A nice letter in which pianist Otto Goldschmidt is writing to the esteemed English conductor Sir George Smart, relaying that he cannot attend the upcoming meeting of the Mendelssohn Scholarship Committee: You will excuse my staying away. It is a great comfort to know the election of a Candidate [is] in such excellent hands and I shall learn with much interest the decision the Committee may have come to.

Otto Goldschmidt had studied with Felix Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Conservatoire for three years and, by all contemporary accounts, inherited Mendelssohn's pianistic style. It was natural, then, that he should join the committee of the Mendelssohn Scholarship, which had been established in 1848 in London shortly after the composer's death. Its founding members included Goldschmidt's wife, Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, who had been a close friend, collaborator, and romantic interest of Mendelssohn's in the 1840s.