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 [Illustration]

 [Illustration: _Painting by N. M. Price._  FIRST WALPURGIS NIGHT.
   "Through the night-gloom lead and follow
         In and out each rocky hollow."]




A DAY WITH FELIX
MENDELSSOHN
BARTHOLDY

BY GEORGE SAMPSON


HODDER & STOUGHTON


 _In the same Series._
 _Beethoven._
 _Schubert._




A DAY WITH MENDELSSOHN.


During the year 1840 I visited Leipzig with letters of introduction from
Herr Klingemann of the Hanoverian Legation in London. I was a singer,
young, enthusiastic, and eager--as some singers unfortunately are
not--to be a musician as well. Klingemann had many friends among the
famous German composers, because of his personal charm, and because his
simple verses had provided them with excellent material for the sweet
little songs the Germans love so well. I need scarcely say that the man
I most desired to meet in Leipzig was Mendelssohn; and so, armed
with Klingemann's letter, I eagerly went to his residence--a quiet,
well-appointed house near the Promenade. I was admitted without delay,
and shown into the composer's room. It was plainly a musician's
work-room, yet it had a note of elegance that surprised me. Musicians
are not a tidy race; but here there was none of the admired disorder
that one instinctively associates with an artist's sanctum. There was no
litter. The well-used pianoforte could be approached without circuitous
negotiation of a rampart of books and papers, and the chairs were free
from encumbrances. On a table stood some large sketch-books, one open
at a page containing an excellent landscape drawing; and other spirited
sketches hung framed upon the walls. The abundant music paper was perhaps
the most strangely tidy feature of the room, for the exquisitely neat
notation that covered it suggested the work of a careful copyist rather
than the original hand of a composer. I could not refrain from looking
at one piece. It was a very short and very simple Adagio cantabile in
the Key of F for a solo pianoforte. It appealed at once to me as a
singer, for its quiet, unaffected melody seemed made to be sung rather
than to be played. The "cantabile" of its heading was superfluous--it
was a Song without Words, evidently one of a new set, for I knew it was
none of the old. But the sound of a footstep startled me and I guiltily
replaced the sheet. The door opened, and I was warmly greeted in
excellent English by the man who entered. I had no need to be told that
it was Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy himself.

Nature is strangely freakish in her choice of instruments for noble
purposes. Sometimes the delicate spirit of creative genius is housed in
a veritable tenement of clay, so that what is within seems ever at war
with what is without. At times the antagonism is more dreadful still,
and the artist-soul is sent to dwell in the body of a beast, coarse
in speech and habit, ignorant and dull in mind, vile and unclean in
thought. But sometimes Nature is generous, and makes the body itself an
expression of the informing spirit. Mendelssohn was one of these almost
rare instances. In him, artist and man were like a beautiful picture
appropriately framed. He was then thirty-one. In figure he was slim and
rather below the middle height, and he moved with the easy grace of
an accomplished dancer. Masses of long dark hair crowned his finely
chiselled face; but what I noticed first and last was the pair of
lustrous, dark brown eyes that glowed and dilated with every deep
emotion. He had the quiet, assured manner of a master; yet I was not so
instantly conscious of that, as of an air of reverence and benignity,
which, combined with the somewhat Oriental tendency of feature and
colour, made his whole personality suggest that of a young poet-prophet
of Israel.

"So," he said, his English gaining piquancy from his slight lisp, "you
come from England--from dear England. I love your country greatly. It
has fog, and it is dark, too, for the sun forgets to shine at times;
but it is beautiful--like a picture, and when it smiles, what land is
sweeter?"

"You have many admirers in England, sir," I replied; "perhaps I may
rather say you have many friends there."

"Yes," he said, with a bright smile, "call them friends, for I am a
friend to all England. Even in the glowing sun of Italy I have thought
with pleasure of your dear, smoky London, which seems to wrap itself
round one like a friendly cloak. It was England that gave me my first
recognition as a serious musician, when Berlin was merely inclined to
think that I was an interesting young prodigy with musical gifts that
were very amusing in a young person of means."

"You have seen much of England, have you not, sir?" I asked.

"A great deal," he replied, "and of Scotland and Wales, too. I have
heard the Highland pipers in Edinburgh, and I have stood in Queen Mary's
tragic palace of Holyrood. Yes, and I have been among the beautiful
hills that the great Sir Walter has described so wonderfully."

"And," I added, "music-lovers do not need to be told that you have also
penetrated

 'The silence of the seas
  Among the farthest Hebrides.'"

"Ah!" he said, smiling, "you like my Overture, then?"

I hastened to assure him that I admired it greatly; and he continued,
with glowing eyes: "What a wonder is the Fingal's Cave--that vast
cathedral of the seas, with its dark, lapping waters within, and the
brightness of the gleaming waves outside!"

Almost instinctively he sat down at the piano, and began to play, as
if his feelings must express themselves in tones rather than words. His
playing was most remarkable for its orchestral quality. Unsuspected
power lay in those delicate hands, for at will they seemed able to draw
from the piano a full orchestral volume, and