And After the Fire

by Lauren Belfer

  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. S
he 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.

  Chapter 36

  On Monday afternoon, in preparation for a curators’ meeting on Thursday, Scott received a draft report on proposed exhibitions for the next several years.

  One proposal in particular caught his attention: Siblings Together and Apart. This show would encompass the lives of William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy; and Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell Brontë. An up-and-coming curator in the literature department had dreamed this up.

  What about a Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel exhibition?

  Yes, absolutely: the Mendelssohn siblings deserved an exhibition—as he would explain to his fellow curators at the meeting on Thursday. The MacLean housed extensive archives centered on them, including a large number of letters written by Fanny and Felix, an array of Felix’s terrific watercolors and drawings, and sixteen Mendelssohn and four Hensel music autographs. Because Fanny and Felix were composers, such an exhibit would provide a unique opportunity to explore technological advances in museum presentations. Technology now allowed visitors to study the original manuscripts while hearing the linked music at individual listening stations.

  In addition, the New York Public Library, which owned a trove of Mendelssohn material, might be willing to make some loans to the exhibit. Alternately, Scott could try to convince the Public Library to mount its own show. Two Mendelssohn/Hensel exhibitions simultaneously in New York City would garner a good deal of international publicity. He could secure loans from other institutions, as well. Masses of material had survived, even amid the wreckage of World War II in Germany. He seemed to recall a particularly touching item of Mendelssohn-family biographical interest . . . After a few moments online, he was examining the first issue of the Gartenzeitung, prepared in the mid-1820s by Felix, Fanny, and their friends and family. Several issues of the mock newspaper had survived, now scanned and displayed on the website of the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. Remarkable. If he could convince the curators of the Staatsbibliothek to loan one of these, what a coup that would be.

  Cultural issues were at stake in any examination of the Mendelssohn siblings, making the exhibition even more compelling. As the ideas poured into his mind, he began jotting down notes. He would write up his proposal as soon as possible and circulate it before the meeting. Fanny and Felix were Jews who’d converted to Christianity. They’d seemingly led lives of complete assimilation. Or had they? This was worth exploring. It wasn’t an issue Scott had ever focused on.

  Furthermore, the dictates of nineteenth-century society (enforced by her father and her brother Felix) had prevented Fanny from performing in public and publishing her compositions. Only shortly before her death at age forty-one—and with the support of her husband, the gifted artist Wilhelm Hensel—did she gain the confidence to force this issue and move ahead with publication. Much of her solo piano music was excellent. Lieder were her specialty. Her songs were dreamlike and filled with emotion.

  Felix had published some of Fanny’s songs under his name. Feminist critics got into a tizzy about him supposedly obliterating Fanny’s identity, but Scott was willing to view this in context: a properly raised woman from the upper echelons of society did not ordinarily, during that era, publish under her own name. At least Felix had thought his sister’s work worthy of publication. Scott could hear the critics coming down on him: Who was Felix to decide whether his older sister’s work was good enough to be published, and, worse, to publish it as his own?

  The issue was complicated, however. Evidence showed that Fanny had participated in the technical preparation of the song sets for publication. This implied that she didn’t simply allow the subterfuge but was an active collaborator in it. During one of Felix’s visits with Queen Victoria, the queen especially admired a song that had been written by Fanny. Felix had confessed to the queen immediately, to his credit. In addition, proving that the problem wasn’t entirely gender-based, Felix had in fact supported the work of a female pianist and composer, Clara Wieck Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann. Clara was middle class; not upper class, like Fanny. Scott seemed to recall reading anti-Jewish comments that Clara and Robert Schumann had made regarding Felix.

  These complexities proved Scott’s point: the exhibition was a terrific idea and would stir up lots of controversy and fill the galleries with visitors.

  Scott hadn’t reviewed the Felix and Fanny correspondence in years. His schedule this afternoon was free, so he could look into it now. If some of the letters discussed specific pieces of music, and if by some miracle the MacLean collection included autographs of those pieces—the possibilities filled him with excitement. He checked the archive’s computerized index of holdings and wrote down the call numbers of the items he needed.

  “I’m going to the vault,” he said to his assistant.

  After he passed his ID card over a series of security monitors, the staff elevator took him several stories beneath ground level. He could have asked the archivists to bring the letters to his office, but he had the privilege of going into the vault, and he liked to take advantage of it. The vault sounded mysterious, ominous, and altogether terrific. Simply using the word made him feel like one of the superheroes admired by his younger nephews.

&nbs
p; “Scott!” said Edith Corbin, his favorite librarian-archivist. Edith was petite and slightly stooped. She looked like someone who might be obliged to buy clothes in the children’s department. The sleeves of her sweater hung loose at her wrists despite being rolled up. “So very nice to see you.”

  “Good to see you, too, Edith. I should come down to visit you more often. I always love being here.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Her eyes shone. “What can we do for you today?”

  Edith often used the pronoun we, as if the materials of the vault were alive and conversed with her.

  “I’m researching an idea for an exhibition. Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn.”

  “Fanny and Felix! They’ve been waiting for decades for someone to take proper notice of them.”

  “I can well imagine.” He wasn’t certain how seriously to take her personal identification with the holdings. He didn’t think she was crazy. Maybe she spent too much time alone in the vault, and she took pleasure in conjuring up some activity around her. “I’m looking for—” He checked his note.

  “146A to 398B,” said Edith.

  “Exactly.”

  “This way.”

  Edith guided him down the rows of stacks. Despite its evocative name, the vault was simply a modern version of an old-fashioned library, different from other libraries only in that many of its shelves held legal-size boxes stacked horizontally. One of the vault’s few distinguishing features was that its air was filtered and controlled for temperature and humidity. It was maintained at a steady 65 degrees Fahrenheit, 42 percent humidity. The air quality was marked by an extreme purity that could be achieved only at great expense and by continual computerized monitoring. Scott already felt a bit light-headed from it. This atmosphere must have wielded its powerful influence on Edith, too.

  “Here we are,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”