move; and soon she became unconscious. Before midnight she was dead.
While she lay in her coffin, surrounded by flowers, her husband drew her likeness. It was one of the most perfect portraits he ever made, and it was his last. He resigned all his commissions and never again painted anything worthy of himself. The happiness and inspiration of his life were gone, and during his fifteen remaining years he was restless and unhappy, and devoted himself to politics, which he had formerly abhorred. He died at length of injuries received in saving a child from being run over.
Upon Felix, although he was in the full enjoyment of a happy household of his own, the blow fell with yet more crushing weight. He never recovered from it. He survived his sister only a year.
Fanny Hensel lies buried in the church-yard of the Holy Trinity at Berlin, between the brother and husband to whom she was so devoted.
It is to her son, Sebastian Hensel, that we owe the precious volume upon the Mendelssohn Family in which her story is given to the world. It is one of the most pleasing exhibitions of domestic happiness, ennobled by high feeling and great talent, ever given to the world.[1]
- ↑ The Mendelssohn Family. From Letters and Journals. By Sebastian Hensel. Translated by Carl Klingemann and an American Collaborator. 2 vols. Harper & Brothers, N. Y., 1882.
