III.

In January, 1825, Moscheles, in the course of his musical wanderings, gave several concerts at Hamburg.  Among the crowd of listeners who came to hear the great pianist was Charlotte Embden, the daughter of an excellent Hamburg family.  She was enchanted by the playing of Moscheles, and, when she accidentally made the acquaintance of the performer at the house of a mutual acquaintance, the couple quickly became enamored of each other.  A brief engagement of less than a month was followed by marriage, and so Moscheles entered into a relation singularly felicitous in all the elements which make domestic life most blessed.  After a brief tour in the Rhenish cities, and a visit to Paris, Moscheles proceeded to London, where he had determined to make his home, for in no country had such genuine and unaffected cordiality boon shown him, and nowhere were the rewards of musical talent, whether as teacher, virtuoso, or composer, more satisfying to the man of high ambition.  He made London his home for twenty years, and during this time became one of the most prominent figures in the art circles of that great city.  Moscheles’s mental accomplishments and singular geniality of nature contributed, with his very great abilities as a musician, to give him a position attained by but few artists.  He gave lessons to none but the most talented pupils, and his services were sought by the most wealthy families of the English capital, though the ability to pay great prices was by no means a passport to the good graces of Moscheles.  Among the pupils who early came under the charge of this great master was Thalberg, who even then was a brilliant player, but found in the exact knowledge and great experience of Moscheles that which gave the crowning finish to his style.  Busy in teaching, composing, and public performance; busy in responding to the almost incessant demands made by social necessity on one who was not only intimate in the best circles of London society, but the center to whom all foreign artists of merit gravitated instantly they arrived in London; busy in confidential correspondence with all the great musicians of Europe, who discussed with the genial and sympathetic Moscheles all their plans and aspirations, and to whom they turned in their moments of trouble, he was indeed a busy man; and had it not been for the loving labors of his wife, who was his secretary, his musical copyist, and his assistant in a myriad of ways, he would have been unequal to his burden.  Moscheles’s diary tells the story of a man whose life, though one of tireless industry, was singularly serene and happy, and without those salient accidents and vicissitudes which make up the material of a picturesque life.