MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY, Felix. Autograph Signed Letter (‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’) to Mrs Taylor, 103 Portland Street, [London], 29 April [1832].
£ 5,000
18.5 x 11.3 cm; AUTOGRAPH letter; with integral address leaf. In English, one page.
Provenance: Sotheby’s, 28 May 1986, lot 478; bought by Maggs Bros – Sotheby’s, 31 March 1998, lot 296.
The letter reads:
103 Portland Street
[30th April 1832]
Dear Madam,
Accept my best thanks for your kind invitation for Friday next, I accept it with the greatest pleasure and shall be most happy to be introduced by you to Mrs. Worsley, as I doubted whether I could take the liberty of calling upon her without knowing her husband. I am not yet allowed to go out late in the evening & missed therefore the pleasure of calling upon Mr. Taylor at the hours you told me he was usually to be found at home, but yet I hope to see him before Friday as I feel so well, that I shall not like to behave any longer as an invalid. Believe me, dear Madam.
Very truly yours,
29th April
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
From the collection of the late Dr Elkan Lewis.
The Taylor family were amongst Mendelssohn’s closest English friends: he had stayed at their house in Wales in 1829, which he described to his sisters as ‘one of those times which will never vanish from my mind’, and he attributed to the Taylor daughters the inspiration for his 3 Fantasias or Caprices, op.16.