Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 2
TO HIS FAMILY.
I have just received your very welcome letter written on Ascension Day, and must yield to the temptation to send you another answer from here. To you, dear Fanny, I am just about to send the copy of my symphony, which I am having copied here and sent to Leipsic (where, perhaps, it will be performed), with strict injunctions that one copy shall be forwarded you as soon as possible. Please collect votes for a title to it, which I have to choose. “Reformation Symphony,” “Confession Symphony,” “Symphony for a Church Festival,” “Child’s Symphony,” or what you like; only write to me, and, in place of all these dull suggestions, give me a bright one; still I should like to hear the stupid ones that are brought to light by the occasion. Yesterday evening I was at a party at Goethe’s, and played alone the whole evening: a concert piece, “Aufforderung,” and “Polonaise” in C by Weber, three foreign pieces, Scotch sonatas. At ten o’clock came the end, but, of course, I stopped for the frivolities, dancing, singing, and so on, till twelve. I am living like a very pagan. The old man always goes to his room at nine, and when he has gone we dance furiously, and as yet have never broken up before midnight.
To-morrow my portrait will be ready; it will be a large dark drawing in chalks, and a very good likeness, only it makes me look very bearish. Goethe is so friendly and affectionate with me that I know not how to thank him or how to deserve his kindness. In the morning I have to play the piano to him for an hour, pieces from all the great composers arranged in the order of dates, and then explain to him how music has progressed in their hands; meanwhile he sits in a dark corner, like a Jupiter Tonans, and his old eyes flash fire. About Beethoven he was indifferent. But I said he must endure some, and played him the first movement of the symphony in C minor. It affected him very strangely. First he said, “That does not touch one at all, it only astonishes one.” Then he murmured to himself, and said presently, “It is very great, it is wild; it seems as though the house were falling; what must it be with the whole orchestra!” And at dinner, in the middle of a conversation about something else, he began again on the same theme. You know already I dine with him every day, and at those times he asks me searching questions, and after dinner grows so gay and sympathetic that we generally sit together for an hour alone in the room, while he talks without a pause. It is a very especial joy when he shows me his engravings and talks critically about them, or pronounces judgment on Hernani or Lamartine’s Elegies, or on theatrical matters, or on pretty girls. On several evenings he has invited guests, which is very rare with him now, so that it is long since most of the people have seen him. Then I have to play a good deal, and he makes me compliments before the company, “stupendous” being his favourite expression. To-day he invited a bevy of Weimar beauties for my delight, for “I ought to live with young people.” If I meet him in such company he says to me, “Dear heart, you must go to the ladies and behave prettily.” I displayed my savoir vivre by asking yesterday if, perhaps, I did not come there too often? Then he growled rather to Ottilie, who put the question, and said, on the contrary, he wanted more talk with me, for I quite understood my business, and he had a great deal to learn from me. I felt twice my height when Ottilie repeated that to me, and when he said it again himself, and told me there was much in his spirit that I must light up for him. I said just, “Oh, yes,” and thought to myself: “this is an honour never to be forgotten.” More often it is the other way about!