealed to by the preface-writer,—a frame of mind unduly optimistic perhaps, but which emboldens me to hope that I may find some new friends amongst those who will care to read what I have to say about the old ones.

F. M.

London, February 1899.

CONTENTS

FRAGMENTS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

the terrors of a certain night when the wind was howling and the rain was beating down in torrents over the arid plains of the Lüneburger Haide; between them they had blown or blotted out the flickering lights of a heavy, lumbering travelling carriage such as one used to hire in the so-called good old times. The horses were plunging in the mire, the postillion was swearing, and a very small boy was howling. That boy was I, and the incident marks my first entrance into that conscious life which registers events in our memories. Not that I exactly remember what happened, and how we got out of the ankle-deep mud, and finally reached our destination; but I have no doubt that my father and the "brother-in-law," as the German postillion was addressed in those days, had to get the wheels out of the ruts as best they could without assistance, for there was no traveller, weary or otherwise, of the regulation first-chapter pattern, to come to the rescue.

No—I remember but little of it, but I have lived it all over again every time I have heard the dramatic strains of Schubert's Erl-king. Great artists, gifted with the power of song, have depicted the whole scene to me in thrilling accents; dear old Rubinstein, the friend, alas, I lost all too soon—grand old Rubinstein, the master whose magic touch swept the keyboard as the hurricane sweeps the plain—could conjure up visions of a misty past in my mind. "My father, my father," I could have cried, as the Erl-king of Pianists pursued the doomed child with his giant strides and unrelenting touch, alternately letting loose the elements to rage in maddening tumult, and drawing uncanny whispers from his weird instrument.

Whatever I may have been prompted to cry when under the spell of Rubinstein's art, I do not think I invoked my father's aid on that night upon the heath; it was more likely "My mother, my mother," I called, and she just protected me, and so, fortunately for me, it all ended happily, and: "In her arms the child was not dead," but cried itself to sleep, and was put back into the little hammock that was slung across from side to side of our old-fashioned vehicle, and that temporarily replaced my cradle in 3 Chester Place, Regent's Park, London, the house I was born in.

My father was on a concert tour in Germany, reaping laurels and golden harvests, such as were rarely heard of in those days. From his wife he never parted if he could help it, even for a short time, and by way of an encumbrance he had on this occasion taken, besides the necessary luggage, us children—I think there were three of us then—and a little dumb keyboard on which he used to exercise his fingers to keep them up to concert pitch when pianos were out of reach. I hadn't seen any of those little finger-trainers for years, when I came across one on Robert Browning's writing-table; he always kept it by his side, and I wondered whether he used it to stimulate the fingers that had to keep pace with the poet's ever-flowing thoughts. But my earliest recollections are connected, not with dumb keyboards, but with very full-sounding and eloquent ones. My father was ever happiest when at the piano or composing. He was interested, oh yes, much interested in the sister arts, in science and politics, but he had a way of disappearing after a while when such matters were being discussed, or of getting lost when we had set out conscientiously to do museums or churches in Venice or Antwerp, or to visit crypts, shrines, bones of ancestors, and other historical relics above and below ground. We knew we should find him at home at the piano, or pen in hand composing, that is, if he had not perchance been stopped on the way by the sounds of music in some attractive shape. It was quite enough for him to hear such sounds proceeding from an open window, to make for the door, ring the bell, and ask for the "Maestro" or the "Herr Kapellmeister." He would introduce himself, and presently be making friends on a sound musical basis with his colleague. It would sometimes lead to a continental hug of the warmest description, when the surprised native would discover that his visitor was the pianist.

Sometimes my father did not wait for that finishing touch, as when on one occasion he invaded the room of an ill-fated lover of music. It was at Tetschen, on a journey through Saxony and Bohemia; we arrived one evening at the little hotel of that place, tired and hungry, and thinking only of supper and a good night's rest. Scarcely had we settled down to the former, when, separated from us only by a wooden partition, a neighbour commenced operations on the piano, slowly and carefully unwinding one bar after the other of that most brilliant of pieces, Weber's "Invitation à la Valse." "Dass dich das Mäuserle beisse!" exclaims my father, in terrible earnest. "May the little mouse bite you!" That was a favourite expression of his, when he found himself suddenly impelled to denounce somebody or something, and, as he accentuated it, it always seemed amply to replace those naughty words which are not admissible in daily life, and may only be used—and that, to be sure, for our benefit—on Sundays by the exponents of the Christian dogma.

The servant-girl was summoned, and she explained that the neighbour usually began at that time, and was in the habit of playing several hours. "Dass dich das Mäuserle" muttered my father with suppressed rage; "Dass dich" ... and with that he rushed out of the room. What would happen? We were about to tremble, when a meek, respectful knock at the neighbour's door happily reassured us. "Herein"—Come in. Enter my father suavely apologising for the interruption—we hear it all through the thin partition. He, too, is a lover of music; may he as such be allowed to listen for a while. Much pleased, the other offers him a chair and resumes his performance; my father listens patiently, and waits till the last bars are reached. "Delightful!" we hear him say, "a beautiful piece, is it not? I once learnt it too; may I try your piano?" And with that he pounces on the shaky old instrument, galvanising it into new life, as he starts off at a furious rate, and gives vent to his pent-up feelings in cascades of octaves and breakneck passages; never had he played that most brilliant of pieces more brilliantly. "Good-night," he said as he struck the last chord; "allow me once more to apologise." "Ach! thus I shall never be able to play it," answered the neighbour with a deep sigh, and he closed the piano, and spent the rest of the evening a sadder but a quieter man.

But it was not often my father was allowed an opportunity of watching over his own comforts. That was a duty my mother would not willingly share with him or with anybody else; quite apart from the affection she lavished on the husband, there was the tribute of respect she paid to the artist. His was a privileged position, she held, and his path should be kept clear of all annoyance. Petty troubles, at any rate, should not approach him, nor the serious ones either if it was within her power to shield him from them; if not, she would contrive to take the larger share of the burden upon herself.

From our earliest days, we children were trained to be on our best behaviour when our father came home, whatever our next best might have been previously. We were mostly happy little listeners when he was at the piano, and if he stopped too long for our juvenile faculties of enjoyment, why, our happiness gradually took the shape of respect for the musical function. It even turned into something akin to awe when he was composing. At such times I would not have whistled within his hearing to save my life. A wholesome fear of the Mäuserles that would assuredly sweep down upon me, if I disturbed the peace, would, I daresay, in a great measure account for my praiseworthy attitude, but, apart from any such practical considerations, it was the mystery connected with the evolution of the beautiful in art, which, from the first, held me in subjection.

The whooping-cough with which one of us children started, rapidly communicating it to the others, was also regulated in its outbursts with due regard to my father's peace. Whilst the fit was on us, it was a source of particular enjoyment to my sisters and myself, but we never freely indulged in it when my father was near. At other times we would come together, and wait for one another till the spirit moved us to whoop. Then I would wield the bâton in imitation of my betters at the conductor's desk, and we would have our solos and ensemble-pieces, our ritardandos and prestissimos, producing unexpected effects, and with the limited means at our disposal, making what I recollect as a very attractive and interesting performance. Edifying as it should have been to a parent, my mother could at first not see it in that light, but she had finally to give in, and to acknowledge that it was a bad cough that whooped no good.

I was an only son—an elder brother died some years before I was born—and it was but natural that my mother should look with indulgence on my delinquencies. I must sometimes have tried her and those around me sorely, as, for instance, when I hanged my little sister's favourite doll Anna Maria, from a knob of the chest of drawers, there to remain until she be dead.

Clara—that was my sister's name—was of a warm temperament, and fought for the release of her wax baby with all the passionate energy of the maternal instinct. I had to give way and cut down the victim, and then, all other means to pacify her having failed, I appealed to her imagination, and persuaded her to play at my having killed her in the battle we had just fought; it would be such a surprise for mamma. Ever sharp and quick as she was, she at once saw the far-reaching possibilities of my scheme, and allowed herself to be wrapped up in a bedsheet, as in a shroud, and to be laid out stiff and rigid as a corpse. I pulled down the blinds and shut the shutters; then I lit a candle which I placed by her side; when all was ready, I hid in a cupboard and set up a dismal wail that soon brought my mother to the spot. The effect upon her was all I could have desired, perhaps more so, for the first surprise once over, she expressed her disapproval of my conduct in terms suitable to the occasion, and thus quite spoilt the pleasure I had taken in the whole thing.

My mother was a remarkable woman,—a "lovely" woman, to use the word as the Americans do when they want a single epithet to describe alike the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul, a word that shall tell of the brightness of the intellect and suggest the qualities of the heart.

There are those who think that when it comes to the selection of epithets applicable to a mother, however distinguished or worthy she may have been, the son is not the person to entrust with that selection. Perhaps they are right, and if in this case they care to do so, they must look round for corroborative evidence in her books. It is just their fault if they have never read them, or if they have never heard of her as Felix Mendelssohn's grandmother, a character in which she appeared with great advantage to the grandson when she was twenty-four, and he as a young man of nineteen paid his first visit to England. And it is just their loss if they never saw the jet-black plaits as she wore them coiled around her head when she was young, or the mass of silky, snow-white hair of her later days that, when set free, would cascade over and far below the shoulders that bore the weight of fourscore years. On her face Time had left its mark. Every line, every wrinkle gave character and expression to her features, and bore testimony to the truly beautiful life she had led. The picture reproduced on the first page of these reminiscences I painted when she was in her 83rd year.

But the story of my mother's life must be written in another volume. For the present I return to earlier recollections.

When I was ten years old, I was dubbed a big boy, too big to be tied to his mother's apron-strings, and I was sent to King's College to rough it with other boys. Opportunities were not wanting for the roughing it. On one occasion a boy called me a German sausage, and I retorted by punching his head; and on another I met a University College boy, called him a stinkermalee, and got my head punched in return. What the appellation precisely meant, I didn't know, nor do I now, but it was then the particular term, opprobrious and insulting, we King's College boys had adopted to express our unbounded contempt for the hated rivals in Gower Street.

I was generally allowed to walk to school and back by myself, for it formed part of the scheme of education mapped out for me by my parents, that I should start fair and see life for myself. My way lay through St. Giles's and the Seven Dials, and there I did see life and did hear English too, English as she was spoke in those parts, perhaps as she is to this day; but as I pass that way now, I don't come across it; the hand of Time has been moving across the Seven Dials, and all the old landmarks are gone. Where in these degenerate times can a schoolboy hope to see a bear, a real big brown bear, in a cage just in front of a barber's shop? only a penny-shave place to be sure, but bold in its advertisement, a notice in sprawling big characters proclaiming the superiority of the establishment's bear's grease over any other grease, whatever its kind might be. Where is the schoolboy to-day who can realise the pleasurable excitement of approaching such a caged bear in a public thoroughfare close enough to test the beast's good nature under circumstances of provocation, and his own adroitness in making good his retreat in case of retaliation?

In the streets and alleys of St. Giles's I was first initiated into the horrors of warfare, especially into the kind of warfare considered quite legitimate in those days. A quarrel first;—passions roused—words leading to blows. Coats off, fists clenched, and there, whilst two savages were trying the issue as to which could knock the other into a jelly, or, if luck would have it, into a coffin, we, the enlightened public, formed a ring and stood round, nominally to see fair-play, but virtually to back one or the other of the combatants, goading both on to fight like devils, and finally rejoicing over the survival of the fittest.

That kind of thing has been stopped in St. Giles's, but the devil doesn't mind; there is so much legitimate warfare, slaughter and massacre nowadays on a larger scale, that he is said to admit himself that he gets over and above the share he originally claimed; and as for the ring, why, that has grown apace; thanks to scientific progress, it is iron-bound now with telegraphic wires, and is known by the euphonious name of "the Concert of Europe."

How good man is, and how tender in his concern for his brother! More than once I saw him pick up the battered jelly and carry it with fraternal solicitude to the neighbouring chemist. How good we all are, stitching at Red Cross badges, chartering ambulances, and sending the hat round at the Mansion House and elsewhere to save the surviving fittest from starvation!

The question of woman's rights—and wrongs—was also occasionally raised and illustrated for my benefit in one or the other of the Seven Dials, the object lesson sometimes delaying me and getting me into trouble for being late at the hic-hæc-hoc business in the Strand. I particularly recollect a female fiend rushing after her wretched husband, who fled down the street from her, and from the blood-stained poker she savagely brandished.

But there were quieter corners too, not far from the lairs of the vicious, a dear old printshop for one, just by St. Giles' Church. The most tempting pictures were displayed in the windows: coloured prints of stage-coaches, cockatoos, prize-fighters, and racehorses; lovely female types, as originally published in Heath's Book of Beauty; there were fashion-plates next to Bartolozzi's, not in fashion, and I daresay many an undiscovered treasure besides. I used to spend my pennies on views of London, little steel-plate engravings, printed on a sort of shiny cardboard. Was it my innate love for London that made them so attractive, or my equally innate love of architecture? Probably both. I always was, and am still a cockney at heart, and as for the building craze, that has been on me from that day to this. Certainly no boy ever had such a collection of bricks as I had, and such a table to build on, specially constructed with drawers and divisions for all sizes and forms of my materials.

"I'm going to be an architect," I informed the old Duke of Cambridge on a gala occasion when he rode up to our house. "Right you are, my boy," said the Duke. "You'll be too late to build me a house, but you can build me a mausoleum." I've been planning mausoleums ever since, but unfortunately, not being an architect, I never have had a commission in that line. The Duke, who was an enthusiastic lover of music, had come on that occasion specially interested to hear Bach's Concerto in G minor, which my father played from a copy of the original manuscript he had received from his friend Professor Fischhof, of Vienna.

But to return from Royalty to the plebeian quarter of St. Giles, I must state that whatever of my pocket-money may have been invested in views of London, it was not that printshop, but the Lowther Arcade, which usually wrecked my finances. I could not resist the temptation which that short cut from the Strand to Catherine Street offered; my money went to the purchase of most fascinating articles, unfortunately at best of a twopenny-halfpenny character, things of beauty irresistibly suggesting themselves as presents for my sisters, things no girl should be without, wax angels under glass globes, bottle imps, china shepherdesses, or jumping frogs, the latter to be sprung upon the recipient unexpectedly. I brought them home and confided to my mother what bargains I had got. Unhappily the angels, frogs, imps, and the rest, however effective at first, were not long lived, or they proved themselves otherwise disappointing; so they were soon forgotten. Not so their cost.

My mother had carefully kept account of my wasteful expenditure for some weeks, and one day she confronted me with the sum total it had reached. It actually came within measurable distance of half-a-crown, an amount I had as yet never been able to call my own. I was overwhelmed by such proofs of my recklessness, and henceforth resisted the wiles of the Lowther Arcade. So the lesson was not lost on me; it sank deep into my heart, whence I have on more than one occasion been able to bring it to the surface. But I am bound to confess that I never was radically cured. I have periodical relapses when the old craving comes upon me, and the taste for beautifully fashioned angels, for china and for glass, and I revel in a bargain, and exult when I have picked up something every girl ought to have. Whilst the glorious fit is on, I am privileged to forget all I learnt in the sum-total lesson.

My experiences in the Lowther Arcade were soon to be suddenly interrupted, and for a long time it was even doubtful whether I should ever again be able to put in an appearance in that place or anywhere else. I caught the scarlet fever, not in the slums as it might be thought, but at school, where a regular epidemic had broken out. Our class-rooms in King's College were down in the basement, and those who knew said that the outbreak was due to the fact that the filth-laden river came right up to the feet of the grand old building, and washed them dirty day and night; other wiseacres contended that it was more likely to be the churchyard of St. Mary-le-Grand just opposite which had done the mischief. As far as I can remember, nobody mentioned the drains, which in those days had not yet come into notice and fashion, and could do their level best for the multiplication of bacilli without being hampered by meddlesome sanitary inspectors. Well, whatever may have been the malignant source which poisoned me, it had done its work thoroughly, and developed my scarlet fever in its most virulent form. It was a terrible time I went through. I was at death's door, but fortunately that sombre portal remained closed, and I was not bidden to cross the grim threshold.

No, I was destined to live and to fight the battle of life with whatever fighting powers I might possess. Later on I was to wrestle more than once with the grim immortal who only spares each of us mortals till his hour-glass tells him it is time to use his scythe. And if I wrestled well and am here to tell the tale, it is because by my side watched day and night that best of nurses, my mother.

I was never what is called a good patient, and to this day I am very much averse to sending for the doctor. I quite feel he indeed is a friend in need, and I do not wish to disparage his power for good, or to underrate his skill and judgment, but as a rule I make a point of not calling him in till I know what I want him to say. I think that doctors nowadays are more agreeable than they were formerly; the great and fashionable doctors, I mean. A man, to be up to date, had to be brief, brusque, and bumptious. He seemed to have learnt his stronger English from Dr. Johnson, and generally to have been trained in a Johnsonian atmosphere. He had to say smart things that could be quoted and hawked about, and to enunciate wise saws in imitation of the master whose sayings are so unmercifully inflicted on us to this day. He was in a hurry; he drove up in a big yellow carriage, and before the horses could pull up, his tiger had sprung from the footboard, and was giving the most tremendous double-knock, one evidently meant to awaken the dead, in case medical assistance had come too late.

To pass muster, the doctor's natural kindness had to be concealed beneath an outer coating of apparent roughness. Sometimes it was the roughness that was concealed only by a transparent veneer of amiability. Certain it is that in those days no doctor could look at a boy's tongue without at once declaring that he stood in immediate need of a black dose, and if that vile compound did not exceed every other mixture in nastiness, he did not believe it would be efficacious. He revelled in blue pills, and was happiest when he could pull out a little lancet and bleed you, or send round a man with a complete set of sharp blades, to do the thing wholesale, jerking them into some part of your precious self, and pumping a given number of ounces out of it and into his cupping-glasses.

All this is very ungrateful of me, for Dr. Stone was the best and kindest of men—and very undutiful, for he was my godfather (Felix Stone is my full name). To be sure he had a big yellow carriage, and a tiger whose main ambition in life it seemed to be to knock his master's patients up. To be sure Dr. Stone came coated with a veneer of roughness, but it was skin-deep; true, he gave me as many black doses and blue pills as he thought my robust constitution could stand, but in addition to these he made me many beautiful presents—a silver mug emblazoned with our family crest and the motto "Labore," a splendid family Bible of about my own weight and size, a costly edition of Byron's "Childe Harold" and ditto of Milton's "Paradise Lost and Regained," and a number of other things doubly delightful and gratifying to my juvenile mind, because they always came at least three or four years before I knew how to use them.

My good godfather had ushered me into this world, from which unfortunately he was himself called away before he had had many opportunities of performing the duties he had undertaken when he pledged himself to see to it that I should "renounce the devil and all his works."

When after many weeks of hard fighting with the scarlet enemy, and after having passed through various relapses and complications, I emerged from the sick-room, I was taken to Brighton for a complete change of air. There I soon found new life and strength. Dear old Brighton! I was to find new life and strength there once more, thirty years later, when I met the young lady who said she would—when I asked her to marry me.

My next station was Hamburg. I was sent there to get the benefit of a thorough change of air, and to improve my German. It was shortly after the terrible conflagration which had laid low a great part of the city.

The jagged walls, springing in fantastic forms from immense piles of crumbling masonry and charred timber, had a weird fascination for me. I was deeply in sympathy with my beloved friend Architecture, and deplored the fate that had overtaken some of the best buildings, but at the same time I was lost in admiration of the beauties, now picturesque, now awe-inspiring, which the caprice of the destructive element had stamped on crazy walls and tangled masses of wreckage.

I have since been similarly impressed; in Pompeii first, and again in Paris, after the Commune; only to be sure the former scene of devastation I saw neatly put in order and made presentable for the visitor, whereas the latter was yet smoking and all besmirched with the blood of the sorely visited Parisians.

My father had given a concert for the benefit of the sufferers in Hamburg, and was able to contribute a sum of £643 to the relief fund raised.

On my arrival I was received with open arms by my relatives. My grandfather, Adolf Embden, had been staying with us more than once, and he was particularly partial to his grandson, because he had a marked predilection for England and everything that was English. He knew more about British politics than most men born and bred in the country; he read all the big speeches delivered in Parliament, identified himself with the Whigs, and was a fervent disciple of Cobden and Bright. He did his best to train me in the way I should go, and his methods were quite congenial to my taste. We often took long walks together, and his peripatetic teachings are pleasantly blended in my mind with the half-way house at the corner of the Jungfernsteg and the Alster Bassin, then occupied by Giosti Giovanoli, the confectioner. He trained me just once too often, but that was in London, in a shop near Oxford Circus, and it was a Bath bun that made me restless. That shop was painted green and gold, and to this day I would not eat on green and gold premises if I were starving.

In Hamburg I was welcomed, too, by uncles and aunts, first and second cousins, male and female, and by a strong contingent of grandaunts. I am aware that most people have quite as many relatives of their own as they need for home consumption, and that being so, they are not pleasantly disposed towards the family history of their friends. So I mean to use my relatives sparingly, and only to bring them in where they are associated with things I well remember. My mother has penned most characteristic sketches of many of those worthy personalities in a MS. she has entitled "Early Recollections," and the grandaunts hold a prominent place in those papers; but for the reason just given, I refrain from transcribing her graphic descriptions of their doings. I would, however, record my own boyish impressions, to the effect that one or two of my grandaunts were a caution to rattle-snakes. I have learned since to see that they were nothing of the kind, but just old ladies of marked originality. It took some time before I could get to like being loved by them; I preferred making faces behind their backs, a pastime which I was joined in by a cousin about my own age. Cousin Carl got into trouble oftener than I did, and had more reason to regret it, for in one of the drawers of an old-fashioned mahogany secretary his father kept an orthodox cane which he would produce on special occasions—such were the unchallenged methods of training in those days. My uncle was the best of men, anxious only to chastise for the good of the young delinquent, whom he tenderly loved, but he might have saved himself the trouble, for poor Cousin Carl was never to reap the benefit of his training. He had at no time been robust, and was not to live long. That winter of 1842 was looking about for victims. The fearful mornings, when we had to get up in the dark, and wash by the flicker of a tallow candle—wash, that is if we succeeded in hacking up the ice in the jug, and in finding some water at the bottom of it—those fearful mornings proved too much for him. Poor Carl's faces, as he made them behind people's backs, grew longer and longer, his cough grew hollower and hollower, and he soon went to rest where there are no canes and no tallow dips, and all is peace, and even one's grandaunts are seraphs.

The sad event did not, however, take place during my stay in Hamburg. I spent some six or eight months with my uncle and aunt. She, my Tante Jaques, was my mother's only sister, and was deeply attached to her; on me she lavished unvarying kindness and affection. My cousins, all older than myself, were delighted to have the "little Englishman" in the house, and the friendship we struck up then has lasted through life.

One of the grandaunts was a sister of Heinrich Heine, the poet. She had married into the Embden family, and so Heinrich was a sort of cousin of my mother's. They saw a good deal of one another when my mother was in her teens, and he was a dreamy youth whom she and the other girls of the family circle delighted to chaff. His frequent headaches they not incorrectly ascribed to his mode of living; to be sure, they said, he looked pale and interesting, but that was only because he had eaten too much at yesterday's dinner party. "Now, what is the matter with you again to-day?" said my mother as he sat down opposite her one morning and watched her shelling peas. "How pale you are! it's that head again, I suppose?" "Yes, Lottchen, I am ill; it is the head again." "That is what you are always saying, but I'm sure it is not as bad as you make it out to be. Come now, am I not right?" "O Lottchen," he said, "you do not know how I suffer;" and as he sat there musing, she had not the heart further to chaff him. When the next volume of his poems appeared shortly afterwards, she knew what had passed through his mind on that occasion, and perhaps on others when she had shown him friendly sympathy.

He writes:—

Sometimes he was in livelier moods, as one day, when he, my grandfather, and my mother were walking through the fields together, and were joined by a remarkably dull doctor of philology, whose company was particularly distasteful to Heine. Pointing to half-a-dozen cows and oxen that were grazing close by, he said in an undertone: "I say, Lottchen, now there are seven doctors on the meadow."

Salomon Heine, the poet's uncle, was a millionaire who spent his money right royally and philanthropically; a man who owed his fortune to his own exertions, and who, when he had made a million of marks for each of his children—I forget how many he had—devoted the next million he amassed to the foundation of a hospital. He was a delightful specimen of an uncle, too, for he would spend his money philonepotically as well as philanthropically. The nephew was ever ready to dive into the uncle's purse; equally ready to make literary capital out of him and his friends. Gumpel, another rich banker—we know him as Gumpelino—was his pet aversion, and specially suggestive to him as a butt for his satire. Gumpel, too, was a self-made man, a fact of which, however, he did not like to be reminded, quite unlike old Heine, who loved to bring up the subject to the annoyance of his friend, shouting across the table stories of the early days when they came to Hamburg with their bundles slung across their shoulders. To his nephew he was ever indulgent; he was proud of his rising popularity, and as a rule was not appealed to in vain when the young genius had got into money troubles. On one occasion, though, he lost patience when he had given him a round sum wherewith to defray the expenses of a journey to Norderney, a summer resort on the coast of the North Sea. Instead of devoting the money to the purpose of improving his health, he managed in one night to roll the round sum into other people's pockets at the gaming tables. This time the uncle was indignant, and Heinrich would probably never have gone to Norderney, and consequently never have written the "Nordsee-Lieder," had not the well-known firm of Hoffman & Campe come to the rescue with the necessary funds, in consideration of which they stipulated he should write a volume of songs for them.

In Hamburg I was sent to the Johanneum, a large public school. It was rather hard, after having been called a German sausage in England, to be derided as an English "Rossbiff" or "Shonebool," which was meant for John Bull. The whole class roared with laughter when I rose for the first time to decline ἡ Μοὑσα, pronouncing the defunct Greek language as it was spoken in King's College, and the jeers of that whole class so galled and stung me that I wished I could kill all German boys at a stroke, or at least maim those despicable ones within my reach for life. It was well I could not act upon the impulse, for many a German boy of that day was to be a staunch friend to me in after life. I had my troubles in those Teutonic school-days, and I thought the proceedings monotonous, but still there was pleasurable excitement to be had occasionally, as when old Hummel came along—a half-witted water-carrier whom every bad boy in Hamburg knew and hooted. Three words we would shout in his face, three words that meant absolutely nothing, but that sounded worse than any bad language I had ever heard. He was a shaky old man, and the water-pails suspended from his shoulders prevented his running after us, and so we could indulge with impunity in the exhilarating sport of mocking him to the fullest extent our wicked little human hearts desired.

I have also a pleasant recollection of caterpillar-hunting; we were spending the summer near Hamburg in a rustic retreat, and a regular plague of these insects made life a burden to some members of the family. They were larger than ordinary caterpillars and more hairy, and they were so numerous that much thought and care had to be bestowed on the methods of protecting ourselves against them; for they did not confine themselves to the garden, they made no difference between vegetable produce and grand-aunts, and would mistake the best bonnets of those worthies for cabbage leaves. There was even a rumour that one of these slimy crawlers had been crushed out of existence by my grandest-aunt, who chanced to be the heaviest one too. How that caterpillar found its way between that lady's bed-sheets, and whether it did so with or without assistance, was fortunately never ascertained, and as discreet silence has been maintained on the subject for years, it is not for me to solve the mystery to-day.

After an absence of some six or eight months I returned to London, to that 3 Chester Place so full of memories, personal and artistic.

There were quite as many infant prodigies in those days as there are now; little exotic plants, forced in artistic hothouses, artificially developed, and prematurely produced in drawing-rooms and concert halls; glittering little shooting-stars, nine-days' wonders, to be soon forgotten, and ere long to be buried.

But then, there were also wonder-children, as the Germans call them, who thrived and lived, and who seemed to combine in themselves all the qualities that had belonged to the little victims of forced training. Such a one was Joachim. He first appeared in public when he was seven; five years later be played in Leipsic at Madame Viardot's concert; and when he was not yet fourteen he gathered his first laurels in London at the Philharmonic. That year—it was 1844—Mendelssohn was in England, and mightily interested in the young violinist. One evening, after singing at our house, Mendelssohn wanted to take him to a musical party; a pair of gloves were deemed necessary to make him presentable, and we two boys were sent out to get them; we had a walk, and a talk besides, and I remember thinking what a nice sort of sensible boy he was; no nonsense about him and no affectation; not like the other clever ones I knew. The gloves we bought in a little shop in Albany Street, Regent's Park, and as these were the first pair of English gloves that Joseph wore, I duly record the historical fact for the benefit of all those who have at one time or the other been under the spell of the fingers we fitted that evening.

When two years later we met in Leipsic, it so happened that I was suddenly fired with the desire to play the violin too. My friend Joseph was quite ready to teach me, and we started operations, but two or three lessons were sufficient to convince him and me, that mine was an unholy desire, which, if gratified, would give me the power of inflicting much suffering on my fellow-creatures, and which therefore was calculated to lead me into trouble. So we gave it up, and Joachim has had to rely on other pupils for his reputation as a teacher.

Liszt too had been a juvenile phenomenon, but had long arrived at full maturity at the time I first remember him. I was then about ten, and he some twenty years older. I think I never knew anybody so calculated to fascinate man, woman, or child. He generally spoke in French, which I did not understand, but I had to listen to every word. His voice alone held me spell-bound; it rose and fell like a big wave, and I could tell that something unusual was going on; that voice was evidently scattering thought as the big wave scatters spray, and those clear-cut features of his were each in turn accentuating and emphasising his words. His grand leonine mane fascinated me as it started from the lofty forehead, and bounded Niagara-like with one leap to the nape of the neck.

My early recollections of his playing are rather limited. As a boy I was mainly impressed by his long chord-grasping fingers, contrasting as they did with my father's small, velvety hand. To see him play was quite as much as I could do, without particularly attending to what he played, to watch his hands fly up from one set of notes and pounce down on another, and generally to lie in wait for the outward manifestations of his genius. Later on I grew accustomed to the grand young man's ways, and just knelt at his shrine as everybody else did.

My father was not the least outspoken of his admirers. In the early days he mentions him as "that rare art-phenomenon," and tells how "he played Hummel's Septet with the most perfect execution, storming occasionally like a Titan, but still in the main free from extravagance." Later on, at the Musical Festival held in Bonn, he describes him as "the absolute monarch, by virtue of his princely gifts, outshining all else."

Half a century ago playing à quatre mains was much more popular than it is now; more pieces were written and more pianoforte arrangements were made for two performers. The full-fledged pianist of to-day thinks he is quite able to do the work of two, and sees no reason why he should share the keyboard with another; so he prefers to keep the whole function in his own hands. Formerly he was satisfied to give a concert; the very word implied concerted action of several artists; now he announces the one-man show called a Recital, in which he stars and shines by himself. He scorns assistance, for he wishes it to be understood that he can get through the most formidable programme without breaking down, and that he can rely on his ironclad instrument to hold out with him and lead him triumphantly to the finale.

Well, the great virtuosi of my early days certainly loved playing together, and many are the instances of such joint performances, both in private and in public, which I recollect. How my father enjoyed playing with Liszt he records when he says: "It was a genuine treat to draw sparks from the piano as we dashed along together. When we are harnessed together in a duet we make a very good pair; Apollo drives us without a whip."

If, as my father assumes, Apollo was really the driver on occasions of that kind, I feel sure that his favourite team must have been Mendelssohn and Moscheles; they certainly enjoyed being in harness together, sometimes playing, and sometimes improvising. Occasionally the humour of the moment would lead them to compose together, as when one evening they planned a piece for two performers to be played by them three days later at a concert my father had announced. The Gipsies' March from Weber's "Preziosa" being chosen as a subject for variations, a general scheme was agreed upon, and the parts were distributed. "I will write a variation in minor and growl in the bass," said Mendelssohn. "Will you do a brilliant one in major in the treble?" It was settled that the Introduction and first and second variations should fall to Mendelssohn's lot, the third and fourth to my father's. The finale they shared in, Mendelssohn starting with an allegro movement, and my father following with a "più-lento." Two days later they had a hurried rehearsal, and on the following day they played the concertante variations, "composed expressly for this occasion," as the programme had it, "and performed on Erard's new patent-action grand pianoforte." Nobody noticed that the piece had been only sketched, and that each of the performers was allowed to improvise in his own solo, till at certain passages agreed upon, both met again in due harmony. The Morning Post of the day tells us that "the subject was treated in the most profound and effective manner by each, and executed so brilliantly that the most rapturous plaudits were elicited from the delighted company."

Mendelssohn himself in a letter gives a graphic account of a rehearsal held at Clementi's pianoforte factory, when the two friends played his "Double Concerto in E."

"It was great fun," he says; "no one can have an idea how Moscheles and I coquetted together on the piano—how the one constantly imitated the other, and how sweet we were. Moscheles plays the last movement with wonderful brilliancy; the runs drop from his fingers like magic. When it was over, all said it was a pity that we had made no cadenza; so I at once hit upon a passage in the first part of the last Tutti, where the orchestra has a pause, and Moscheles had, nolens volens, to comply, and compose a grand cadenza. We now deliberated amid a thousand jokes whether the small last solo should remain in its place, since, of course, the people would applaud the cadenza. 'We must have a bit of Tutti between the cadenza and the solo,' said I. 'How long are they to clap their hands?' asked Moscheles. 'Ten minutes, I daresay,' said I. Moscheles beat me down to five. I promised to supply a Tutti; and so we took the measure, embroidered, turned and padded, put in sleeves à la Mameluke, and at last, with our tailoring, produced a brilliant concerto. We shall have another rehearsal to-day; it will be quite a picnic, for Moscheles brings the cadenza and I the Tutti."

That golden thread of "great fun," as he calls it, goes through the history of Mendelssohn's life. It intertwined itself with the sensitive fibres of his nature, thus becoming an element of strength, a factor that illuminated his path and spread bright sunshine wherever he went. In fact I always thought one of the most delightful traits of his character was a certain naïveté, which enabled him to appreciate the humour of a situation, and thoroughly to enjoy it with his friends. He would turn some trivial incident to the happiest account, and in his own peculiarly genial way, make it the starting-point for a standing joke, or a winged word, to be handed down from generation to generation in the families of his friends.

Amongst the many drawings of his we treasure in the family is one humorously illustrating my father's works. It takes the shape of an arabesque, artistically framing some lines written for the occasion of his birthday by Klingemann. A second verse was composed for a subsequent birthday.

When in later years, and with a view to publication, I ventured to ask Robert Browning for an English version of those lines, he, with his usual kindness, sent me the following letter:—

"29 De Vere Gardens,
Nov. 30, '87.

"My dear Moscheles,—Pray forgive my delay in doing the little piece of business with which you entrusted me: an unexpected claim on my mornings interfered with it till just now. Will this answer your purpose anyhow?—

"Were my version but as true to the original as your father's life was to his noble ideal, it would be good indeed. As it is, accept the best of yours truly ever,

Robert Browning."

Having started on my recollections of Mendelssohn, I am somewhat perplexed to know how many or how few of them I should record here. So much has been published about him, first by my mother in "The Life of Moscheles,"[1] where she has used my father's diaries and correspondence, and then by myself, when I translated and edited Mendelssohn's letters to my parents,[2] that perhaps I ought not to run the risk of telling what is already known. But, on the other hand, Mendelssohn plays so prominent a part in my early recollections, that I cannot write these without attempting to portray the principal figure, my father's most intimate friend and my very dear godfather.

I shall, at any rate, have to exercise due discretion and care, for Mendelssohn, and what he said and did, was such a constant theme of conversation in our family, that I grew up knowing my parents' friend nearly as well as they did themselves, and I may consider myself fortunate if, in recording my earliest impressions, I do not find myself remembering things that happened before I was born.

The very first letter which connects me with Mendelssohn is the one in which he congratulates my parents on the arrival of a son and heir. He heads it with a pen-and-ink drawing, representing a diminutive baby in a cradle, surrounded by all the instruments of the orchestra.

"Here they are, dear Moscheles," he says, "wind instruments and fiddles, for the son and heir must not be kept waiting till I come—he must have a cradle song, with drums and trumpets and janissary music; fiddles alone are not nearly lively enough. May every happiness and joy and blessing attend the little stranger; may he be prosperous, may he do well whatever he does, and may it fare well with him in the world!

"So he is to be called Felix, is he? How nice and kind of you to make him my godchild, in formâ! The first present his godfather makes him is the above entire orchestra; it is to accompany him through life—the trumpets when he wishes to become famous, the flutes when he falls in love, the cymbals when he grows a beard; the pianoforte explains itself, and should people ever play him false, as will happen to the best of us, there stand the kettle-drums and the big-drum in the background.

"Dear me! I am ever so happy when I think of your happiness, and of the time when I shall have my full share of it. By the end of April, at the latest, I intend to be in London, and then we will duly name the boy, and introduce him to the world at large. It will be grand!"

In a later letter he announces himself as arriving in June, "ready to act as a godfather, to play, conduct, and even to be a genius."

He came, and I was duly christened Felix Stone Moscheles in St. Pancras Church. Barry Cornwall wrote some lines commemorative of the occasion. Alluding to the date of my birth, he begins:—

Well, the "sweet maid, Music" never led the new-named one "straight to fame," nor did the child ever get there by any circuitous route, but Felix was certainly "happy ever."

In this, my case, there certainly must have been something in a name, for my good godfather endowed me with my full share of happiness.

In later years Berlioz wrote that well-known line of Horace's in my album:—

"Donec eris Felix, multos numerabis amicos."

(As long as you are happy you will number many friends.) And when I reflect how much friendship I have enjoyed from the day of my christening to the present hour, I feel certain that the name was of good augury, and that Horace and Mendelssohn were right.

If the complete orchestra was the first godfather's present, the little album was the second. It measures only six inches by four, but that small compass holds much that is of interest. The book is full now; it required about half a century to cover its pages, for they contain only the autographs of such celebrities as were my personal friends. Mendelssohn had appropriately inaugurated it with a composition, the "Wiegenlied" (slumber-song), now so popular.

There are also two drawings by him, one of 3 Chester Place, Regent's Park, and another of the Park close at hand. Mendelssohn must have sat out of doors to make these very faithful transcripts of nature, and I sometimes wonder how the street-boys of those days took it. Looking at those contributions, one cannot help being struck by the care which he bestowed on everything he did. His handwriting was always neat and clear, with just enough of flourish and swing to give it originality. His musical manuscripts vie in precision with the products of the engraver's art, and again there is a marked analogy between his style of drawing and the way in which he forms the letters of the alphabet, or the notes of the scales. As one peruses his manuscripts, one finds oneself admiring the artistic aspect of his well-balanced bars, and on the other hand, the harmonious treatment of his drawings recalls the appearance his pen gives to his scores. In the view he took of the Regent's Park, the leaves, so delicately and yet so firmly pencilled, seem to sway and rustle in unison with the sprightly melody of the scherzo in the "Midsummer-Night's Dream," and just as that melody is discreetly accompanied by the orchestra, so in the drawing, the houses, the old Colosseum in the background, and the trees in the middle-distance, are, one and all, made to keep their places, and deferentially to play second fiddle to the rustling leaves.

In due course of time, and after full enjoyment of the Slumber Song, I got out of my cradle and on to my legs, and it is from that stage in my development that I really date my recollections of my godfather. Some are hazy, others distinct. I am often surprised when I realise that he was short of stature; to me, the small boy, he appeared very tall. I looked upon him as my own special godfather, in whom I had a sort of vested interest, and I showed my annoyance when I was not allowed to monopolise him, or at least to remain near him. Being put to bed was at best a hateful process; how much more so, then, when I was just happily installed on my godfather's knee; occasions of that kind are connected in my mind with vociferous protests, followed by ignominious expulsion.

There were, however, happier times soon to follow, times which recall to me our exploits in the Park. He could throw my ball farther than anybody else; and he could run faster too, but then, to be sure, for all that, I could catch him. There were pitched battles with snowballs, and there was that memorable occasion when I got my first black eye. I remember it came straight from the bat, but—to tell the truth—I was never quite sure that Mendelssohn was in any way connected with that historical event, correctly located though it is, in the Regent's Park.

Our indoor sports must have been pretty lively too, for on one occasion my mother records how "in the evening Felix junior had such a tremendous romp with his godfather, that the whole house shook." And she adds: "One can scarcely realise that the man who would presently be improvising in his grandest style, was the Felix senior, the king of games and romps."

One of my achievements, when I was a little boy in a black velvet blouse, was the impersonation of what we called "the dead man"; the dying man would have been more correct. From my earliest days I evidently pitied the soldier dying a violent death on the battlefield. Since then I have learnt to extend my commiseration to the tax-payer, and to the many innocent victims of a barbarous and iniquitous system. Well, the dying man in the blouse was stretched full length—say some three feet—on the Brussels carpet. Mendelssohn or my father were at the piano improvising a running accompaniment to my performance, and between us we illustrated musically and dramatically the throes and spasms of the expiring hero. I was much offended once, because they told me I acted just like a little monkey; I did not know then, but I am quite sure now, that behind my back they said in a very different tone, admiring and affectionate: "He is such a little monkey."

That black velvet blouse I particularly remember, because John Horsley, now the veteran R. A., then but a rising artist, painted me in it; and also because Hensel, Mendelssohn's brother-in-law, made a sketch of it in my album, at my particular request, representing me on horseback.

What honours that garment might not further have attained I do not know, had I not once for all checked its career by climbing over some freshly painted green railings in the Park, and thus irreparably spoiling it.

The dead-man improvisations remind me of the marvellous way in which my father and godfather would improvise together, playing à quatre mains, or alternately, and pouring forth a never-failing stream of musical ideas. I have spoken of it before, but it was in a preface, and who reads a preface? So I may perhaps once more be allowed to describe it. A subject started, it was caught up as if it were a shuttlecock; now one of the players would seem to toss it up on high, or to keep it balanced in mid-octaves with delicate touch. Then the other would take it in hand, start it on classical lines, and develop it with profound erudition, until perhaps the two joining together in new and brilliant forms, would triumphantly carry it off to other spheres of sound. Four hands there might be, but only one soul, so it seemed, as they would catch with lightning speed at each other's ideas, each trying to introduce subjects from the works of the other.

It was exciting to watch how the amicable contest would wax hot, culminating occasionally in an outburst of merriment, when some conflicting harmonies met in terrible collision. I see Mendelssohn's air of triumph when he had succeeded in twisting a subject from a composition of his own into a Moscheles theme, while the latter was obliged to second him in the bass. But not for long. "Stop a minute," said the next few chords that my father struck. "There I have you, you have taken the bait." Soon they would be again fraternising in perfect harmonies, gradually leading up to the brilliant finale that sounded as if it had been so written, revised and corrected, and were now being interpreted from the score by two masters.

Besides my godfather there were many of my father's friends who were kindly disposed towards me. Malibran is one of those I associate with my earliest days. Perhaps I remember her, perhaps I but fancy I do, for I was only three or four years old when she died. But I have impressions of her sitting on the floor and painting pretty pictures for us children; a certain black silk bag, from the depths of which she produced paint-box, brushes, and other beautiful and mysterious things, had an irresistible charm for us, as had also her big dark eyes, and that wonderful mouth of hers, which she showed us could easily hold an orange. And then she would sing to us Spanish songs by her father, Manuel Garcia, and other celebrities. In my album she wrote, "Nei giorni tuoi felici ricordati di Marie de Beriot," and the flourish appended to the signature takes the shape of an apocryphal bird. For my father's album, one of the completest of its kind, she composed an Allegretto, a song which I believe has never been published.

The words, probably by herself, run thus:—

It is dated July 16, 1836: she died on the 23rd of September following.

Thalberg was also a children's man. He was not much of a romp, but always full of jokes, musical and otherwise. Interested as I was in the outward appearance of my home pianists, I was duly impressed by Thalberg's rigid appearance at the piano, contrasting as it did with the lively ways of Liszt and others. He had trained himself to this truly military bearing by practising his most difficult passages whilst he smoked a long Turkish chibouk, the cup of which rested on the ground.

Another source of wonder, not unmixed with awe, was the bulky frame of Lablache, the great singer. It was indeed a basso profondo which emerged from the depths of his ponderous figure. The beauty of his voice, the perfection of his style, and his unconventional deportment on the stage, I learnt to appreciate in later years. I particularly recollect him as Bartolo in Rossini's "Barbiere," on an occasion when Sontag and Mario took the other leading parts. As a small boy I just liked to walk round him, and thought the hackney-coach driver, as they called the cabby then, was not far wrong when he inquired whether his fare expected to be conveyed in one lot.

One of the friends of those early days was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His father was giving my elder sisters Italian lessons, and that led to most friendly intercourse with him and his two sons. I mention Gabriel's name with a twinge of regret, for the chief records of that intercourse, a number of drawings by his hand, are irretrievably lost. There were—I see them still—knights in armour, fair ladies, and graceful pages, bold pen-and-ink drawings, illustrating a story that ran through several numbers of our own special paper the "Weekly Critic." What, or by whom the story was, I do not recollect, probably by Chorley, who was a frequent contributor to that weekly publication of ours. The drawings in no way foreshadowed Gabriel's later manner; they were just what an imaginative young fellow of seventeen or eighteen would draw, but I feel sure there were no beautiful peculiarities or other poetical deviations from the natural in this his early work. I often wonder where the "Weekly Critic" is in hiding. If this should meet the eye of anybody who knows, I trust he will come forward and receive my blessing in exchange for the drawings which we will give to an expectant world.

When I was about twelve I made my first appearance on the stage under peculiar circumstances. My father had announced a concert in Baden, where we were spending the summer, he the centre of a musical circle, I a schoolboy enjoying my holidays, and specially devoted to the climbing of trees and the picking of blackberries. The impresario of the Court Theatre in Carlsruhe (he seemed to me a sort of Grand Mogul) had graciously permitted the stars of his Opera to sing at that concert of my father's. At the eleventh hour, however, there was a hitch, and the stars were needed to shine on their own Grand-Ducal boards. In the hope that matters might yet be settled in his favour, my father sent me to him with urgent messages. On my arrival I made straight for the theatre, and entering by an unguarded back door, I soon found myself in a maze of dark passages. The sounds of music guided me to the stage, where a rehearsal of the "Vier Haymons-Kinder" was going on, and from the wings I found my way into a rustic arbour destined for the trysting-place of the lovers in the particular scene which was being rehearsed; there I was biding my time when I was discovered by the lady who had come to meet the tenor. The performance was abruptly stopped; the lady was no other than the great prima donna and our old friend Madame Haizinger. Rushing at me with a cry of dramatic exultation, she seized me and carried me triumphantly on to the middle of the stage. "Here," she cried, holding me up to the assembled company, my arms and legs dangling in mid-air—"here, ladies and gentlemen, you see Felix, the son of my old friend Moscheles." The Grand Mogul sat at a table covered with papers to my left, and happily looked upon the interruption and the rapturous outburst as nothing uncommon. As soon as I was replaced on my feet, I delivered my messages, but my influence as a diplomatic agent was not proof against untoward circumstances, and I failed in my mission.

That same Court Theatre was destined soon to become the prey of flames; it was the scene of a terrible catastrophe when many lives were lost.

I was soon to see more of Carlsruhe. Chiefly with a view to improving my German, I was put to school there. Now Carlsruhe was in those days one of the dullest places rational man ever condescended to inhabit. I think it was Heine who said that the dogs came up to you in the street and begged as a favour that you would tread on their toes, just to relieve them of the intolerable monotony of their lives. How it is to-day I don't know; probably they now have music-halls and motor cars, jingoes and pickpockets, but in my time all was slow, sure, and safe. The Grand-Duke sat in his palace like a royal spider in his web; all the streets radiated fan-like from the centre he occupied. In the forest, at the back of the palace, the avenues were cut out so as to form a counterpart to the city, one and all converging towards the abode of the Ruler. A fine spacious market-place there was, however, with a town-hall and a church and a monument to a departed Markgraf, round which clustered on certain days quaint old apple-women whom we school-boys patronised to the fullest extent of our limited means. We were close at hand, for the "Gymnasium" was happily situated in this most attractive part of the town. For all that, it took me some time before I could get accustomed to my new home.

Professor Schummelig, to whose care I was entrusted, was good in his way; I give him a fictitious name, as I have to record that he could also be bad in his way. I don't think he made my lessons more tedious or my tasks more irksome than any other ordinary German professor would have done; but he was pedantic and I was imaginative, so we did not always give one another satisfaction. We had one or two grand rows, in which the wrongs cannot have been all on my side, for, as soon as convenient, he granted me a free pardon, in consideration of which I was required not to mention the unpleasant incident in my letters to my parents (my father paid a hundred florins per quarter). I acquiesced, and so we were soon on good terms again.

But I always felt he was an egoist. He would carve the daily little piece of boiled beef just so as to give himself the particular portion which I coveted. The bread, too, was under his control: he would never take much of it at a time, but he would just cut himself little titbits, crisp corners, and knotty excrescences, until the loaf took the appearance of a dismantled wreck. He also squinted, not with that broad outside squint, ever ready to see both sides, to embrace all things, but with a narrow selfish inside squint which slid down his nose, and from there watched the focussing and absorption of the titbits with keen interest and an irritating show of gratified tastes.

And not only was the professor's field of vision thus distressingly limited, but there was also some moral obliquity in his composition. He mistook certain piles of fire-logs, which had been stocked for the use of the public school, for his own private property. When this was discovered, the authorities, happily for the professor, winked at his delinquencies with an eye to avoiding a scandal—a course they might be well justified in taking, as Justice herself is admitted to be blind.

There were two female servants to minister to our wants—two female drudges, I should say. In lieu of their real names they had been dubbed "Die grosse Biene" and "Die kleine Biene"—the great bee and the little bee—with a view, I suppose, to encouraging them in the delusion that they were not born white slaves, one large and the other small, but busy bees whose nature it was to improve the shining hour, whether it shone by the light of the day or the oil of the night.

The German language, as spoken in the Fatherland, its irregularities, vagaries, and varieties, gave me much trouble. In Hamburg I had learnt to pronounce the words "stehen" and "stossen" with a sharp and incisive st; in the south, all the stiffness and stubbornness was taken out of it, and I had to say "schtehe" and "schtosse." Then the words themselves changed, and "laufen" stood for "gehen," "springen" for "laufen." This surprised me, as I did not know then that the Southerner generally calls running what the Northerner calls walking.

Titles, too, puzzled me, especially when applied to ladies. The first time I heard the "Frau Professorin" mentioned, I looked so blank, not to say shocked, that I evoked general mirth. (It is surprising how well one remembers the occasions when one was laughed at.) But the "Frau Professorin" seemed a strange creature to me in those days, and I little thought that for many a year I was to hear my own mother called by that title.

I had my first skirmishes with the French language too, and I certainly thought I was being made a fool of when I was told there was no word in French for our verb, "to stand." I had learnt the German "stehen" and the ditto "schtehe," and I had conjugated every tense of the Latin "stare," and now I refused to believe that the French language could have a locus standi amongst civilised nations without an equivalent for those words. I did not know then how much civilisation can put up with, and it took me a long while to overcome my mistrust of a language so evidently unsound at its base.

We all know to what wearisome length an average schoolmaster can draw out a single hour, and my teachers were no exception to the rule. Time went slowly, as did all things fifty years ago in Carlsruhe.

What a blessed relief it was then when a holiday came round! Perhaps it was when we were liberated in honour of our glorious Grand-Duke's birthday, perhaps when we were to join in the commemoration of some great deed or greater misdeed of one of his ancestors, or perhaps—best of all—when once or twice Mother Earth was clad in so much loveliness, that it was just impossible to keep masters and boys indoors, dissecting dead languages and putting historical bones together. Nature herself seemed to proclaim a free pardon for us prisoners and for our warders: off we went all together to the woods.

How we ran and shouted when we got into those avenues of trees behind the Grand-Ducal Palace, how madly we raced, how heroically we fought the boys we hated, and how solemnly we swore eternal friendship with the ones we loved! We climbed trees, cut sticks, and did what little harm we could to exuberant prolific Nature; we chased butterflies and deprived spiders of their legitimate prey, and then—selfish little lords of creation that we were—we settled down where the grass grew thickest, to discuss large haunches of bread and red-cheeked apples, and to crack nuts and jokes in true schoolboy fashion.

The masters forgot for the while that they were German professors, with spectacles on their noses and Latin quotations on their lips. They were just human, and felt themselves as much at home in the woods as we did, gratefully inhaling the same balmy air, and greedily swallowing the same glittering dust. They knew something, too, to tell us about God's creation, and in those blessed hours taught us wonderful and beautiful things that stirred our little souls, and made us glad to live and wonder and worship.

Oscar—I have forgotten his surname—was not a professor, and did not even wear spectacles, but he was a sort of monitor, had long silky eyelashes, and he certainly was in love. He never told me so, but I am sure he was, and remembering him and his eyelashes as I do, I can easily reconstruct the simple story of his love. She was a Gretchen, a sweet German maiden, blue-eyed and golden-haired. They first met at a Kränzchen where their feet waltzed to the same step and their hearts beat to the same tune. Then on two ever-to-be-remembered Sunday afternoons they took coffee together in the "Restauration zum blauen Stern," and on the second occasion, as they were going home through the pine-woods, he said something to her she had never heard before; her answer was inaudible, but I know she left her hand where he wanted it to remain, and the good old moon did the rest. They soon received the paternal and maternal blessings, and now they were happy in the knowledge that in six or eight years nothing would stand between them and their fondest hopes, when he probably would have passed his examinations and have secured his first appointment.

I must have caught the loving mood from Oscar, or else some wood-nymphs or sprites must have been trying their hands on me, or perhaps I was only tired and lagged behind. Certain it is that a new sort of feeling came over me, a semi-conscious yearning for an unknown quantity that was waiting for me somewhere; and as I lay on my back under the trees, my imagination shot upwards, starting from the gnarled roots by my side, along the mast-like perpendiculars the pines, past jolly little squirrels, patches of moss and garlands of creepers, right to the top where the sky's blue eyes were winking at me. Nature was whispering some secret and I was dreaming my first Midsummer-Day's Dream.

All around there was humming and buzzing, piping and singing; mysterious sounds, joyous notes, and pensive ditties. Some bird with a flute-like voice sang a pretty little musical phrase, just a bar of five or six notes, and kept on repeating it at intervals. Another little bird, deep down in the forest, answered it—birds of a feather flirt together—only there were so many chirping chatterboxes about, enjoying themselves in their way, that the warbling flirtation was carried on under difficulties. For all that, the flute-like voice never tired of saying its say, and putting its question, pleased as it evidently was with its mate's reply. I dare say it knew a good deal better than I did at the time what it was all about, and what was the grand and glorious answer inexhaustible Nature held in store for it.

For my part, I gazed upward at the patches of ultramarine, and longed for them, but it was not till years afterwards that they vouchsafed to come down. Then, when they took the shape of a pair of real blue eyes, it all dawned upon me, and I knew what Nature had been whispering, and understood that stately pine-forests, jolly little squirrels, and loving little birds, were only created to guide and direct good little boys to realms of joy and happiness.

Whilst I was sitting on school-forms puzzling over nouns and verbs, or lying on the grass communing with the birds, things were happening in my London home that were once more to lead to a change in my surroundings.

Another pleasant day-dream, one that my father and his friend Mendelssohn had for some time past been indulging in, was about to be realised. The frequent correspondence between them, delightful as it was, the exchange of views, musical and personal, and the occasional meetings in England or Germany, had only more saliently brought out the points in favour of a long-cherished scheme which should enable them to live and work together in the same town.

Mendelssohn had for some time been planning the formation of a School of Music in Leipsic, and his letters of this period are full of the warmest and most eloquent appeals to my father to give up his position in England, and to take up his residence in Leipsic. The outcome of it was, that the Conservatorio in that city was founded, and that my father was offered a professorship. In answer to his assumption that Mendelssohn would act as director, the latter answers: "I am not, and never shall be the director of the school. I stand in precisely the same kind of position that it is hoped you may occupy. The duties of my department are the reading of compositions, &c., and as I was one of the founders of the school, and am acquainted with its weak points, I lend a hand here and there until we are more firmly established."

In the summer of 1846 my father migrated to Leipsic. He gave up his brilliant position in London, and, actuated by the love of his art and his desire to be in daily touch with Mendelssohn, he had no hesitation in accepting a salary of 800 thalers (£120) per annum. In a letter to a relative he speaks of the dear and kind friends he leaves behind. "Parting from them individually," he says, "and indeed from the English nation generally, will cost us a bitter pang, for twenty-four years of unswerving kindness have laid upon us obligations which we can only pay with life-long gratitude."

And Mendelssohn wrote: "How could I tell you what it is to me, when I think you are really coming, that you are going to live here for good, you and yours, and that what seemed a castle in the air is about to become a tangible reality; that we shall be together, not merely to run through the dissipations of a season, but to enjoy an intimate and uninterrupted intercourse! I shall have a few houses painted rose-colour as soon as you really are within our walls. But it needs not that; your arrival alone will give the whole place a new complexion."

Not by such words only, but most practically did Mendelssohn show his friendship. With the precision of a courier and the foresight of a brother, he goes into the minutest details of the cost of living in the German city: "A flat, consisting of seven or eight rooms, with kitchen and appurtenances, varies from 300 to 350 thalers (£45 to £50). For that sum it should be cheerful; and, as regards the situation, should leave nothing to be desired. Servants would cost 100 to 110 thalers per annum (£15 to £16, 10s.), all depending, to be sure, on what you would require. Male servants are not much in demand here, their wages varying from 3 to 12 thalers per month (9s. to £1, 16s.). A good cook gets 40 thalers a year (£6), a housemaid 32 (£5). If you add to these a lady's-maid who could sew and make dresses, you would reach about the above-mentioned figure. Wood—that is fuel for kitchen, stoves, &c.—is dear, and may amount to 150 or 200 thalers (£22, 10s. to £18) for a family of five with servants. Rates and taxes are next to nothing; eight or ten thalers a year would cover all."

Those were indeed the good old times, when the Fatherland was not yet weighed down by blood-and-iron taxes. The most gifted member of the International Arbitration and Peace Association could not speak more eloquently than do those figures. A family of five with servants; 24s. to 30s. a year would cover all rates and taxes!

Soon, then, the suitable flat was found and my father migrated to Leipsic, entered on his new duties at the Conservatorio, and became a good citizen and ratepayer. The "intimate and uninterrupted intercourse" became a reality, and there was scarcely a day when the Mendelssohns and Moscheles did not meet. They could not do without me, however (remember I was an only son, and a well-beloved godson), so I was recalled and soon left Carlsruhe, I am afraid, with a wicked sense of ingratitude for all the care bestowed on me by Professor Schummelig and my other teachers.

It was terribly cold that winter, and travelling was fraught with difficulties, if not with dangers. Our diligence was a heavy one, and when it got stuck fast in the drifting snow, as it did more than once, the passengers had to get out, whether it was by day or by night, and literally put their shoulders to the wheel. It was only thanks to a very kind and provident "conducteur," that my much-tried little spark of vitality was preserved. He kept a never-to-be-forgotten straw-plaited brandy flask suspended from his neck by a green cord, and when my spirits flagged, his did good office.

It was midnight a day or two before Christmas when we arrived at the "Post" in Leipsic. My luggage was put on a diminutive sledge and dragged along the snow-bound street, I running by its side to keep body and soul together. Nobody knows till he has tried it how hot a run in the bitter cold can make one, particularly when one's heart beats at the thought of a welcome, and one's mind is all ablaze with the brilliant images of those one loves. There I was at last in the new home and folded in the old embrace.

Once settled, the question soon arose what was to be done with me next, and a decision was come to, to send me for a short time to the Bau Schule (School of Architecture). Those wooden bricks of my early boyhood, and the table with the many compartments, had gone the way of all good bricks and tables, but my love for architecture remained, and I now sometimes regret that I was not to continue my studies in that direction till I had had the regular classical education; but so it was. By the time I had learnt how to stretch a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, and how to handle the compasses and T-square, and just when I was getting to know something about the price of tiles and the mixing of mortar, I left the Bau Schule, and was entered at the Thomas Schule. That was a famous old institution. The whole upper storey of the school was occupied by a number of free pupils, the "Thomaner" choir-boys. They were celebrated throughout Germany as the best singers of sacred music, trained as they had originally been by no less a master than Johann Sebastian Bach, the famous "Cantor." His rooms in that building were now occupied by his successor, Hauptmann, who knew how to maintain the highest standard of excellence in his pupils. He was a man of learning and an erudite musician, and as such, one of the pillars of strength on which rested Leipsic's reputation, that city standing quite unrivalled as the centre towards which all musical aspirants gravitated.

He spoke little; but when he did, it was to say much. His criticisms could be severe, as when a new orchestral piece was being rehearsed, he said, "That sounds quite Mendelssohnian, it must be by Sterndale Bennett."

His boys sang on many occasions—at church, at weddings, funerals, or birthdays. I made great friends with some of them, and formed a regular class to teach them English; but although they were very willing pupils, I did not obtain as brilliant results in my line, as my predecessor, Johann Sebastian Bach, had achieved in his.

Herr Magister Hohlfeld, the Professor of Mathematics, was a wonderful old man—how old no one knew. He was a figure that belonged to the middle of the last century. Clad in a long grey cloth coat, which reached to his feet, he looked a curious relic of bygone times; cares and calculations, worldly and scientific, had worked deep furrows all over his lofty forehead, and had left their impress on every feature. A rich crop of white hair fell over his shoulders; his hands on his back, and his head slightly bent down, he would solemnly address the boards he was treading, as he paced up and down between the two lines of school-benches; it was given to few of us to catch the words of mathematical wisdom that fell from his lips.

"The Frenchman" was another figure I look back to with interest. Not that there was anything remarkable in his appearance, but that, when judiciously roused to anger, he would never fail to make a fool of himself. He was not a Frenchman, but a German born and bred, who taught French, and happily for us he was so constituted, that it was a real pleasure, unchecked by any fear of possible consequences, to take advantage of his weaknesses. We did so, exercising our indiscretion whenever we had a chance. A good opportunity presented itself during the cherry season. We paved the particular part of the class-room he was in the habit of promenading, with bad intentions in the shape of cherry-stones. After the first few steps he had taken, he stopped short, indignantly apostrophising us. "I tell you, boys, it's just a piece of impudence when the master treads on cherry-stones." We thought so, too, and howled with delight. At that time I had a beautiful big dog named Hector, and one afternoon I thought it might prove effective if I entered the class-room with him when the French lesson had begun. I did so, to the terror of "the Frenchman," on whom Hector had at once made a friendly rush. The dog was expelled, and then I was severely taken to task. "Ah," said the Professor, "you think you can take liberties with me, but I tell you, sir, you can't take liberties with such a big dog."

But it must not be thought that I was always worrying poor innocent Magisters, and rejoicing in their discomfiture; some of my teachers I think of with gratitude. There was Stallbaum, the rector himself a great man of learning: he took great pains to cram us with our full share of Latin and Greek, and to make us periodically contribute to the wealth of the classical literature handed down to us, by writing essays and composing verses in the dead languages.

The love of fighting was early instilled into us by the works of Homer, Herodotus, Julius Cæsar, and other historians; and if, as some think, my pugnacious instincts have not been satisfactorily developed, it was not the fault of the Rector. But he taught me to revere that grandest and most powerful of tragedians, Sophocles.

Nor must I forget to mention the lasting impression that Ovid's "Metamorphoses" made on me. The gods of mythology have ever remained dear to me; they are so accessible, so free and easy as they come down from Olympus quite unceremoniously, to roam about and make love; you meet them in the woods and on the waters, above ground and below ground, sometimes enjoying themselves at your expense, but mostly showing you, by their example, how you should enjoy life. To be sure the methods of a Jupiter or a Venus are quite inapplicable to the social restrictions, and generally to the changed conditions of the present day, but they were dear old gods and goddesses all the same, who condescended to be human, and sanctified our frailties. I, for one, am grateful to them, for they taught me the love of poetry and the poetry of love.

My first drawing-master, Herr Brauer, was a good old soul too: I owe him one of the foremost pleasures of my life, the exercise of my profession as a painter. His own work, although very clever in its way, was niggling and minute, but his ideas and teachings were broad, and whilst encouraging a taste for form which had made the study of architecture so attractive to me, he knew how to awaken a love of colour, that was eventually to lead me to the sister art.

The old masters, too, had their full share in making me long to paint. There was a certain picture by Murillo, a Madonna and Child, in the Schletter Collection which afterwards formed the nucleus of the Leipsic Picture Gallery; that picture so filled my imagination that I was fired by the desire to go forth and do likewise.

I have since frequently found that that kind of auch'io feeling is by no means confined to those in whom it would be justifiable. In a masterpiece the artist betrays no effort; all looks so easy that one fancies it is easy. The lines of the composition flow so naturally, the colours strike so complete a chord, that one is deluded into the belief that it could not be otherwise, and that it is just what one would have done oneself had one been in the painter's place. So I was gradually settling in my mind that, as soon as I had passed my Abiturienten Examen (equivalent to our matriculation), I would, without much delay, begin to paint like the old masters.

Of Mendelssohn and the many friends, musical and otherwise, who made my stay, and later on my visits to Leipsic, interesting, I must speak afterwards. But an incident which has left a lasting impression on my mind, finds its place here, as being connected partly with my school-days and partly with my art studies.

CHAPTER II

WILL YOU SIT FOR ME, FRIDA?

, and I shall ever remember with gratitude, the man who in my German school-days helped me along the thorny paths of the Latin and Greek grammar, Herr Magister Dr. Traumann. I suppose I got into trouble, as much as any boy of sixteen, with the so-called regular, and those disgracefully irregular, verbs the old Greeks tolerated. But Dr. Traumann was always kind and helpful; in fact, he was not only a first-rate teacher but a lovable man. I had, soon after my arrival in Leipsic, been put under his care, and thanks to his coaching, I got so well ahead of myself, that although my scholastic antecedents would really have fitted me more for the "Tertia" class, I could be pitchforked into "Secunda."

During a temporary absence of my parents from Leipsic I was for some months staying in the Magister's house; three flights of stairs brought one to his door. I usually bounded up those stairs with the elastic step that leads to a happy home, but to-day—a certain to-day that seems but yesterday—my tread was slow and diffident. How could I face the Magister, the man above all others whom I had treated with disrespect—I had libelled! What reception awaited me? Whether I took two steps at a time or one at half-time, the result was much the same; I got upstairs, rang the bell, and went in.

This is what had happened during the morning's lesson at the Thomas-Schule. The learned doctor was expounding the subtle meaning of some lines in Virgil's "Æneid." I found that the top layer of the poet's meaning would do for me, but, as is the way with the erudite, Dr. Traumann went down very deep, backed by an army of commentators; in fact so deep that I did not care to follow. So I took to a more congenial occupation, and, under the cover of a friendly desk, I began to compose what seemed to me an interesting subject. How long I was about it, I do not know. The Doctor had walked up and down dozens of times between the forms, when suddenly a hand reached behind the desk and quietly annexed and pocketed the composition. The hand was the Doctor's. He walked on quite unconcernedly, prodding and probing old Virgil's defunct thoughts as before. And all the while he had that wicked caricature of himself in his breast-pocket, and presently he would see it and read the legend that relegated him and the commentators to the Dantesque depths of their own seeking.

I was eating a green apple, to give myself courage, when the Magister came in. What would he say? How would he take it? Well—he took it just as if nothing had happened, and smiling pleasantly, he said, "Look here, Felix, I have got a splendid specimen to show you," and with that, he fumbled in his pocket and produced a small piece of quartz. "I have got another piece, so you can have this for your collection."

"Oh, thank you, Herr Magister," I said; "I am sure you are too kind. I—I don't deserve it."

He cut me short with: "Not at all, my boy; we are just on a footing of exchange. 'Eine Hand wäscht die andere,' as the proverb says."

What has become of my minerals I don't know, but to this day I often think, soap in hand, of the proverb that says, "One hand washes the other." As for the caricature, he never said anything about it, but I know now he treasured it and loved me all the more for being a bad one.

If he was kind, she was still kinder; she, the Frau Magisterin. I had by this time got initiated into the mysteries of German usage as regards the participation of the wife in her husband's titular advantages. Without an effort I could address Frau Schmidt as Mrs. Lettercarrieress, or Frau Müller as Madame Chimneysweeperess. So the "Frau Magisterin" came quite naturally to me. She called me "Mein Lixchen," a tender variation on my name. In fact, tenderness prevailed between her and me from first to last, maternal on her side, filial on mine. She was under middle size and of slight build; her bright little eyes, beaming with benevolence, attracted you so much that you saw but little else in her face. Everything was small about her. A tight-fitting cap hid the best part of her hair, and the plain dress without puffs or ruffles, or any of the other digressions dictated by the fashions of the day, seemed to make everything else subordinate to the love-beaming eyes. She was then in the prime of life. When I last saw her she was an old lady of fourscore years, and her dear little face had become so very small, that, although I am sure I did not mean to be irreverent in my thoughts, I could not help being reminded of the immortal Cheshire cat, that vanished leaving naught behind but a smile. Time, I felt, might deal with her as is its wont, contract here and pinch there, lay out in folds and wrinkles what were round and smooth surfaces; but that particular twinkle that goes straight to the heart, the smile of the eye, would ever remain intact.

The Magister and his wife were a truly happy and devoted couple, and closely wound around their hearts were Bella and Frida, their two daughters; one was about sixteen, the other fourteen, at the time I was staying with them, good girls and pretty, with brown hair inclined to curl on Bella's head, very smooth and Priscilla-like on Frida's. With a view to securing for them the best possible education under the maternal eye, classes had been formed at their home, and consequently a bevy of young girls came up and went down those three flights of stairs on certain days and at given hours. I was always interested in curious coincidences, and so, to bring them about, I frequently found myself in the way at the given hours. On such occasions I tried to look unconcerned, or surprised at the meeting, but unfortunately I was yet too honest and truthful, so I signally failed and blushed like a girl. Not like those girls though; they didn't seem to blush, the little fiends. With the exception of just one, they tittered right over the banisters, whispered, and shook locks and dangled satchels until I was quite discomfited. I suppose they thought it rich fun, for they knew, long before I was aware of it myself, that I was desperately in love with Helene. It was the tittering, I am sure, that finally put me on the track, and the whispering that opened my eyes to the blindness I was stricken with. That was one day when those rosy, mischievous, young amorettes must have said something particularly unkind to their sister, for she bounded past me and her tormentors, like a deer, to get rid of the lot of us. After this I felt an ever-growing desire to see Helene, but took a dislike to the staircase as a meeting-place.

About this time, as luck would have it, I came across her two brothers, fair chubby boys about my age. We struck up a sort of friendship, and I took care the sort should be improved upon, interested as I was in securing their good-will. It was, above all, important to get reliable information as to where and when she could be met out skating, and my new friends, I found, were particularly sympathetic and communicative when under the influence of a certain kind of "apfelkuchen," an open apple tart, dispensed on most advantageous terms in the Barfussgässchen. There the Frau Bakermistress often had to open for me a little shutter in a shutter and hand out, on a piece of newspaper, large segments of the Kuchen, bidding it God-speed with a parting jerk of the perforated tin sugar-box. Perhaps to show that there was no bribery or corruption in my standing treat, and, perhaps too, as one's appetite at the age of sixteen is rather stimulated than blunted by love, I took my fair share of the segments. These symposia led, in the most natural of ways, to our making appointments to meet on this or that frozen pond or river, and I was sure to be punctual, knowing as I did, from information received, that Helene would be there. More than once I skated along that narrow river, the Pleisse, for miles, pushing before me the "Stuhlschlitten," with its precious many-locked burden. Helene was comfortably ensconced in that elementary specimen of a sledge, a sort of easy-chair on skates, and was wrapped up in furs and covers, every inch of her carefully protected, excepting her little nose and lips, which would get linked to her veil by cobweb threads of ice, as King Frost welcomed her cherished breath. And didn't his Majesty just rule supreme that year!

I may have been a fair example of a boy lover, but I fear a diary which I kept and have preserved goes far to prove that I was a most precocious—you might call it priggish—young meteorologist, making his observations with pedantic regularity, morn, noon, and night, on thermometer and ombrometer, and publishing the results in his own name with the proud prefix of "Herr Gymnasiast." We often hear of exceptional winters, but the one I speak of beats the record. Siberian cold visited us all through January; on the 21st of that month I find noted:

A bitter cruel time to many;—a very Godsend to hardy skaters. I was of the latter. Off with overcoat and on we went—left, right—left, right—in long curved lines, the sledge flying ahead on the frozen waters of that puny river that had swallowed up thousands of Napoleon's followers on their retreat after the lost battle of Leipsic. On we went till we landed on the very spot where one of the last decisive encounters took place, and there we, some dozens of us, fought bravely for an adequate supply of coffee and Kaffeekuchen (you know by this time that "Kuchen" means cake, and that it meant a good deal to us in those days). In the meanwhile the girls of our fancies had time to thaw, and usually came in a melting mood to the little tables at which they would graciously accept the chivalrous attentions dear to the bread-and-butter Miss.

As for Helene, to be sure she was of the ripe age of seventeen, and I had a sort of feeling that she would expect me to speak to her parents if I had anything definite to say. Till then the indefinite would do, and she made it quite easy to me to say all I wanted in that deliciously tentative way that marks our first attempts at disguising our feelings, whilst we are burning to proclaim them. It was all smooth sailing as long as I only had to minister to her creature wants, and I got as far as—

"O Fräulein, you must come out every Sunday; I do hope you will."

But when I wanted to explain that this my wish was mainly owing to the fact that her hair started in most fascinating wavelets from her temples, there was a kind of barrier that arose to stop me, a halo that came in the way to form a magic circle into which I could not penetrate. I wanted to say something about Helen of Troy, but I did not know what conclusion to draw from her history, and besides it would sound so foolish and priggish. So I said nothing about her, and by the time we got up to return home, I had not done much to improve the opportunity.

Our skates were once more firmly secured to our feet, and our young ladies comfortably settled in their Stuhlschlitten. We all started together, but soon we broke the ranks, each one taking his own time. I was in a mood to go ahead and struck out at full speed. In fact it was not long before I was dashing past another sledge at such a close-shaving pace that Helene gave a start and a little cry of "Ach, don't, Herr Felix, please don't." But I was reckless and only went at a madder pace. She was in my grip; I had her to myself right away from the other boys. How I triumphed over them all! What did they know about love? With them it was all giggling and window parade, and meeting on the Promenade, and doffing caps, and then taking a short cut, to meet again and have another chance of capdoffing. To be sure I had done all that kind of thing myself, but I was much too full of the present to think of the past.

She was mine; I held her in my—or at least my sledge held her in its—arms; it was the most glorious consummation of my wishes. I had carried her off into some new atmosphere, that did all the propelling automatically, some new element where weight counted for nothing. So on I went. Danger! Nonsense, there was none. I had got my treasure well in hand. Never mind if she fancied there was danger and was nervous; all the better if she was right. Was not I there to save and to protect her?

Such a swing round to get out of the way of that lumbering skater, hanging on to a sledge with a woman and two children. No, I certainly wouldn't dig my heel into the ice and pull up.

"Ach, don't, please don't, Herr Felix," she cried; "I'm sure there'll be an accident."

"Don't be afraid, please don't, Fräulein Helene," I rejoined; "can't you trust yourself to me?"

"Oh yes, yes, but really, please, do stop, dear Herr Felix."

I slackened a little as I said, "Why do you always call me Herr? It does sound so formal."

"Well, isn't that the right thing?" she answered. "You only call children by their Christian names. Don't grown-up people always call one another Herr, or Frau, or Fräulein?"

"Not always; you don't call Julius, Herr Julius."

"To be sure not, you silly; who is Julius? He is only my cousin."

"That's just so unfair. He's a benighted ass, who, I'll be bound, doesn't know the colour of your eyes, or which side the dimple is, and you treat him better than those who do—(a pause)—yes, who do—who do quite well."

"Oh, I hate my dimple; my brothers are always worrying me about it."

"I'll stop that, but you must drop the Herr."

"No, I certainly won't. Do you want to be a child?"

"No, Helene, you are the child and I am the man; that I will show you"——

And with that I started off again viciously.

"Ach, Herr Felix—no, I mean Felix, I didn't say I wouldn't."

Another diabolic spurt that made the sledge twist and quiver. She clutched its wooden sides for safety, and cried out to the young fiend behind:

"I never said I wouldn't, Felix; do please stop—Felix—dear Felix."

This time my heel went deep into the ice, grinding out its order to pull up. In a moment I was round to the front, on my knees to pick up one of the rugs that had got loose and was dragging. The footstool was half off, and poor Helene's little feet were exposed to the biting frost. They were just lumps of ice, and I felt very guilty, for it was all my zig-zagging and swinging about that had done it. "Wait a minute, I know what will warm them in no time. My fur gloves are the very thing."

And with that I popped one foot into each glove, and gave her the cord to hold that connected both, and that was usually slung round my neck.

"Oh, that is glorious!" she said, as the heat from my gloves, my heat, passed into her veins. "You are too kind, dear Mr.... I mean, my dear Felix. But you will want them yourself. You must take them back."

"Nonsense," I answered, as I tightened the gloves round her feet and tucked her up with the rug that had kindly played truant.

"But I am sure you will get your fingers frost-bitten."

"Not likely; you just look out they don't set the back of your sledge on fire."

And with that we started at a moderate pace. I was in no hurry to get home, and in fact we had to give the rest of the party time to come up with us.

Fancy having to sit down and prepare for to-morrow's mathematics and Virgil after that! This time I was one of the commentators, and marginal notes in the shape of initials and scribbled profiles got in where they shouldn't.

But on the whole I did not find that the new development interfered with my studies. It was rather the other way, for I felt it would be positively ignominious to be snubbed by a professor, a schoolmaster. I was filled with overweening self-confidence, and fired with ambition. The things I thought and planned! Just the things you would laugh at now that you know so much about love and love-making. You shouldn't laugh! Is not the boy's first budding love the very best bit of the Creator's work, the tenderest shoot He grafts on the old tree of life? Nature likes to hear her own voice as it comes truly and purely from the boy's lips, tired as she is of man's false vows. The boy's heart holds the divine spark of love, the same that will light the flame of his later days, only it is minus the bacilli that threaten to creep in, sooner or later, and crowd it with doubt and disappointment, or poison it with selfishness and passion. Nature, consistent as she is, repeats her processes wherever she is at work. For a while the rosebud remains closed, and is safe; then it opens its unsuspecting leaves, and in walks a wary worm and says, "This is just the place for me." The snow falls white, even in grimy cities—how soon to mingle with soot and dirt! The world changes, but the fountain source of all things remains pure; we can return to it, recuperate and restore ourselves in its waters; there alone we may find the mythical baths that, in olden days, promised health and youth. Harking back, we shall hear voices that once touched us, and may yet guide us.

But whilst my aspirations were soaring higher and higher, the fates were taking me and my lady-love into their old meddlesome hands, and just shaping our course at the dictates of their irresponsible caprice.

A grand sledge-party had been organised for the following Sunday,—a big affair, with a band to start us and torches to light us home. It was a glorious prospect, and I for one was duly excited. On Friday, at 10 P. M., I went as usual to take the reading of my thermometer. The mercury had risen by six degrees. I went out into the garden, consulted the wind and sniffed the air, and my meteorological soul was filled with the greatest misgivings. I felt it, I knew it; nothing could save us. The thaw had set in; there would be no band, no torches, no Helene!

Such an opportunity I was never to have again. The river that had befriended me had lost its strength, and was no more to carry her or me; soon it would flow its natural course. Thoughts alone and words remained icebound, and my hopes sank below zero. Henceforth I should meet her only on terra firma, and—alas!—terra firma was not as friendly an element as aqua firma had been.

The first time I saw her was about three weeks after the "My dear Felix" day. She was walking with her mother along that beautiful promenade that encircles the old city of Leipsic. On her other side was a middle-aged man—he must have been at least twenty-five—and he—oh! I could see it at a glance—was all smiles, doing the amiable. He was not like Julius; he knew which was the dimple side and had taken it.

To be sure I had to pull off my cap and salute, what they call bow and grin; but I felt like a bird with clipped wings, a string tied to its leg and fastened to a bar of its cage.

After that I did not see her for a long time. I heard she had gone to Dresden on a visit to friends. Once or twice I met her brothers, but, although I quite intended to do so, I could not summon courage to ask them who was the middle-aged man; nor did they seem inclined to talk about him or about her. But the truth gradually leaked out. He was the acknowledged suitor. Soon the news came. They were engaged. She was going to Switzerland in the summer to meet his parents, and in the autumn they were to be married. It was true, then: Helene had preferred a man to a boy!

Once more I met her before she left. It was on the Neumarkt, close to the old Gewandhaus. I bowed stiffly and was passing on, for I had swallowed the poker of resentment, but she stopped short and stroked my big dog Hector, and said to him: "You wish me all happiness, I am sure, don't you? We have been friends, and we shall always remain friends, shan't we?"

And as the dog didn't answer, I had to say, "Yes, Helene, always."

And then the poker began to lose substance, and gradually it melted away. But it was only gradually.

It is many years ago now, but I still adhere to my original proposition, "Helene was of a lovable type," and I am sure Leonardo da Vinci, if no one else, would say that I am right.

I must admit, though, that shortly after that interview on the Neumarkt, I became painfully aware that I was not as unhappy as I should have liked to be. This is such a world of compensations, and they do so flood in upon one in the spring-tide of life! Not that I at once met with any new and revised edition of Helene, handsomely bound; but true friendship came to heal the wound, and sisterly affection to take the place of love. Bella and Frida were my friends. Bella so restful and soul-soothing, with her far-away look; Frida so sympathetic and affectionate. They did not say much about Helene, as it was an awkward subject to discuss, but through all their tact and reticence I could plainly see that they disapproved of Helene's conduct, and thought her worldly and heartless. At that time I was much with those kind sisters, but I soon after left the Magister's house to live under the paternal roof, my parents having returned to Leipsic after a prolonged absence. But there was constant and pleasant intercourse between the two families, and my friendship with Bella and Frida flowed on peacefully and serenely, as if nothing could ever impede its progress through life.

All the while Time, in a quiet, unobtrusive way, was doing his wondrous work, taking the school-girls in hand and making young ladies of them. Pinafores had long since been relegated to the dust-hole or the paper-mills, but there were frumpy aprons to be exchanged for dainty ribbons, dresses to be elongated, and something dangling or jingling to be added before the young ladies could be considered presentable in a ball-room. And Time had done just the right thing, not scamping the work, as he will sometimes, or hurrying it and putting in touches that would come so much better a little later. So the result was that the newly developed young ladies remained young girls still, natural and unsophisticated.

And the schoolboy was being transformed too. It was noticeable that the left-hand side of his right hand middle finger-nail now rarely showed the inroads of an inky pen; a looking-glass, too, had evidently been consulted in some important matters, and the hands were observed frequently to twist and twirl some imaginary growth on the upper lip.

There is more in the eagerness with which the youth welcomes the advent of a beard than is at first apparent; he feels intuitively that the time is approaching when that mobile feature, the mouth, may possibly want a little disguise. It is easier to control the eyes, where there is an emotion to conceal, than the lips with their tell-tale quiver: they need protection. Bold indeed is the man who dares to shave, and reveal, say to a young and confiding wife, who has known him only with a beard, all that underlies the hirsute mask, thus laying bare his true nature, whatever that may be, good, bad, or indifferent. We may safely assume, I think, that under the beard she will find a man she does not know.

But all those considerations are, at best, after-thoughts. When my time came to twirl the first threads of my moustache, I suppose I did not feel anything intuitively, but greeted the badge of manliness with satisfaction. Then, to be sure, I was not going to be an actor, who wants every square inch of his face for his work, nor a priest who has nothing to conceal, nor a lawyer who is not worth his salt if he cannot conceal anything or everything. I was going to be an artist, and as such, I meant to look my part, at any rate as regards the beard.

My school-days had come to an end; some dreaded examinations were satisfactorily passed, and I sallied forth, backed by a grandiloquent Latin document describing me as "F. S. M. Londiniensis," an "honest youth" who had never done anything "reprehensible," and who was now "omnino" worthy to be admitted to the higher universities.

Instead of accepting the advantages thus offered to me, I disposed of some of those old school-books I hated, and packed up others that I loved, in a green carpet-bag, which was adorned with a worsted-work presentment of a shepherdess tending her sheep under a very small tree. This bag was of a style much admired in the Fatherland of those days, and had been presented to me by a very dear friend. Another parting gift I much prized was a woollen comforter knitted by Bella's own hands. Thus equipped, I started for Paris. The Traumanns saw me off. They were characteristic in their parting words. The Magister said—

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Never look at things superficially, my boy, go deeper for the cause of things."

The Magisterin said—

"Remember, mine Lixchen, wear those woollen socks and keep your feet dry."

Bella said—

"You will write, won't you? I shall be so anxious to know all about—I mean something—about what you are doing."

Frida said—

"Ach, Felix, do see if you can't get me one of those lovely black cats they have in Paris."

What a change from Leipsic to Paris, from home to the unknown, supervision to independence! When I speak of Paris, it must be borne in mind that it is the Paris of 1850-51, not the one we evoke when we think of the Imperial capital of later days. It was the old city with its high houses and crooked streets, with its nooks and rookeries, suggestive of revolution and barricades; not the Paris we know with its gloriously disciplined palaces, standing shoulder to shoulder, and with its splendid military avenues that can carry conviction in the straightest and most direct of lines from the mouth of the cannon to the heart of the canaille.

The first restaurant I went into—it was a "Marchand de vins, Traiteur"—I was addressed as "Citoyen," rather a startler for a newly imported Leipsic schoolboy; but those were the days of the Republic that had followed Louis Philippe's flight, and there was a great show of "Liberté, Égalité', Fraternité," on walls, churches, and other public buildings; whilst, as far as I could see, everybody seemed to be just as anxious as before to be fraternally equal with his neighbour in the matter of taking liberties, and whilst Prince Louis Napoleon and his friends were looking round for a favourable opportunity to daub out the foolish words and replace them with a capital "N," protected by an imperial eagle with rather sharp claws.

The coup d'état came. I saw it all; first the soldiers bivouacking on the quais and in the streets, eating and drinking to their hearts' content; then the Prince President riding across the Place de la Concorde on a proudly prancing horse, followed at some distance by a brilliant staff of officers on more modestly prancing horses (according to the rules of etiquette), and I heard the troops shouting "Vive Napoleon! À bas la République!" and the crowd hooting "À bas Napoleon! Vive la République!" and saw the future emperor bowing impartially left and right, to the loyal and to the disloyal, and fulfilling his destiny with the imperturbable passiveness of the fatalist. He really looked the picture of Fate in the uniform of a General, and adorned with a moustache waxed to inordinate lengths and culminating in sharp points.

Then I was run in, not for shouting, but because I was with a friend who carried a stick with a lead-weighted knob. At the police-station they proceeded to "dresser procès verbal," as they call it, and we were temporarily released; that process, however, within the next few hours, got so mixed up with human blood, ashes, and brick-rubbish, for the station had been fired, that when I called a few days later there was no trace of it left. So I was never sent to Cayenne or any other penal settlement.

On the contrary, Prince Napoleon had saved France, and he could not do without me to consolidate it. Achille Fould was his Chancellor of the Exchequer, his right hand, and as Madame Achille and her sister were old friends of my parents, and had been amongst the first to welcome me into this big world, it was but natural they should now take me in hand and wish to introduce me into their particular world. So wherever golden dust was to be thrown into the eyes of the pleasure-seeking Parisian, my presence was politely requested. On my side I accepted favours with princely condescension, and got into the Tuileries, when there was a ball or a fête on, hours before other poor mortals of inferior clay. The coachman of our ministerial carriage holding a card with the injunction, "Laisser passer, s'il n'y a pas empèchement de force majeure," we had not to wait our turn in the interminable queue that stretched through Paris for miles. I might be dancing at the Tuileries one night in the same room with the Prince President, who would perhaps be walking a quadrille with the wife of the British ambassador, and the next night—there comes the other side of my life—I was accoutred in a blouse and a workman's cap, and was diving into the haunts of destitution and misery, into those privileged places where unpoetical license reigns supreme. I learnt French argot, the thieves' language, at the fountain-source, and studied political economy under Communists—some of them philosophers, some firebrands. All that, to be sure, I could not have done alone, but I had some trusty friends amongst my studio comrades who initiated me and taught me French, as according to them she should be spoke. I had to learn a poetical effusion by heart of which I just recollect the two lines—

One of the highest officials I met at the Tuileries, the type of a perfect gentleman, was the biggest scoundrel I ever came across; whilst on the other hand, the man who more than any other taught me to love humanity, was a scoundrel whom I met in a low wineshop in the Belleville quarter, the hotbed of irresponsible revolution.

Memories are rather troublesome friends to deal with. They will not form into line after the example of the Parisian queue, but crowd around the pen with the cry of "Laissez passer." One ought really to have one's little brains divided into thought-tight compartments, so that one could turn on perfect gentlemen, biggest scoundrels, or would-be Emperors, without being flooded by the immortals of the Institute, or those gods of the day representing the arts and sciences, whom it was one's good fortune to have known. Some special bulkheads or barriers should be provided to restrain the lovely types of womanhood that memories evoke.

I have to get back to Bella and Frida, and tell of heavy clouds that arose to darken our path, and of how I came to draw a portrait that has left a lasting impression in my mind. So I will but cursorily mention that there were one or two of the above-named lovely types that commiserated the unlicked cub, and set themselves the difficult task of raising him, if not to their level, to within measurable distance of it. It was rather an awkward position for the cub when one of them more than usually warm-hearted and liberal, foreshadowed the bestowal of a first prize if the unlicked one proved himself an apt pupil. Of this I said something in a letter to Bella, for I occasionally remembered that she had wished me to tell her "all about—I mean something about" what I was doing. I gave the incident in a diluted form, merely hinting that the lessons might be learnt in Paris, but could be better applied elsewhere. Yes! When I come to think of it, I am sure Bella was my guiding star, shedding a ray of light just when I particularly wanted it to show me the right way.

It was now more than a twelvemonth since I had gone to Paris, and the time was drawing near when, in accordance with the good old fashion, I should spend Christmas at home. Notwithstanding all the attractions of upper and lower Paris, I had been working hard, drawing from morning to night, and sometimes from night to morning. Those were the days when a humble student might still worship at the shrine of a Vandyke or a Rembrandt, when the war-cry, "Nous avons changé tout cela," had not yet sounded, and the Messiahs of modern art were not yet busy proclaiming their newly-found truth from the house-tops, and painting there, too, lest a particle of light should get lost. So I was still quite naïvely addicted to drawing portraits by lamplight, putting in deep shadows and deeper accents, and picking out high lights on the breadths of foreheads or the tips of noses.

At last I was in the train and we were approaching Leipsic. I was thinking of parents and friends, and as I mentally rehearsed our meeting and greeting, I am sure my lips moved unconsciously, and the subtle smile of anticipation must have played around them. It was 3.30 P. M., I had travelled forty-five hours, but at last the old familiar landmarks appeared. There was the row of poplars, the distant spire. Out came the pocket-comb—a final touch, and in a few minutes I was in my mother's arms. She had come upon the chance of my arriving by that train; time-tables did not pretend to give much information in those days. It is a long while ago, but I well remember that particular meeting and embrace. The two separate parts of one whole were re-united and were being welded together. Words had to wait. When they came—it does seem absurd—they were the most trivial ones, and rushed out buzzing like froth from the bottle. "Where's the green carpet-bag?" "I've got the parcel;" "All right, here is my passport;" "And when did you leave? to be sure, you must be hungry, poor boy;" and so on, till home was reached, where other loving arms awaited me. As we sobered down, the froth was brushed aside, the right words came, and we drank deep draughts from the phial that contains the very essence of love.

My first visit was for the Traumanns. That tailor at the corner of the Passage d'Orléans in the Palais Royal—he is there still—had made me a waistcoat of blue velvet, dotted with little yellow spots; it was of the very latest Paris fashion, and in it I went to make my call.

Once more a joyous meeting, a warm welcome. Herr Magister and the Frau Magisterin were just the same as I had left them. Frida had grown, but was little changed otherwise, just as bright and happy as ever; but Bella I could not see; she was not well. That was disappointing; I kept looking at her desk, just opposite me, with the glass inkstand on the right, and the little bust of Mendelssohn I had given her, on the left.

"Well, good-bye, Frida," I said at the door, "tell Bella she must be well by Friday; she's got to dance at least two waltzes and the cotillon with me."

Now dancing at the Tuileries is a very good thing in its way; elbowing a future emperor, and hobnobbing with a scoundrel disguised as a gentleman, are things to brag of. But it is nothing to having a dance at one's own home, with one's sisters, and one's sisters' friends, with one's friends and one's friends' sisters.

I was surprised to find several "Impériales" on the programme of our little dance, and was told that was the latest craze all over Paris. Now nothing of the kind had ever been heard of in the terpsichorean circles I had just left, so naturally I had no notion of what the step might be like. When I attempted it, however, it mattered little whether I danced it correctly or not, for, coming straight as I did from the French capital, I was supposed to know all about it; so the good Leipsickers soon adopted my rendering, and my step became the fashion.

I wanted those two waltzes and the cotillon because Bella was the best dancer in Leipsic. She must have been born under the star of rhythm; some fairy must have beaten time with a magic wand, pronouncing a One-two-three, One-two-three blessing upon her. One would never have imagined that that reserved girl, with the far-away look, was the queen of the ballroom; true, her figure was perfect, but it was not till she waltzed that its graceful and subtle lines revealed themselves. Curiously the far-away look never left her when dancing; she seemed to be undulating towards some distant goal, wherever that might be.

How few fairies there are to beat time at the baby's cradle! and is it not curious how seldom they go to the little boys? Dancing humanity has had to invent the valse à deux temps, that bids us close our ears to the strains of the syren, Strauss, and take two steps where there should be three. Perhaps there is some malignant fairy to visit the cradles of the little boys. One would think so, to judge by the expressions on the faces of many dancers, expressions varying from that of painful uneasiness to that of abject misery. Poor souls! Some rushing wildly to destruction, others doomed to crawl out their ballroom existence, gravitating within the narrow circle of the chandelier!

* * * * * *

Friday came, and the ball.

But I have nothing to tell about it. Bella was not there. No, Bella could not be there—she was ill.

Ill—then very ill—dangerously ill. Soon she was dead!

It all came so rapidly, it must be told rapidly, breathlessly.

When? How?—She died on Sunday night at eleven o'clock—It can't be true!—It was true.

How incredulous we are when first called upon to realise the truth! how slow to understand and believe that what was but yesterday a living form must be accounted dead to-day! Anguish rises rebellious: It cannot be.—It is a dream, a grievous mistake, to be explained away presently. Love's giant strength would wrench its victim from death's grasp. Hope, the very last to yield—or is it but an after-glow of hope?—will catch at shadowy straws, ere it submits and sinks to rise no more.

None but the father, mother, and sister were at the bedside when the young life ebbed away. Poor tortured souls! May they be strong enough to bear the heavy trial. That night the father never shed a tear, nor the next day, nor the next. It would have been better had grief found a natural channel. He spoke but little, and mostly sat by the bed as if in deep thought, until they carried her away.

The white wreaths had come,—and the black hearse; and graceful lilies, their long stems bound together with white ribbons. Black crapes too, and sable hues, to harmonise with a world of sorrow and darkness.

Then the blinds went up, and the world went on as before. I looked out of the window; I recollect a boy's cap had got cast adrift on the branch of a tree just opposite the house of sadness; a little crowd had collected to do justice to the incident. "Would it get off, or gradually perish where it hung?" was the question of paramount interest to that particular little world.

But does the world really go on as before? Not quite. A fraction of our globe has been disturbed, a balance lost. The blow that struck down one brother or sister wounds many hearts, reverberates in circles small or large, and it will take time to restore that fraction's equilibrium. It is as when we break the peaceful surface of the water. First a thud, a gash; next a circle, small, but broken and restless; then a larger one and a larger, each and all gradually calming down to be at rest, with the smooth untroubled waters beyond.

When a link in the chain of existences, near and dear to us, is snapped asunder, we instinctively seek to close up the gap, to join hands and succour one another. So Frida's heart went out to her father as he sat brooding, with his eyes fixed on the desk with the little bust. It was not till much later that I knew what she had suffered. She wished to throw her arms round his neck and cry her little aching heart out, and love him with her dead sister's love and her own, and let him cry too, that love and sorrow could mingle. But he sat there, so forbidding, so strange, that her arms fell, and her tears flowed back to the aching heart. Then she went up to him and stood by his side. The word "father" quivered on her lips; she knew not why, but she dared not pronounce it. Her mother came in and stood waiting too, hoping he would turn round, but he did not move. "Dearest mine," she said, "speak to Frida."

He lifted his head slowly, as if it were a great weight, his lips moved with an effort, and looking vacantly at his poor love-seeking child, he said, "Never, never!"

Days passed, and melancholy settled deeper and deeper on the sufferer. He would occasionally show something of the old tenderness for his wife, and sometimes a spark of gratitude would for moments light up the darkness of his moods. But mostly he sat brooding, prostrate, heart-stricken. If she spoke to him of Frida he would wave his hand as if to beg her to forbear, and would keep on repeating to himself the words, "Never, never!"

She had insisted one day; she had hoped to break the spell, when he rose angrily, he the mildest of men. "Never, never mention her name to me again," he said sternly, then, gradually recovering himself, he returned to his seat and relapsed into silence.

The well-known physician and psychologist, Dr. Reclam, was in daily attendance on the patient. He was an old friend of the Magister's, and put heart and soul into the task of restoring him to health. He had said, "No, she must not show herself for the present, it would be to no purpose; but you must not let a day pass without mentioning her name in some way or other; we must not allow the blight to settle upon him undisturbed." Soon he advised change of air and surroundings. So the Magister and his wife left for Sonnenthal, a place far away in the country, where a cousin of his owned a large farm. He had spent part of his childhood there, and it was hoped that early associations, and the soothing influence of some old trusted servants who would be around him, might go far to restore his mind to peace and rest.

Frida remained in Leipsic; she left the darkened home, and went to stay with an uncle, a well-known lawyer. He was a good man at heart, but one of those whose hearts lie so deeply hidden away that there is no getting at them. He had a boy we all hated; his heart-strings must have been hopelessly knotted and tangled, or he would never have tortured that poor kitten as he did. With the assistance of his friend, the carpenter's son, he—But no, I will not tell, for I am firmly convinced that the very mention of evil begets evil. Such is man; moulded perhaps after the Divine image in some respects, he has in his composition quite as much of his brother beasts as of divinity. Curious lord of creation! As if there were not enough misery in the world as it is, he must needs go out of his way to torture kittens.

In this crisis of her life Frida found two friends, absolutely devoted and sympathetic: Helene and her husband. They, more than anybody, helped her through those first sad weeks. How mistaken the girls had been when they thought Helene worldly and heartless. My little flirt was then, and has proved herself through life, the most steadfast and reliable of us all. Her two brothers, the chubby boys, were now students at the Leipsic University, qualifying themselves for future town-councillorships and civic honours, coupled, I presume, with some German substitute for turtle soup.

Frida spent much of her time in the congenial atmosphere of my parents' house. We had always been devoted to her; how much more now! She loved music, and that, with us, was a sort of staple commodity to be found as surely as the daily bread. It was not an easy task to divert her thoughts from her trouble. All her girlish brightness had vanished, and she seemed, without a warning, to have had womanhood, suffering womanhood, thrust upon her. But she loved to be soothed by music, and more than once I remember my father improvising strains of consolation on his grand Erard, that seemed to go straight to her heart and strengthen her.

"Will you sit for me, Frida?" I asked one evening. "I should like to draw a portrait of you."

I had known Frida for four or five years, and had never asked her to sit, so the question surprised her, and it startled my mother, who was seated at the other end of the drawing-room on a little raised platform, surrounded by palms and a variety of plants with curiously shaped and fancifully speckled leaves. Her spinning-wheel, that had been going round with the regularity of clockwork, suddenly stopped—perhaps the thread had snapped. Catching my eye she reproachfully signalled behind Frida's back: "How can you, my dear? Surely this is not the time to use the poor girl as a model?" Frida evidently thought so too; she was at a loss for an answer, and there was an awkward silence. For an instant I wished I had not spoken; my request, I felt, was really ill timed; but, once out, I adhered to it, insisting, "Do, Frida; if nothing else, it will keep me out of mischief this evening."

She knew the thought of mischief was for from my mind, and she simply answered:

"Very well, Felix, if you wish it, I will sit." And with that she gave me an encouraging look.

I was anxious to get her to sit, for a picture of that girl in her sadness had gradually been ripening in my mind; it was so complete that it seemed only to want putting down, and no more difficult of accomplishment than the writing out of any lines that I might have learnt by heart. It was a case of "Don't begin till it's finished." That I have often since found a good maxim, but one not so easily lived up to. The picture, then, such as I had conceived it, I was wedded to, for better or for worse. I must draw her all but full-face. The light from above, and slightly from the left, will model and bring out the delicate beauty of her features. It was all ready to be transcribed: the smooth hair with the black ribbon tied in a large symmetrical bow on the top of the head, the plain dress, the background, and, above all, that expression, reflecting the yearnings of a poor chilled soul. On the surface, bewilderment, helplessness; beneath, a substratum of trust, of faith; and far below, hope, the spark of life that glimmers and glows on, even under mountains of despair.

We got the lamp that had served my purpose more than once, and the two candles, with the little special shades I had brought from Paris (I have them still), and Frida sat. Not once, but often, for the more I drew the more I was eager to pursue that will-o'-the-wisp, the realisation of an idea. Many a time I had to point my crayons, Conté No. 2, and to blacken the little paper stumps, the classical tortillons, before I could make up my mind to admit that I had finished.

And what was the result? Perhaps it was very poor; probably it was; certainly, if you like—but I don't want to know it if it was. I want to think it was good and true, like the knight that serves the lady. If it is an illusion, bear with me and let me keep it.

I had a grey mount put round it and a cheap little black frame; and then—may the gods forgive my presumption!—I felt as if the crayons and the humble tortillons might possibly have been working for the ends of Providence; I packed up the picture and sent it with all my love to the Magisterin.

"Try it," I said; "he may like it." And she tried it, and—to that poor little drawing of mine it was given to work a miracle—gradually, but surely, it rent asunder the veil that obscured my dear Magister's mental vision.

It was not till long afterwards that I learnt what had happened on that critical day. The Magisterin told me all as we sat on a stone bench in the garden at the back of their house. It was a hot day and the Magister was in shirt-sleeves, pruning and tending his rose-trees, perhaps removing the blight that had settled on some leaf to warp and waste it. For once in the way the good Hausfrau vouchsafed to stop knitting, and took my hand as she began:—

"Your drawing came in the morning, my Lixchen. It was as I had fancied it, for Frida had well described it in her letters. It touched me deeply, but I could not even give a stray thought to my own feelings. 'Try it,' you had said, and a wild rush of conflicting emotions quite overcame me. How should I try it? I wished you were there, you or Reclam, to tell me what would be best. Might it not give him a shock and do him harm? I never felt as utterly helpless as all that morning. I waited. At one o'clock he was lying on the sofa and resting; he seemed to slumber more peacefully than usual. You know he had the desk with the little Mendelssohn bust sent from Leipsic; it was the only thing he had asked for. I stood the drawing up against it. He would be sure to see it when he awoke.

"Then I sat down and prayed.

"He rose as usual and seated himself at the table. Hours passed. His face was turned away from me, but I could see his hands as they lay clasped before him. At last he got up and went to the bookcase. 'They have changed everything,' I heard him say to himself. 'Where is my Sophocles? Ah! to be sure, to be sure.'

"He sat down, but got up again directly, found paper and pen, and laid out everything, just as he used to do at the old writing-table before beginning work. He took up the pen, but he did not write; occasionally he passed the quill over his forehead. I dared not move or speak. Oh, how long the hours seemed!

"The daylight was fading. Martha came home with the cows, and old Günther made his rounds and bolted the front gate. After that all was quiet. Yes—all was quiet,—quite quiet for a while.

"Suddenly he rose. He turned round and stood still. He looked at me,—a look I knew. My heart beat fast and the clock ticked so loud.

"He looked, and, ach, mein Lixchen, he smiled at me, just a little feeble smile, and an instant afterwards he rushed up to me and he burst into a flood of tears as he buried his face in my lap.

"'O Hannerl, my heart's treasure, tell me: Where is my Frida? Why is she not with me?'"

The dear old Magisterin could say no more; tears of gratitude choked her voice. I pressed her hand with my right, and with my left hand I brushed away something that had got between my eyelashes.

CHAPTER III

LEIPSIC IN 1847 AND 1848—MENDELSSOHN'S DEATH

that first year of my stay in Leipsic, when all our interests seemed to centre in the friend we were to lose so soon.

At all times I was proud of my godfather, inordinately so, perhaps, when conversation turned on the great kindness which Goethe had lavished on his young friend Felix. To know a man who had known Goethe seemed to me like knowing a man who had known Shakespeare, and I was accordingly proud of my godfather. It is not surprising that Goethe, the great dissector of human nature, should, with a few masterly touches, have portrayed the boy of twelve, and forecast the character of the man. "You know," he said to his friend Rellstab, "the doctrine of temperaments; every one has four in his composition, only in different proportions. Well, this boy, I should say, possesses the smallest possible modicum of phlegm, and the maximum of the opposite quality." Whatever that "opposite quality" was which Goethe had in his mind, it was one which kept Mendelssohn on the alert; it was the very essence of life that he was drawing on, alas! too prodigally.

Thus, of his own compositions he says in a letter to my father: "How I am to set about writing a calm and quiet piece (as you advised me to do last spring) I really do not know. All that passes through my head in the shape of pianoforte music is about as calm and quiet as Cheapside; and when I sit down to start improvising ever so quietly, it is of no use—by degrees I fall back into the old ways."

But if Goethe noted the boy's extreme sensibility, he also appreciated his sound intellect. "He is so clear-headed about his own subjects," he says, "that I must learn a great deal from him." And Mendelssohn relates how, seated at the piano, he familiarises the poet with the work of Beethoven, how the grand old man is overwhelmed by the beauties and mysteries revealed, and sits all the while in a dark corner, like a Jupiter Tonans, with his eyes flashing fire. "I felt," he says, "that this was the very Goethe of whom people will one day declare that he is not at all one person, but is made up of several smaller Goethes."

The house we lived in stood in its own grounds, and very picturesque they were; some parts delightfully kept, others still more delightfully neglected. Wild tangles blocked disused paths; weeds and creepers climbed up the legs of classical statues, and wound round their arms when they had any. There was a Kiosk too, a little museum in which had been collected relics of the great battle which had raged furiously in those grounds. It was dedicated to Prince Poniatowski, who, during the disastrous retreat of the French army, was drowned with scores of other fugitives in that rapid little stream, the Elster, which flowed at the bottom of what was in my days called "Gerhard's Garten," the same stream in which I now used to take my daily swim.

There were only two houses in that "Garten." In one of them lived the Herr Legationsrath Gerhard, our landlord, a personal friend of the great Goethe, and himself a gifted poet, and so good a scholar, that he was able to make an admirable translation of Burns's poems. The good people of Leipsic appreciated his talents, but were very angry with him because he was unmistakably a poet with an eye to business, and he charged five neugroschen (sixpence) for admission to the historical site and to the Poniatowski Kiosk.