Chapter 8

"On Friday afternoon, the 14th of May, 1847, Madame Hensel, the beloved sister Fanny, to whom, from earliest infancy, Felix, the child, the boy, the man, had committed every secret of his beautiful art life; the kindred spirit, with whom he had shared his every dream before his first attempt to translate it into sound; the faithful friend who had been more to him than any other member of the happy circle in the Leipziger Strasse, of which, from first to last, she was the very life and soul,--Fanny Hensel, the sister, the artist, the poet, while conducting a rehearsal of the music for the next bright Sunday gathering, was suddenly seized with paralysis; suffered her hands to fall powerless from the piano at which she had so often presided; and, an hour before midnight, was called away to join the beloved parents whose death had been as sudden and painless as her own. She had hoped and prayed that she, too, might pass away as they had done, and her prayer was granted; to her exceeding gain, but to the endless grief of the brother who had loved her as himself. On Sunday morning, in place of the piano, a coffin, covered with flowers, stood in the well-known hall in the Garden House. And the life, of which that Garden House had so long been the cherished home, became henceforth a memory of the past."

An English lady, Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, known not only as a writer, but as an ardent advocate of woman suffrage, has in one of her books written a chapter which she entitles "A Genius Wasted--Fanny Mendelssohn." She says: "One of the saddest instances with which the world has ever become acquainted, of gifts repressed and faculties wasted because of the sex of their possessor, is that of Fanny Mendelssohn, the sister of the famous composer, Felix Mendelssohn. With natural powers apparently fully as great as her brother's, Fanny was not, indeed, denied all opportunity of cultivating them, but was effectually prevented from utilising them, and, therefore, from fully developing her genius or from displaying its force."

These two Jewish children were members of a family in which both intellect, in its widest meaning, and musical talent, specifically, were hereditary. Their mother began to teach music both to the boy and the girl in their early years. Fanny, who was five years older than her brother, was naturally more advanced than he; and when the two children were allowed to show off their powers as pianists, it was Fanny who always won the most applause. They passed from their mother's elementary tuition to that of superior teachers, L. Berger and afterward Zeiter, and the former of these indicated Fanny as being, in his opinion, the future great musician.

But a father and mother with a maiden of genius on their hands were like a hen whose duckling takes to the water. The difference of the training of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, as distinguished from their musical education, is effectually indicated by the following letter from their father to Fanny, written when she was fourteen years old. After referring in terms of satisfaction to the compositions of both his son and daughter, Abraham Mendelssohn proceeded to say to the latter of his two gifted children:

"What you wrote to me about your musical occupations, with reference to and in comparison with Felix, was both rightly thought and expressed. Music will, perhaps, become _his_ profession (Felix was at this time only nine years old. Fanny was fourteen), whilst for _you_ it can and must be only an ornament, never the root of your being and doing. We may, therefore, pardon him some ambition and desire to be acknowledged in a pursuit which appears to him important, while it does you credit that you have always shown yourself good and sensible in these matters; and your very joy at the praise he earns proves that you might, in his place, have merited equal approval. Remain true to these sentiments and to this line of conduct; they are feminine, and only what is truly feminine is an ornament to your sex."

Ten more precious years of youth, the years of training and of hope, passed by; the different ideal was persistently forced by the parents upon the two, although Fanny, more fortunate than many girls, was, nevertheless, allowed to study her art as well as she could in intervals of housekeeping. On her twenty-third birthday, her father again felt it necessary to check his gifted daughter in her pursuit of her art. He wrote her a letter in which he praised her conduct in the household.

"However," he added, "you must still improve. You must become still more steady and collected, and prepare more earnestly and eagerly for your real calling, the _only_ calling of a woman,--I mean the state of a housewife. Women have a difficult task; the constant occupation with apparent trifles, the interception of each drop of rain, that it may not evaporate, but be conducted into the right channel, the unremitting attention to every detail,--all these are the weighty duties of a woman."

The time came, at length, for Fanny Mendelssohn to love,--that crisis came which stimulates a man in his work, and nerves him to fresh efforts to make himself successful, that he may be worthy and able to establish a home. But to a woman this brings, only too often, yet another heavy barrier in the way of success in any art or occupation. So it was to Fanny Mendelssohn.

"Hensel was at first dreadfully jealous . . . even of Fanny's art. . . . Only _her_ letters have been preserved. With characteristic energy she refuses to sacrifice her brother to the jealousy with which Hensel, in the beginning, regards her love for him, but she consents to give up her friends, and even her music. . . . She never, in her thoughts, loses sight of that letter of her father's, in which he calls the vocation of a housewife the only true aim and study of a young woman, and in thinking of the man of her choice she earnestly devotes herself to this aim."

What reprobation and what just indignation would be showered upon a woman who should try to make the man of her choice give up his art, to attend to her private comforts!

Although Fanny's good father and mother, yielding to the prejudices of their day, had struggled to make housekeeping her main interest, and music only her recreation, yet they had not denied her musical genius a complete education. Fanny was not only taught to play the piano in her childhood, in company with Felix, but she was also allowed to receive lessons in thorough bass and the theory of composition. She was thus rendered capable of the expression of her musical talents; and in between her household duties, after, as well as before she became a wife and mother, she often found time to compose. Much of what she wrote was of so high a character that her brother Felix felt no hesitation in putting it forth to the world as _his_ own composition! It is, apparently, impossible to discover which, amongst the works published as those of Mendelssohn, were really those of his sister; but references now and again occur in his private letters to the fact, which thereby becomes incontrovertible, that he has claimed before the public compositions which are hers exclusively. The most famous of such passages is one that has became widely known in consequence of its quotation in Sir Theodore Martin's "Life of the Prince Consort." Mendelssohn is telling of his visit to the queen, at Buckingham Palace, in 1842.

"The queen said she was very fond of singing my published songs. 'You should sing one to him,' said Prince Albert, and after a little begging she said she would. And what did she choose? 'Schöner und schöner schmuckt sich;' sang it quite charmingly, in strict time and tune, and with very good execution. Then I was obliged to confess that Fanny had written that song (which I found very hard, but pride must have a fall), and to beg her to sing one of my own also."

As her father had kept her from appearing before the public when she was young, so her brother strenuously opposed her wish to publish her work in her maturity. In the spring of 1837, Fanny, in defiance of him, did issue one song with her own name to it. It had a great success, and Felix himself graciously wrote to her after it had been performed at a concert; "I thank you, in the name of the public, for publishing it against my wish." Fanny's husband urged her to follow up this success by issuing more of her works. "Her mother was of the same opinion, and begged Felix to persuade Fanny to publish. The success had not altered Felix's views, however, and he declined to persuade his sister; and Fanny, who had herself no desire to appear in print, readily gave up the idea."

Felix's influence sufficed to debar Fanny from all further attempt to obtain recognition, after that one song, until the year 1846, when she was forty-one years old. Then the persuasions of another musical friend led her to publish a small selection of her best work. "Felix had not altered his views, and it went against his wishes when he heard that she had made up her mind to publish. Some time passed before he wrote on the subject at all, but on August 14th the following entry appears in her diary: 'At last Felix has written, and given me his professional blessing in the kindest manner. I know that he is not satisfied in his heart of hearts, but I am glad he has said a kind word to me about it.'"

This little volume, too, was warmly received. Encouraged by the success of her published work,--delayed till so sadly late in life,--tasting the stimulating elixir of appreciation, and knowing the fascinating encouragement of public applause, she now began composition on a larger scale than anything she had before attempted. "I am working a good deal," she wrote, "and feel that I get on,--a consciousness which, added to the glorious weather, gives me a feeling of content and happiness such as I have, perhaps, never before experienced."

Alas! it came too late. In the spring of the next year, Fanny Mendelssohn died, aged forty-two. Her grand playing, "which made people afraid to perform in her presence," went down with her into the silence of her grave; and the musical genius and originality which should have left a lasting mark in the world faded, too, leaving but a few small tokens of what might have been.

The "Songs without Words" are more closely associated with Mendelssohn than any other of his works. The composer considered that music is more definite than words, and these lovely songs had as exact an intention as those which were written to accompany poetry. It was in a letter of Fanny Mendelssohn's, dated December 8, 1828, that their title first appeared, and they are referred to as if Mendelssohn had but lately begun to write them. On the day after his arrival in London, April 24, 1832, he played the first six to Moscheles. The earliest one is No. 2, of Book 2, which Felix sent to his sister Fanny in 1830. "In a Gondola," the last song in the first book, is said to be the earliest of the six, in date. A few only were given titles by the composer. Six books, each containing six songs, were published during his life, and the seventh and eighth after his early death.

We reproduce the charming picture by a German painter, which, entitled "Song without Words," is said to represent the young Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny seated at the piano, side by side. Poetzelberger's other works, which he has named "Con Amore," "Old Songs," and "Trifling," are also distinguished by their graceful sentiment.

CHOPIN.

Liszt, the friend and rival of Chopin, wrote a biography of him which may almost be ranked among the curiosities of literature. Liszt was a genius, but not a good biographer, and his life of Chopin is largely a rhapsody.

For instance, Liszt writes thus about Chopin's short-lived passion for the singer Constantia Gladkowska. "The tempest, which, in one of its sudden gusts, tore Chopin from his native soil, like a bird dreamy and abstracted, surprised by the storm, upon the branches of a foreign tree, sundered the ties of this first love and robbed the exile of a faithful and devoted wife, as well as disinherited him of a country." And the same tendency to "gush" is here again apparent. "Chopin," he says, "could easily read the hearts which were attracted to him by friendship and the grace of his youth, and thus was enabled early to learn of what a strange mixture of leaven and cream of roses, of gunpowder and tears of angels, the poetic ideal of his nation is formed. When his wandering fingers ran over the keys, suddenly touching some moving chords, he could see how the furtive tears coursed down the cheeks of the loving girl, or the young, neglected wife; how they moistened the eyes of the young man, enamoured of and eager for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty asking him to play a simple prelude, then, softened by the tones, leaning her rounded arms upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while she suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of her lustrous eyes the song sung by her youthful heart?"

It has been asserted both by Liszt and others that Chopin owed his musical education to the generosity of Prince Anton Radziwill, but the statement is untrue. That wealthy and cultured nobleman was, however, always a warm friend and helpful patron of the great Polish pianist, who often visited the prince at his country-seat. Prince Radziwill was a musician himself,--a good singer and "cellist," and the composer of numerous pieces, among them being the first portions of Goethe's "Faust." To him Chopin dedicated his first trio for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello, published in 1833. Chopin seems to have passed a very pleasant time with the prince and his family, and, indeed, not to have been blind to the fascinations of the prince's charming daughters, one of whom was an excellent pianist. The prince himself was no mean performer on the violoncello, and he and Chopin played a good deal together. Writing from Antonin, Chopin says: "I have written during my stay here an _Alla Polacca_ with violoncello. It is nothing more than a brilliant salon piece, such as pleases ladies. I should like the Princess Wanda to practise it. She is only seventeen years of age, and very beautiful; it would be delightful to have the pleasure of placing her pretty fingers upon the keys." Chopin was a susceptible being and ever a victim to the latest impression, so it is not strange that the lovely Wanda was soon forgotten.

A countryman of Chopin's, the distinguished artist, Siemiradski, has produced a picture of the young pianist playing in the salon of Prince Radziwill, which itself convinces us of its truthfulness. The painter (born in 1843, and a pupil of Piloty) secured a wide renown through his painting of "The Living Torches of Nero." From a long list of notable pictures by Siemiradski, we select for mention "Phryne at Eleusis," "The Sword Dance," and "The Cremation of a Russian Chieftain in the Tenth Century."

Twenty years from the time at which Siemiradski has painted Chopin, the great pianist lay on his death-bed in Paris. "His sister never left him for a moment. His dearest friend and pupil, Gutmann, was also now constantly with him, and both friend and sister felt that the end was not far off. On the 15th of October, his friend, the Comtesse Delphine Potocka, arrived in Paris, having hastened from Nice, where she was at the time, directly she heard of the master's illness. No sooner was he made aware of her presence than he implored her to sing to him." Says Liszt; "Who could have ventured to oppose his wish? The piano was rolled to the door of his chamber, while with sobs in her voice and tears streaming down her cheeks his gifted countrywoman sang. She sang the famous 'Canticle to the Virgin,' which, it is said, once saved the life of Stradella. 'How beautiful it is!' he exclaimed. 'My God, how very beautiful! Again, again!' Though overwhelmed with emotion, the countess had the noble courage to comply with the last wish of a friend and compatriot. She again took a seat at the piano, and sang a hymn from Marcello. Chopin now feeling worse, everybody was seized with fright; by a spontaneous impulse all who were present threw themselves upon their knees--no one ventured to speak; the sacred silence was only broken by the voice of the singer floating, like a melody from heaven, above the sighs and sobs which formed its mournful earth accompaniment." Since the publication of Professor Niecks's biography, considerable doubt must be felt as to the accuracy of Liszt's statement touching upon what the lady sang; for he states that "Gutmann positively asserted that she sang a psalm by Marcello, and an air by Pergolesi, while Franchomme insisted on her having sung an air from Bellini's 'Beatrice di Tenda,' and that only once, and nothing else." We know that both the authors of these statements were present, whereas Liszt was not; but while that leaves no doubt as to the incorrectness of the abbé in this particular, it does not help us in deciding between the relative statements of the two witnesses. This, of course, is impossible, as there is nothing whatever to guide us to a trustworthy decision. To Professor Niecks, also, do we owe much of interest concerning these last hours of the master, inasmuch as he has brought to light much new testimony of a further witness, M. Gavard, who relates how, on the day following, Chopin called around him those friends who were with him in his apartment. To the Princess Czartoryska and Mlle. Gavard, he said, "You will play together, you will think of me, and I shall listen to you." Beckoning to Franchomme, he said to the princess, "I recommend Franchomme to you; you will play Mozart together, and I shall listen to you!" How well he was cared for, and how much devotion and tenderness were lavished upon him, we can judge from another letter of M. Gavard, quoted by Professor Niecks, in which he says: "In the back room lay the poor sufferer, tormented by fits of breathlessness, and only sitting in bed resting in the arms of a friend could he procure air for his oppressed lungs. It was Gutmann, the strongest amongst us, who knew best how to manage the patient, and who mostly thus supported him. At the head of his bed sat Princess Czartoryska; she never left him, guessing his most secret wishes, nursing him like a Sister of Mercy, with a serene countenance which did not betray her deep sorrow. Other friends gave a helping hand to relieve her,--every one according to his power; but most of them stayed in the two adjoining rooms. Every one had assumed a part; every one helped as much as he could,--one ran to the doctor's, to the apothecary; another introduced the persons asked for; a third shut the door on intruders.

"But, alas! the door was not to be shut upon the greatest of all intruders, and on the evening of the 16th of October the Abbé Alexander Jelowicki, the Polish priest, was sent for, as Chopin, saying that he had not confessed for many years, wished to do so now. After the confession was over, and the absolution pronounced, Chopin, embracing his confessor, exclaimed, 'Thanks! thanks to you, I shall not now die like a pig.' The same evening two doctors examined him. His difficulty in breathing now seemed intense; but on being asked whether he still suffered, he replied, 'No longer.' His face had already assumed the pure serenity of death, and every minute was expected to be the last. Just before the end--at two o'clock of the morning of the seventeenth--he drank some wine handed to him by Gutmann, who held the glass to his lips. '_Cher ami_!' he said, and, kissing his faithful pupil's hands, he died. 'He died as he had lived,' says Liszt, 'in loving.'"

Barrias has worthily painted the last scene in the life of Chopin. A native of Paris, where he was born in 1822, this artist has to his credit a long list of meritorious works which have secured him many honours. They include the "Exiles under Tiberius," in the Luxembourg, "The Death of Socrates," "Sappho," "Dante at Ravenna," "The Fairy of the Pearls," "The Sirens," "The Triumph of Venus," and "Camille Desmoulins at the Palais Royal," in addition to a number of important decorative works. The "Death of Chopin" was exhibited in 1885. A gold medal was bestowed upon Barrias at the Paris Exposition of 1889, when the artist was in his sixty-seventh year. The critic, Roger Ballu, said of him: "A painter of style, very careful of the dignity of his art, he has never made a compromise with the taste of the day."

MEYERBEER.

Among the chief mourners at Chopin's funeral was Meyerbeer, who, though German by birth and training, passed the most important years of his life in Paris, as did the gifted Pole. In our picture Hamman has represented the composer enthroned amid the characters of his chief operas, doubtless as real to him as creatures of flesh and blood.

In the foreground, at Meyerbeer's right hand, are seen Nelusko and Selika, from "L'Africaine," his last opera, which was not produced until the year after his death. "Vasco da Gama, the famous discoverer, is the betrothed lover of a maiden named Inez, the daughter of Don Diego, a Portuguese grandee. When the opera opens he is still at sea, and has not been heard of for years. Don Pedro, the president of the council, takes advantage of his absence to press his own suit for the hand of Inez, and obtains the king's sanction to his marriage on the ground that Vasco must have been lost at sea. At this moment the long-lost hero returns, accompanied by two swarthy slaves, Selika and Nelusko, whom he has brought home from a distant isle in the Indian Ocean. He recounts the wonders of the place, and entreats the government to send out a pioneer expedition to win an empire across the sea. His suggestions are rejected, and he himself, through the machinations of Don Pedro, is cast into prison. There he is tended by Selika, who loves her gentle captor passionately, and has need of all her regal authority--for in the distant island she was a queen--to prevent the jealous Nelusko from slaying him in his sleep. Inez now comes to the prison to announce to Vasco that she has purchased his liberty at the price of giving her hand to Don Pedro. In the next act Don Pedro, who has stolen a march on Vasco, is on his way to the African island, taking with him Inez and Selika. The steering of the vessel is entrusted to Nelusko. Vasco da Gama, who has fitted out a vessel at his own expense, overtakes Don Pedro in mid-ocean, and generously warns his rival of the treachery of Nelusko, who is steering the vessel upon the rocks of his native shore. Don Pedro's only reply is to order Vasco to be tied to the mast and shot, but before the sentence can be carried out, the vessel strikes upon the rocks, and the aborigines swarm over the sides. Selika, once more a queen, saves the lives of Vasco and Inez from the angry natives. In the next act the nuptials of Selika and Vasco are on the point of being celebrated, with great pomp, when the hero, who has throughout the opera wavered between the two women who love him, finally makes up his mind in favour of Inez. Selika thereupon magnanimously despatches them home in Vasco's ship, and poisons herself with the fragrance of the deadly manchineel tree."