In a letter written to me by my mother, during my temporary absence from London, just after the accession of King William IV., I find the following passage with reference to Sir George Smart: 

“London is all alive; the new king seems idolized by the people, and he appears no less pleased with them; perhaps Sir George is amongst the happiest of his subjects.  His Majesty swears that nothing shall be encouraged but native talent, and our friend is to get up a concert at the Duke of Sussex’s, where the royal family are all to dine, at which none but English singers are to perform.  Sir George dined with me on Monday, and I perceive he has already arranged in his thoughts all he proposes to tell the queen about you on this occasion.  It is evident he flatters himself that he is to be deep in her Majesty’s confidence.”

Sir George Smart and his distinguished guest, Weber, were constantly at our house while the rehearsals of “Oberon” went forward.  The first day they dined together at my father’s was an event for me, especially as Sir George, on my entering the room, took me by the hand, and drawing me toward Weber, assured him that I and all the young girls in England were over head and ears in love with him.  With my guilty satchel round my neck, I felt ready to sink with confusion, and stammered out something about Herr von Weber’s beautiful music, to which, with a comical, melancholy smile, he replied, “Ah, my music! it is always my music, but never myself!”

Baron Carl Maria von Weber was a noble-born Saxon German, whose very irregular youth could hardly, one would suppose, have left him leisure to cultivate or exercise his extraordinary musical genius; but though he spent much of his early life in wild dissipation, and died in middle age, he left to the world a mass of compositions of the greatest variety and beauty, and a name which ranks among the most eminent in his pre-eminently musical country.  He was a little thin man, lame of one foot, and with a slight tendency to a deformed shoulder.  His hollow, sallow, sickly face bore an expression of habitual suffering and ill health, and the long, hooked nose, salient cheek-bones, light, prominent eyes, and spectacles were certainly done no more than justice to in the unattractive representation of my cherished portrait of him.

He had the air and manner of a well-born and well-bred man of the world, a gentle voice, and a slow utterance in English, which he spoke but indifferently and with a strong accent; he generally conversed with my father and mother in French.  One of the first visits he paid to Covent Garden was in my mother’s box, to hear Miss Paton and Braham (his prima donna and tenor) in an oratorio.  He was enthusiastic in his admiration of Braham’s fine performance of one of Handel’s magnificent songs ("Deeper and deeper still,” I think), but when, in the second part of the concert, which consisted of a selection of secular music, the great singer threw the house