My Life, vol 1 | Page 4

whole way to Possendorf, arriving at nightfall.
On the way I asked him many questions about the stars, of which he
gave me my first intelligent idea.
A week later my stepfather's brother arrived from Eisleben for the
funeral. He promised, as far as he was able, to support the family,
which was now once more destitute, and undertook to provide for my
future education.
I took leave of my companions and of the kind-hearted clergyman, and
it was for his funeral that I paid my next visit to Possendorf a few years
later. I did not go to the place again till long afterwards, when I visited
it on an excursion such as I often made, far into the country, at the time
when I was conducting the orchestra in Dresden. I was much grieved
not to find the old parsonage still there, but in its place a more
pretentious modern structure, which so turned me against the locality,
that thenceforward my excursions were always made in another
direction.
This time my uncle brought me back to Dresden in the carriage. I found
my mother and sister in the deepest mourning, and remember being
received for the first time with a tenderness not usual in our family; and
I noticed that the same tenderness marked our leave-taking, when, a
few days later, my uncle took me with him to Eisleben.
This uncle, who was a younger brother of my stepfather, had settled
there as a goldsmith, and Julius, one of my elder brothers, had already
been apprenticed to him. Our old grandmother also lived with this
bachelor son, and as it was evident that she could not live long, she was
not informed of the death of her eldest son, which I, too, was bidden to
keep to myself. The servant carefully removed the crape from my coat,
telling me she would keep it until my grandmother died, which was

likely to be soon.
I was now often called upon to tell her about my father, and it was no
great difficulty for me to keep the secret of his death, as I had scarcely
realised it myself. She lived in a dark back room looking out upon a
narrow courtyard, and took a great delight in watching the robins that
fluttered freely about her, and for which she always kept fresh green
boughs by the stove. When some of these robins were killed by the cat,
I managed to catch others for her in the neighbourhood, which pleased
her very much, and, in return, she kept me tidy and clean. Her death, as
had been expected, took place before long, and the crape that had been
put away was now openly worn in Eisleben.
The back room, with its robins and green branches, now knew me no
more, but I soon made myself at home with a soap-boiler's family, to
whom the house belonged, and became popular with them on account
of the stories I told them.
I was sent to a private school kept by a man called Weiss, who left an
impression of gravity and dignity upon my mind.
Towards the end of the fifties I was greatly moved at reading in a
musical paper the account of a concert at Eisleben, consisting of parts
of Tannhauser, at which my former master, who had not forgotten his
young pupil, had been present.
The little old town with Luther's house, and the numberless memorials
it contained of his stay there, has often, in later days, come back to me
in dreams. I have always wished to revisit it and verify the clearness of
my recollections, but, strange to say, it has never been my fate to do so.
We lived in the market- place, where I was often entertained by strange
sights, such, for instance, as performances by a troupe of acrobats, in
which a man walked a rope stretched from tower to tower across the
square, an achievement which long inspired me with a passion for such
feats of daring. Indeed, I got so far as to walk a rope fairly easily
myself with the help of a balancing-pole. I had made the rope out of
cords twisted together and stretched across the courtyard, and even now
I still feel a desire to gratify my acrobatic instincts. The thing that
attracted me most, however, was the brass band of a Hussar regiment
quartered at Eisleben. It often played a certain piece which had just
come out, and which was making a great sensation, I mean the
'Huntsmen's Chorus' out of the Freischutz, that had been recently

performed at the Opera in Berlin. My uncle and brother asked me
eagerly about its composer, Weber, whom I must have seen at my
parents' house in Dresden, when he was conductor