Note 11 — Chapter IV

The two years grudgingly allowed by Count von Flotow for his son's musical education were interrupted by the revolution of 1830, and the young fellow had to return home before he was eighteen, because, in his father's opinion, "he had not given a sign of becoming a great musician;" in other words, he had not written an opera or anything else which had attracted public notice. However, towards the beginning of 1831, the count took his son to Paris once more; "and though Meyerbeer nor Halévy were not so famous then as they were destined to become within the next three years, their names were already sufficiently well known to have made an introduction valuable. It would not have been difficult to obtain such." My father would not hear of it. 'I will not have my son indebted for anything to a Jew,' he said; and I am only quoting this instance of prejudice to you because it was not an individual but a typical one among my father's social equals. The remark about 'his son's entering a profession in which two Jews had carried off the highest prizes' is of a much later date. Consequently we landed in Paris, provided with letters of introduction to M. de Saint-Georges.[11] Clever, accomplished, refined as was M. de Saint-Georges, he was scarcely the authority a father with serious intentions about his son's musical career would have consulted; he was a charming, skilful librettist and dramatist, a thorough man of the world in the best sense of the word, but absolutely incapable of judging the higher qualities of the composer. Nevertheless, I owe him much; but for him I should have been dragged back to Germany there and then; but for him I should have been compelled to go back to Germany five years later, or starved in the streets of Paris.