Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/146

 of a wedding anthem of her own composition, in which her hopes and happiness found lovely musical expression. She was a happy and confident bride, and it was her good fortune to become also a happy wife and a happy mother.

In the summer of 1830 her son Sebastian was born, and she and her husband took possession of the garden-house at Leipziger Strasse, No. 3, which had received the addition of a studio built to accommodate Hensel. Here the greater part of Fanny's future life was passed, and here the young couple soon became the center of another and a wider "Wheel," frequented by authors, artists, actors, singers, musicians, and scientists. Here Hensel began and carried to completion that marvelous collection of pencil and crayon portraits, which at the time of his death filled forty-seven volumes, and contained upwards of a thousand drawings. These were likenesses of relations, friends, and visitors, all made without formal sittings, being sketched in, frequently without the knowledge of the subject, during the conversation or music which usually passed away the time of an evening. The faces, probably for this reason, have a singularly animated look, and the value of the collection is enhanced by the autograph signatures attached to the portraits by their originals.

Even more famous than her husband's portrait gallery were Fanny Hensel's musical matinees, which took place every Sunday morning. These beautiful celebrations, originating in the meeting of a few musical friends to play or sing together upon holidays and Sundays, gradually developed into regular concerts with choral and solo singing, trios and quartets, participated in by the best musicians in Berlin, and listened to by an audience that crowded the beautiful parlor which opened into Hensel's studio upon the one hand, and upon the other on the garden terrace.