Chapter 35
LEIPZIGERSTRASSE 3
June 1846
Sara rested on a bench in Lea’s garden, gathering her strength for the challenge ahead: she was about to perform in one of Fanny’s Sunday concerts. She closed her eyes and reviewed the piece in her mind. She was hoping Lea—
Lea was dead, Sara reminded herself. Even now, four years later, Sara found herself automatically looking forward to seeing her niece; to sharing meals with her, to discussing questions, concerns, gossip. Lea had been only sixty-five when she died. She’d been fine that day four years ago, her usual self, or so Sara had thought when she arrived at noontime to help Lea prepare for a gathering. By evening Lea had collapsed. By morning, she was gone. The doctors called it a stroke.
How Sara missed her. She was eighty-five this year, older than she had any right to be, when Lea was already dead. This morning she’d woken up feeling stiff and confused, and for a frightening moment, she hadn’t known where she was.
Because of this, she’d felt compelled after breakfast to review her last will and testament, to make certain all was accounted for. The cantata her teacher had given to her was not, of course, listed in her will. For years she’d put off deciding who to give it to, as if by pretending that it didn’t exist, she could make it disappear. Now she must quickly determine its future, while she was lucid enough to choose wisely, and still capable of explaining what it was. Her nephew Felix was the logical choice, but given his drive and ambition, she didn’t trust him to keep it secret.
She opened her eyes and looked around.
Elias was with her today. Yes, Elias, one of her original orphan boys. He was speaking with Alexander von Humboldt, stooped and white-haired. Elias was too young to receive the burden of the cantata. Alexander was too old. Elias glanced her way continually; he kept watch over her even though they both maintained the fiction that she was self-reliant. Elias had grown to be tall and lanky. She paid his fees at university, where he studied Classics. Of her other first boys, Carl, who’d spoken French that day, had been claimed by a cousin in Freiburg, and Sara had lost touch with him. Georg had died of a fever when he was twelve. Often she mused about the man he might have grown to become. Daniel, who’d admired Frederick the Great, was studying history, and Sara paid his fees, as well. They were the first of nearly a decade of orphans who’d touched her life. She had been the honorary mother for as many as she could.
So although she herself was unfruchtbar, barren, she’d bettered the lives of many children.
“Tante. Are you ready?” Sebastian stood before her. He was sixteen this year, and he looked like a winsome angel still. “Mother sent me to find you. The concert will soon begin.”
“Thank you, Sebastian.” She roused herself, and with his help, she stood.
“More than two hundred people are attending today,” he said.
“Astounding.” She suspected Sebastian exaggerated, but she’d credit at least a hundred and fifty.
“May I hold your arm?”
“How thoughtful of you, Sebastian.”
Seeing her rise, Elias hastened to join them.
“May I assist you, Frau Levy?” To Sebastian, Elias said, “I’m happy to accompany Frau Levy to the performance salon.”
“I have her arm already,” Sebastian said, squeezing it as if to prove his point.
Were these two young men actually fighting over her?
“With today’s heat,” Sara said, “I feel I must have support on each arm.”
Thus arranged, they walked to the Gartenhaus.
“Ah, here she is, safe and sound,” said Hensel when he spotted them.
“Thank you, boys,” Sara said, indicating she no longer required their help. She could most certainly walk by herself to the front of the salon for her performance, in the first piece of today’s program.
The audience was gathering. Tout le monde attended Fanny’s Sunday concerts. Today the guests included the rather ferocious-looking Giacomo (as he now styled himself) Meyerbeer, who’d experienced fantastic success composing operas in the French style. He accompanied his mother, dear Amalia. From Jacob Beer to Giacomo Meyerbeer . . . he’d changed his name but abided with the faith of his heritage. Sara could give the cantata to him. But could she trust him to keep it secret? He’d become a man of moods and high drama, at least by Sara’s reckoning. No, she couldn’t trust him.
She took her place, greeted Fanny, and once again reviewed the music in her mind: the Concerto in D Minor for three harpsichords and strings, by Johann Sebastian Bach. Today it would be performed with three pianos. Although she felt most at home with the harpsichord, Sara found switching between piano and harpsichord to be effortless. For today’s performance, she would be joining Fanny and a young friend of hers, a talented musician in his early twenties.
“Frau Levy, an exciting day for us,” said this friend as he took his place. He was a handsome and good-humored man, and he had ambitions to join the diplomatic corps. Sara had been introduced to him several times during the past week as they rehearsed, but she simply could not remember his name. She wouldn’t reveal her forgetfulness by asking yet again. Fanny announced the piece.
And so they began. Sara might not remember the young man’s name, but she remembered this piece, every note, and she played it from memory. What a joy it was . . . the sense of proportion, the balance among the three pianos, the astonishing profusion of trills and runs.
All too soon, it was over. The applause was sustained. Afterward, Sebastian, with polished poise, escorted her to an empty seat in the audience, next to Alexander von Humboldt.
“I saved this spot for you,” Alexander said, patting the chair. “You were brilliant, by the way. As usual. Exactly as I expected.”
“Thank you.” She felt herself reddening, as if she were a girl.
“Blushing, for me? After all these years?”
She tried to think of a witty rejoinder, but nothing came to her. What a life Alexander had led, as a scientist and diplomat, exploring such places as South America and eastern Russia. But he was still and always her kind, gentle friend. She leaned against his shoulder for an instant, a gesture allowed them within society because of their elevated ages, and he responded with a quick wrap of his arm around her shoulder.
The next piece on the program was Robert Schumann’s Andante and Variations, op. 46, for two pianos, performed by Fanny and her friend. After only a few bars, Sara found herself mystified: Why had Fanny paired a Bach masterpiece with such a work as this erratic Schumann? It was technically virtuosic, but tiresome. It jumped from style to style. It led nowhere.
Why hadn’t Fanny selected one of her own pieces to perform with her friend? Sara had heard Fanny play her superb four-hand compositions with friends at private dinners here at Leipzigerstrasse 3. Could Fanny actually believe that this, this bizarre Schumann duet, was more worthwhile than her own compositions? Sara was barely able to conceal her instinctive cringing at several sour, screechy dissonances.
When the music finally concluded, the applause was tumultuous. Clearly the younger generation disagreed with Sara’s opinion. She caught Alexander’s eye. He raised his eyebrows, revealing that he shared her point of view.
After a break for conversation and refreshment, the audience reassembled for the final work of the afternoon, Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, “God’s Time is the Very Best Time.” Fanny conducted the choir and instrumental ensemble from the piano.
The opening bars were among the most beautiful music Sara had ever heard. Two flutes seemed to sing above two cellos, while a steady ticking rhythm from the bass line created a recognition of the passage of time, of earthly time subsumed into eternity.
Fanny brought the work to life in all its fullness and complexity. Fanny . . . she’d lived her life mostly in the seclusion of the garden. Sara felt close to her, through bonds of both family and friendship. If she were to ask something important of Fanny, Sara felt certain that the girl would understand and respect her aunt’s wishes.
And then Sara knew: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel must be the next custodian of the J. S. Bach cantata that her teacher had given to her so long ago.
Several days later, Fanny sat opposite her at the tea table in Sara’s morning room. “Thank you for visiting me today,” Sara said.
“No need to thank me.” The girl’s liveliness glowed from her dark eyes. Sara perceived how Hensel, in his drawings, transformed her into a saint, a goddess, a muse. “You said in your note that you needed to discuss something with me—but I need to discuss something with you. I think the two might be the same.”
As if it were yesterday, Sara remembered Fanny as a child, racing across the garden. Time had became a tidal stream, carrying Sara backward and forward.
“Would you like some tea, Tante?”
Here she was, Lea’s daughter, grown up and taking the role of hostess in Sara’s home.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Fanny poured the tea.
“Cake?”
The cake was chocolate with layers of marzipan, a combination Sara loved. Fanny was kind to bring it.
“Most definitely cake, Lea.” The tidal stream. “Forgive me: thank you, Fanny.”
“I’m glad I remind you of my mother.” Fanny cut a good-sized slice for Sara and the same for herself.
The chocolate was dense, the marzipan intensely sweet. They ate in companionable silence. This was a cake that deserved their full attention.
“The cake is outstanding,” Sara said.
“I agree. Shall we have more?”
“Only to make certain we weren’t mistaken in our initial conclusions.”
Fanny refilled their plates.
When she finished her second slice, Sara said, “I was surprised you performed the Schumann variations on Sunday instead of one of your own works.”
“I would never compare my work to Robert Schumann’s.” Fanny licked the frosting from her fork. “He’s a great genius.”
“That Schumann piece,” Sara said, dismissing it. “Irksome and boring.”
Sara caught the look on Fanny’s face, the indulgent smile that said, Aged Aunt Sara, what will she say next?
“Fanny,” Sara said, as if to wake the girl up. “Your piano music is brilliant. Surely you recognize this? After a lifetime of music, you must understand your own merit.”
“Sometimes.” Fanny had a winning smile. “When my friends and family force me to.” She cut a sliver of cake for herself and another for Sara. “I have a surprise for you in that regard. Two publishers have approached me. They’re competing with each other to publish a collection of my lieder. With more publications to follow, or so they promise. I’ve decided to accept one of the offers. What do you think of that?”
“Oh, Fanny. I’m so very pleased.”
“Thank you. I suspected you would be.”
“And what does Felix say about this?”
A pause. “I haven’t told him. But I will.”
“You’ll go forward regardless of his opinion?”
“Yes. I’m resolved.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“I’m getting old.”
“Old?” Fanny was only about forty. “You’re not old. You’re not as old as me, for example.”
“Very few people can claim to be as old as you, Tante.”
“And a good thing, too. But truly—what changed for you?”
“I suppose I finally began to hear what Hensel, and you, and my friends have been telling me for years. And Mother, too. Felix’s opinion began to seem unjust.”
“I must agree.”
“So, have I robbed you of the reason for your invitation today?”
“Pardon?”
“Isn’t this what you wanted to discuss with me? To urge me once more to put myself forward?”
“I’m sorry to say, that isn’t what I wanted to discuss today.”
Fanny reached across the table to take Sara’s hand. “You’re not ill, are you?”
“Ill?”
“You didn’t invite me here to share some awful news, so that Hensel, Sebastian, and I can prepare ourselves?”
How worried the girl looked.
“No, nothing like that. But nothing good, either.”
Asking Fanny to retrieve the manuscript from the sideboard, Sara began the sad task of explaining to her what it was.
Home again. Fanny sat at her desk in her study in the Gartenhaus. She loved this room, especially the tall windows overlooking the trees. Her husband’s paintings, and Felix’s watercolors, covered the walls. Here was her piano and her library of musical scores.
Often in the past, Fanny would look out these windows and watch her mother walking in the garden. How sorrowful was life, that her mother was dead and Tante Levy lived on. This was a mean-spirited thought, Fanny knew, but she couldn’t help herself. Nevertheless, to honor her mother, Fanny was attentive to her formidable great-aunt. Fanny genuinely cared for Sara, too. Sara had always been encouraging toward her.
Therefore, Fanny would follow Sara’s wish and preserve in secret the Bach cantata that rested now upon her desk. The libretto was indeed a shock. Over the years Fanny had often felt pulled like a pendulum . . . baptized and confirmed as a Protestant, studying and believing Protestant tenets, yet living in a society that considered her Jewish. She’d never been able to find a steady path between the two parts of herself. In the end, she’d simply put the conundrum out of her mind.
She’d put God out of her mind, too, after her babies died. She’d had three children, Sebastian who had lived, and the two who had died yet survived in her thoughts: when they were small, they’d raced across the garden playing tag with their big brother. Fanny had instructed them at the piano. Hensel had taught them how to draw. In her imaginings.
Fanny rubbed her hands together. So cold, she was, despite the fine June weather. She was always cold. She hadn’t been joking, when she told Sara that she was getting old, although she should have phrased it differently. She felt she was getting old. Sometimes she experienced numbness in her hands, and in her arms. She felt the passage of time pressing against her. This, too, made her more willing to listen to the advice of Hensel and of her friends, that she publish her compositions.
She lit the candle on her desk. She examined the cantata manuscript. On the wrapper, someone other than Sara (Fanny knew her great-aunt’s handwriting) had written Sollte nicht catalogisiert werden, Not to be cataloged, and a date. Perhaps Sara’s husband had done this. Sara still wore her wedding ring, and she’d never remarried. She must have loved her husband very much. Fanny tried, without success, to picture Tante Levy as a young woman in love.
Especially don’t tell Felix, Sara had said this afternoon, as she urged her to keep the cantata concealed. When Fanny asked her why, Sara had replied that Felix wouldn’t be able to resist performing it in public. Sara was probably right about this.
Keeping a secret from Felix would have been impossible for Fanny when they were younger, but it would be easy now. More and more, Fanny didn’t tell Felix what was most important to her. To maintain an illusion of their closeness, she kept her letters to him filled with amusing stories and witty (she hoped) turns of phrase. When they were young and he went on travels with their father to visit Goethe, and to stay in Paris, Felix had written to her at length, sharing his observations, thoughts, and feelings through pages and pages of prose, so she felt as if she were right beside him on his adventures. Nowadays he rarely wrote, and when he did, he shared little of himself.
Nonetheless she must write to him soon, to tell him that she was going against his wishes and publishing her work. She’d ask for his blessing, although she didn’t expect to receive it. She dreaded writing this letter and had been putting it off. She dreaded also the wait for his response. But she was resolved on her course.
She checked the clock. Household responsibilities pressed upon her. A dozen friends were expected at dinner. Afterward, another dozen would join them for music-making. Fanny needed to consult with the housekeeper and the butler to make certain all was prepared. She wanted to speak with Sebastian, to learn how he’d spent his day. She must also write to her brother Paul, who handled the family’s finances, to request an advance on next month’s disbursement.
Felix never had to trouble himself over household matters at his home in Leipzig. Apart from correspondence with Paul relating to expenses, Felix’s wife, Cécile, took care of everything. Fanny had never felt at ease with Cécile, and she sensed Cécile felt the same toward her. Felix composed, conducted, traveled across Europe, met with royalty, published his work, spent time with his children when the mood struck him, and Cécile did the rest. Such was the way of the world, no sense complaining, especially when Fanny herself employed a full complement of servants.
Opening the ink bottle, she dipped her pen. Im Privat-Kabinett halten, she wrote on the wrapper of the cantata that Sara had given her. Keep in the private cabinet.
She put the manuscript into the cabinet where she kept the compositions she was in the midst of working on, those she wasn’t ready for anyone, not even Hensel, to see.
Taking the candle with her, closing the study door behind her, she headed toward her dressing room to change for dinner. Since her mother’s death, Fanny was the hostess at Leipzigerstrasse 3, and soon their evening would begin.