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The letters addressed by Felix Mendelssohn to my father came into my possession in 1870. After Mendelssohn’s death, my father had carefully arranged them in a special manuscript book, and had supplemented them with an index of the contents and a table showing the dates of the principal events in the life of his departed friend.

If I have abstained from giving publicity to these letters for so long a time, it is because I thought such delay was in accordance with the wishes of both writers. Many passages occur in which prominent musicians of those days are unreservedly criticised—passages which I felt as little authorized to suppress as to publish during the lifetime of those alluded to. I trust they will be none the less interesting now that time has judged between the critics and those criticised. Nor did I feel justified in omitting passages that may prove of less interest to the general public than to a smaller circle; for they truly depict the warm friendship which, in the course of years, ripened between Mendelssohn and Moscheles, and they are thoroughly characteristic of the bright and genial way in which Mendelssohn would express his personal feelings.

For a copy of my father’s letters to Mendelssohn, I am indebted to Prof. Carl Mendelssohn, of Freiburg, the eldest son of the composer. From these I have made extracts, or embodied their substance in a commentary, where it seemed necessary to explain what Mendelssohn had written. To give them in full I deemed undesirable, so much of similar subject-matter from the pen of my father having already been made public, notably in the “Life of Moscheles,” edited by my mother. This biography is chiefly compiled from diaries extending over a period of nearly sixty years, and faithfully reflecting his impressions on the manifold incidents of his artistic career.

The letters addressed by Mendelssohn to my mother could, however, not be omitted, although an English version of most of these appeared in print some years ago. They accompany the letters to my father in chronological order, and bear testimony to the warm regard which Mendelssohn entertained for her, and which she so fully reciprocated. Although only five years his senior, she was well fitted to be his guide and Mentor on his entrance into London society; and he, on his side, was always ready to take advice and friendly hints from his “grandmother,” as she would call herself. Since that time half a century has gone by. She has become a grandmother and a great-grandmother, surrounded by a bevy of great-grandchildren; and now, in her eighty-third year, she is still with us, active in mind and body, and, while cherishing the memories of the past, ever ready to share in the joys and to join in the aspirations of the present. And when she looks back on the long list of departed friends, no figure stands out more brightly in her memory than that of Mendelssohn; and we all, young or old, love to listen when she talks of him.

I too have my recollections of him—juvenile impressions, to be sure, for I was not fifteen when he died; but none the less firmly are they imprinted on my mind. Nor could it be otherwise. From earliest childhood, I looked upon him as my parents’ dearest friend and my own specially dear godfather, whose attention I had a right to monopolize, whenever I thought my turn had come. I recollect waiting for that turn more than once, while he was sitting at the piano with my father. When it came, I had every reason to enjoy it. He really was a rare playfellow, a delightful companion, not likely to be forgotten. A certain race across the Regent’s Park; the tennis ball thrown into immeasurable space; that pitched battle of snowballs, which appeared to me second to none in the annals of warfare; his improvisation of a funeral march, to which I enacted the part and exemplified the throes of the dying hero—all seem but things of yesterday. And then the drawing of that troublesome hatchet!—to this day I am grateful to him for helping me with that curve I could not get right. In fact, whether it was play or lessons, my drawing or my Latin, he always took the most lively interest in everything concerning me and my first steps along the path of life—the thorny path, I might add; for such it was on those occasions when it led me away from the drawing-room in which he was the ever-attractive centre—when the hour struck which, according to cruel practice, gave the signal for my discreet retirement. It is, however, gratifying to me to remember that I occasionally proved refractory. One evening, in particular, I successfully resisted, when Mendelssohn and my father were just sitting down to the piano to improvise as only they could, playing together or alternately, and pouring forth a never-failing stream of musical ideas. A subject once 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 sparkling eye, his air of triumph, on that evening when he had succeeded in twisting a subject from a composition of his own into a Moscheles theme, while Moscheles was obliged to second him in the bass. But not for long. “Stop a minute!” said the next few chords that Moscheles struck. “There I have you; this time you have taken the bait.” Soon they would seem to be again fraternizing 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.

Bright and enjoyable as were such performances, they were by no means the only ones that impressed me. In my father’s house there used to be a great deal of music-making. “To make music” (Musikmachen) is a German expression that covers a vast area of artistic ground. I should say it meant: “To perform music, for the love of music.” That is certainly how it was understood by the select little circle of musicians which gathered round the piano in London, and later on in the Leipzig home. Their motto was that which stood inscribed over the orchestra in the Gewandhaus: “Res severa est verum gaudium.” High art to them was truly a source of eternal joy. As I write now, I know full well that I was born under a happy constellation; it was a happy name that Mendelssohn had given me, and Berlioz was not wrong when, quoting the line of Horace, he wrote in my album: “Donec eris Felix, multos numerabis amicos” (As long as you are Felix, you will number many friends). But in those days the fact that I was enjoying special privileges scarcely dawned upon me. It was all a matter of course; to be sure, Mendelssohn or Liszt, the Schumanns or Joachim, would come in and make music, and I would listen devoutly enough many a time; but then, again, I could not always follow my inclinations. There were my Latin and Greek exercises to be done by to-morrow; and when such was the case, I might or might not listen to what was going on in the next room, even if it happened that Mendelssohn was playing and singing some new numbers just composed for the “Elijah.”

The mention of my exercises reminds me of an incident truly characteristic of Mendelssohn. It was on the evening of the 8th of October, 1847, memorable to me as being the last I passed in his house. He, Rietz, David, and my father had been playing much classical music. In the course of an animated conversation which followed, some knotty art-question arose and led to a lively discussion. Each of the authorities present was warmly defending his own opinion, and there seemed little prospect of an immediate agreement, when Mendelssohn, suddenly interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence, turned on his heel and startled me with the unexpected question: “What is the aoristus primus of τὑπτω, Felix?” Quickly recovering from my surprise, I gave the answer. “Good!” said he; and off we went to supper, the knotty point being thereby promptly settled.

But the sounds of mirth, as the chords of harmony, were soon to be silenced. On the following day, the 9th of October, Mendelssohn was struck down by the illness that proved fatal. He died on the 4th of November.

Shortly afterwards I spent many an hour in the house that had been his. Cécile Mendelssohn, his widow, carried her heavy burden with dignity and resignation. The door of his study she kept locked. “Not a pen, not a paper,” she says, in a letter to my father, “could I bring myself to move from its place; and daily I admire in him that love of order which, during his lifetime, you have so often noticed. That room must remain, for a short time, my sanctuary—those things, that music, my secret treasure.”

It was with feelings of deep emotion that I entered that sanctuary, when shortly afterwards Cécile Mendelssohn opened its door for me. I possessed already much love for the study of painting; and now I had asked and obtained permission to make a water-color drawing of that room, while all yet stood as the master and friend had left it. There, on the right, was the little old-fashioned piano, on which he had composed so many of his great works; near the window was the writing-desk he used to stand at. On the walls hung water-colors by his own hand—Swiss landscapes and others; to the left, on the bookcases containing his valuable musical library, stood the busts of Goethe and Bach; on the writing-table, the pen which but the other day was wet, along with this or that object which I had so recently seen in his hand. And as I sat working, doubts and misgivings arose in my mind. Was it not profanation, I thought, to intrude with my petty attempt at painting, where all was hushed in the silence of death? But I worked on, and my thoughts were lost in my first great sorrow. Cécile Mendelssohn came and went. Not a sigh, not a murmur, escaped her lips.

But enough. I close this hasty sketch, although yet many a color and form arise in my memory to complete it. Sufficient has been said in these pages, if between the lines there stands to read, that in editing and translating the following correspondence I have been performing a pleasant duty and a labor of love, and that I feel happy to share with a larger circle of Mendelssohn’s friends and admirers the possession of those letters which have so long been dear to me.

Felix Moscheles.

London, May, 1888.