Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 28
TO HIS MOTHER.
Dear Little Mother,—Do you still remember our living here twenty years ago in the pleasant inn under the great walnut-trees with the fair young hostess? Ten years back I was here again, and they refused me quarters. I looked too disreputable after my journey on foot, and that, I think, was the only annoyance I had on all that journey. Now we are living here again, this time as people who are settled in life. The Jungfrau with its silver horns still shapes itself as steeply and delicately as ever in the air; the mountain looks fresh still, but the hostess is grown quite old, and it was only by her unchanged deportment I could recognise her. I have been sketching the walnut-trees, far better than before, no doubt, but far worse than I know it really ought to be. The Unterseen post brings us the letters as it used; but there are many new houses. The Aar ripples and murmurs as quickly and quietly; and the water is as green as ever; “time is, time was, time is passed.” Really, I have little more to write; description, of Swiss journeyings are neither here nor there, and instead of my old diary, I now fall to sketching like one possessed. All day long I sit down before a mountain and try to copy its outlines, and never leave oft till the drawing is hopelessly spoilt; my great idea is to get at least one landscape daily into my book…. It is a strange thing with the mountains here as the greatest books, they seem to change with oneself, and display a new aspect of themselves to one’s own altered temperament, and always rise above one in the same glory. Now that I come to see them with my wife, my whole impression is quite different from what it was; then I cared for nothing but to rush up every craggy peak and green meadow-slope, and now I should like to stop in every place, and live there quietly for months. I can give no assurance that some fine spring I won’t pack off here with all my household goods, and never return to the North till the very last leaves are off the trees……