Scherzo in E Minor
Below are two letters: the first written by Mendelssohn, and the second by Anne Taylor, both recalling the time which he spent with the Taylors on holiday in 1829.
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London : September 10, 1829.
. . . My stay at the Taylors' was one of those times of which I shall never lose the flowery memory, and I shall always recollect the meadows and woods, the brook with its pebbles and rustling sound; we have become friends, I think, and I am truly fond of the girls, and believe that they like me too, for we were very happy together. I owe them three of my best piano compositions. When the two younger sisters saw that I took the carnations and rose in earnest, and began to write music (of course in Susan's summer-house), the youngest came up with little yellow open bells in her hair, assuring me they were trumpets, and asking me whether I could not introduce them into the orchestra, as I had talked the other day of wanting new instruments ; .and when in the evening we danced to the miners' music and the trumpets were rather shrill, she gave it as her opinion that her trumpets would do better to dance to, so I wrote a dance for her but the yellow flower-bells supplied the music. And for the other sister I composed "The Rivulet," which had pleased us so much during our ride that we dismounted and sat down by it (I think I wrote about it to you). The last piece I believe is the best I have done in that way: it is so flowing and quiet, and drowsily simple, that I have played it to myself every day, and have got quite sentimental over it. I would send you the pieces, but as I hope to have my quartet finished by next post-day, and intend sending it you, and must bring home something new in December, I shall keep back my five pieces not fi lions,' as Rebecca calls them, but 'darlings' of mine. One of them I have not even got in manuscript. Yes, children, you may be scandalised, I do nothing but flirt, and that in English. But seriously, it was a happy time, and passed very quickly. I drove away in the evening; the lights in the house sparkled through the bushes in the distance; in my open carriage I passed by several favourite places, the gentle brook already mentioned, the last hedge of the property, and then off I went at furious English speed. I snubbed all my travelling companions, spoke not a word, but kept quiet, half dreaming, half thinking, a little gloomy, just as I think one always is when one. goes along two hundred miles in a mail. It appeared almost like a magic-lantern of chance when on the second evening of my journey (I travelled right through, in order to reach London in the morning) the mail stopped, because it met the mail from London to Chester, and, putting my head out of the window while the two coachmen were talking, I saw peeping out of the other mail Fr. Cramer and his daughter (you remember Miss Marian?). Exchange a few words, then drive asunder, and part for years or longer such is the world ; moving onwards, meeting, coming near, and going far away. On my arrival in London I resumed my quiet life, which consists in writing music and reading English. My quartet is now in the middle of the last movement, and I think will be completed in a few days; so will be the organ piece for the wedding. Then (D.V.) I shall begin my Reformation-symphony, the Scotch symphony, and Hebrides matter, all shaping themselves gradually. Vocal music too moves in my head, but I shall take good care not to say what kind and how. The Clementis sent me back on the day of my arrival the same beautiful piano I had during my former stay; and as I asked Mr. Collard to let me have it on hire this time, he sent me a few English verses and begged me to set them to music. This is hard for me, but I must.
The following letter, written after his death by a member of the Taylor family, gives a very good idea of the impression Felix made on his hospitable friends at Coed Du.
It was in the year 1829 that we first became acquainted with Mr. Mendelssohn. He was introduced to us by my aunt Mrs. Austin, who had well known his cousin Professor Mendelssohn at Bonn. He visited us early in the season in Bedford Bow, but our real friendship began at Coed Du, which was a house near Mold in Flintshire, rented for many years by my father, Mr. John Taylor.
Mr. Mendelssohn came down there to spend a little time with us, in the course of a tour in England and Scotland. My father and mother received him kindly, as they did every- body ; but his arrival created no particular sensation, as many strangers came to our house to see the mines under my father's management, and foreigners were often welcomed there. Soon, however, we began to find that a most accomplished mind had come among us, quick to observe, delicate to distinguish. We knew little about his music, but the wonder of it grew upon us; and I remember one night, when my two sisters and I went to our room, how we began saying to each other: "Surely this must be a man of genius. ... we can't be mistaken about the music ; never did we hear any one play so before. Yet we know the best London musicians. Surely by-and-by we shall hear that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is a great name in the world."
My father's birthday happened while Mr. Mendelssohn was with us. There was a grand expedition to a distant mine, up among the hills ; a tent carried up there, a dinner to the miners. We had speeches and health-drinkings, and Mendelssohn threw himself into the whole thing as if he had been one of us. He interested himself in hearing about the condition and way of life of the Welsh miners. Nothing was lost upon him. A letter that he wrote to my brother John just after he left Coed Du charmingly describes the impressions he carried away of that country. Sometimes he would go out sketching with us girls, sitting down very seriously to draw, but making the greatest fun of attempts which he considered to be unsuc- cessful. One figure of a Welsh girl he imagined to be like a camel, and she was called c the camel accordingly. Though he scorned his own drawings, he had the genuine artist-feeling, and great love for pictures. I need not say how deeply he entered imto the beauty of the hills and the woods. His way of representing them was not with the pencil ; but in the evening his improvised music would show what he had observed or felt in the past day. The piece called "The Rivulet," which he wrote at that time for my sister Susan, will show what I mean : it was a recollection of a real actual rivulet.
We observe how natural objects seemed to suggest music to him. There was in my sister Honora's garden a pretty creeping plant, new at the time, covered with little trumpet-like flowers. He was struck with it, and played for her the music which (he said) the fairies might play on those trumpets. When he wrote out the piece (called a capriccio in E minor) he drew a little branch of that flower all up the margin of the paper.
The piece (an Andante and Allegro) which Mr. Mendelssohn wrote for me was suggested by the sight of a bunch of carnations and roses. The carnations that year were very fine with us. He liked them best of all the flowers, would have one often in his button-hole. We found he intended the arpeggio passages in that composition as a reminder of the sweet scent of the flower rising up.
Mr. Mendelssohn was not a bit sentimental, though he had so much sentiment. Nobody enjoyed fun more than he, and his laughing was the most joyous that could be. One evening in hot summer we stayed in the wood above our house later than usual. We had been building a house of fir branches in Susan's garden up in the wood. We made a fire a little way off it in a thicket among the trees, Mendelssohn helping with the utmost zeal, dragging up more and more wood ; we tired our- selves with our merry work ; we sat down round our fire, the smoke went off, the ashes were glowing, it began to get dark, but we could not like to leave our bonfire. "If we had but some music," Mendelssohn said, "Could anybody get something to play on ?" Then my brother recollected that we were near the gardener's cottage, and that the gardener had a fiddle. Off rushed our boys to get the fiddle. When it came it was the wretchedest thing in the world, and it had but one string. Mendelssohn took the instrument into his hands, and fell into fits of laughter over it when he heard the sounds it made. His laughter was very catching, he put us all into peals of merriment. But he somehow afterwards brought beautiful music out of the poor old fiddle, and we sat listening to one strain after another, till the darkness sent us home.
My cousin John Edward Taylor was staying with us at that time. He had composed an imitation Welsh air, and he was hefore breakfast playing this over, all unconscious that Mr. Mendelssohn (whose bedroom was next the drawing-room) was hearing every note. That night, when we had music as usual, Mr. Mendelssohn sat down to play. After an elegant prelude, and with all possible advantage, John Edward heard his poor little air introduced as the subject of the evening. And having dwelt upon it, and adorned it in every graceful manner, Mendelssohn in his pretty playful way, bowing to the composer, gave all the praise to him.
I suppose some of the charm of his speech might lie in the unusual choice of words which he, as a German, made in speaking English. He lisped a little. He used an action of nodding his head quickly, till the long locks of hair would fall over his high forehead with the vehemence of his assent to any- thing he liked.
Sometimes he used to talk very seriously with my mother. Seeing that we brothers and sisters lived lovingly together and with our parents, he spoke about this to my mother, told her how he had known families where it was not so, and used the words, ' You know not how happy you are.'
He was so far away from any sort of pretension, or from making a favour of giving his music to us, that one evening when the family from a neighbouring house came to dinner, and we had dancing afterwards, he took his turn in playing quadrilles and waltzes with the others. He was the first person who taught us gallopades, and he first played us Weber's last waltz. He enjoyed dancing like any other young man of his age. He was then twenty years old. He had written his 4 Midsummer-night's Dream' (Overture) before that time. I well remember his playing it. He left Coed Du early in Sep- tember 1829.
We saw Mr. Mendelssohn whenever he came to England, but the visits he made to us in London have not left so much impression on me as that one at Coed Du did, I can, however call to mind a party at my father's in Bedford Kow, where he was present. Sir George Smart was there also. When the latter was asked to play, he said to my mother, "No, no, don't call upon the old post-horse when you have a high-mettled young racer at hand," The end of it was a duet played by Sir George and Mr. Mendelssohn together. Our dear old -master, Mr. Attwood, often met him at our house. Once he went with us to a ball at Mr. Attwood's at Norwood. Eeturning by day- light, I remember how Mr. Mendelssohn admired the view of St. Paul's in the early dawn, which we got from Blackfriars Bridge. But the happiest visit to us was that one when he first brought his sweet young wife to see my mother. Madame Felix Mendelssohn was a bride then, and we all of us said he could not have found one more worthy of himself. And with the delightful remembrance of his happiness then I will end these fragments.
In London Felix was upset from a carriage on September 17, and injured his knee so seriously that all his plans were destroyed, and his departure from England was delayed for two months, until the end of November. He had intended to meet his father in Holland and travel back with him through Holland and Belgium, to be present at Fanny's wedding on the 3rd of October. Instead of that a long and painful illness kept him in London, which, however, was relieved and sweetened by the devoted love of Klingemann, who went at once to stay with him, and by the friendship and sympathy of all his English acquaintances.
