Selected letters of Mendelssohn/Letter 4
TO HIS SISTERS.
Dear Sisters,—You know how much I hate giving good advice to people a thousand miles and fourteen days away, but for once I will do it. It is because I think you are making the same mistake that I did once. I never in my life knew our father write in such an irritable tone as since I have been in Rome, and I want to ask you if you couldn’t find some household medicine to cure this a little? I mean just that sort of concession by which you might put the side of things that father likes to see more in the front than the other;—keep silent on topics which vex him, say “unpleasant” instead of “shameful,” or “pretty good” instead of “delightful.” It’s sometimes a wonderful help, and I should like to whisper to you it might be useful just now. For, apart from the great affairs of politics, his ill-humour seems to me to come from much the same source as it did before, when I began to be a musician on my own account, and father’s temper became very troubled so that he used to rail against Beethoven and fantastical people, often disturbing and setting me in revolt. And just at that time something fresh happened which put him out, and, if I remember right, made him really anxious; and so long as I stood up for Beethoven and exalted him above everybody the trouble only grew worse, and once, I believe, I was sent out of the room. But presently it struck me that it was possible to say a great many true things, and yet not precisely those which father could not endure to hear, and then things went on better and came quite right in the end. Perhaps you, too, have forgotten a little how needful it is to give way now and then. Father thinks himself older and more excitable than, thank God, he really is, and it is our part to make concessions to him, be the right ever so much on our side, just as he has so often yielded to us. So praise a little the things he likes, and don’t find fault with the old-fashioned established things that are rooted in his heart. And only praise novelties when they have acquired some sort of acceptance in the world, for till then it can only be a question of taste. I should like to see you draw father prettily into your circle and amuse him; in short, try to smooth away the difficulties, and remember that, after all, travelled man of the world as I am, of course, I have never yet found a family that, taking account of all our weaknesses and vexations and faults, has been so happy as we have up till now.
Don’t answer this, for your letter would not reach me for four weeks, and then something else would have happened. Finally, if it is stupid of me to write this, I don’t intend to take a scolding from you; and if I am right, you had better follow my good advice.
The other day we young people went to Albano. We set out early in the brightest of weather; the road went beneath the great aqueduct with its dark-brown masses sharply defined against the clear sky, so to Fraseati, from there to the monastery of Grottaferrata, where there are beautiful frescoes by Domenichino, then to Marino which lies very picturesquely on a hillside, and so we came to Castel Gandolfo on the lake. All these landscapes repeat the first impression I had of Italy, not so much of something striking or startlingly beautiful, as one imagines them, but with a wonderful beneficent and calming effect. They are pictures in which the gentle outlines make a very charming whole full of fine points of shading and light. And here I must sing the praises of my monks who are always there to accentuate the picture and give it tone with all their various draperies, their quiet devotional carriage and their shadowlike look. From Castel Gandolfo to Albano there goes a charming shady alley of evergreen oaks sloping down to the lake, and along it goes a perpetual fluttering of all sorts of monks, who enliven the scene, or perhaps bring out its loneliness. By the town a pair of begging friars were marching along, then came a troop of young Jesuits, presently we spied a young and elegant ecclesiastic lying among the bushes with a book, and next it was a pair of monks in the forest frightening off the birds with their flintlocks, and then we arrived at a monastery encircled by a crowd of small chapels. Here all was quiet for a time, but there came out a stupid-looking, dirty Capuchin loaded with heavy bouquets of flowers, which he proceeded to hang on the crucifixes all about, kneeling to each before adorning it. Going further, we met two aged prelates deep in an exciting conversation, and soon we heard the vesper bell sounding at Albano. Here on the highest point of the mountains there stands a convent of the Passionists. Here they are only allowed to speak during one hour of the day, and are bound to employ their thoughts perpetually with the story of the Passion.
It was a curious sight in Albano to meet among all the girls with pitchers on their heads and people selling flowers and vegetables, one of these coal-black silent monks, who was turning his steps back to Mont Cavo. They have taken all the beautiful region in possession, and add a strange melancholy ground-tone to all the brilliancy and freedom and the perpetual blitheness there is in Nature here. It is as though the people required a sort of counterpoise to all that. But it is no affair of mine, and indeed, I need no contrast myself to enjoy what one has here.