THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF GREAT MUSICIANS

By Rupert Hughes

Illustrated

Volume I. 

[Illustration]

1903

NOTE

Portions of a few of the chapters of this work appeared serially in _TheCriterion_, and the last chapter was published in _The Smart Set_. 

While, so far as the author knows, this is the first book on thesubject, it is given, perhaps, especial novelty by the fact thatadvantage could be taken of much new material given to the public forthe first time (with one exception) in the last few months, notably: arevelation of the exact identity of Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved;" theletters of Liszt to his princess; letters of Chopin long supposed tohave been burned, as well as diaries and letters gathered by an intimatefriend for a biography whose completion was prevented by death; thepublication of a vast amount of Wagneriana; the appearance of a fulllife of Tschaikovski by his brother, with complete elucidation of muchthat had been suppressed; the first volume of a new biography of ClaraSchumann, with a detailed account of the whole progress of her beautifullove story, down to the day of the marriage; and numberless fugitiveparagraphs throwing new light on affairs more or less unknown ormisunderstood. 

 Love it is an hatefulle pees, A free acquitaunce without re lees. An hevy burthen light to here, A wikked wawe awey to were. It is kunnyng withoute science, Wisdome withoute sapience, Bitter swetnesse and swete errour, Right eville savoured good savour; A strengthe weyked to stonde upright, And feblenesse fulle of myght. A laughter it is, weping ay; Reste that traveyleth nyght and day. Also a swete helle it is, And a soroufulle Paradys. 

 Romaunt of the Rose. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

 I. THE OVERTURE

 II. THE ANCIENTS

 III. THE MEN OF FLANDERS

 IV. ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA

 V. HENRY AND FRANCES PURCELL

 VI. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF STRADELLA

 VII. GIOVANNI AND LUCREZIA PALESTRINA

 VIII. BACH, THE PATRIARCH

 IX. PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN

 X. THE MAGNIFICENT BACHELOR

 XI. GLUCK THE DOMESTIC, ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR, AND THE AMIABLE PICCINNI

 XII. A FEW TUNESTERS OF FRANCE AND ITALY --PERI, MONTEVERDE, ET AL

 XIII. MOZART

 XIV. BEETHOVEN: THE GREAT BUMBLEBEE

 XV. VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED

 XVI. THE FELICITIES OF MENDELSSOHN

 XVII. THE NOCTURNES OF CHOPIN

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PRINCESS LICHTENSTEIN (Frontispiece)

DAPHNE

HÉLOISE

MARY STUART

ORLAND DI LASSUS (Roland de Lattre)

HENRY PURCELL

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH

MORNING PRAYER IN THE FAMILY OF SEBASTIAN BACH

JOSEPH HAYDN

MRS. BILLINGTON

GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD VON GLUCK

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

NICOLA PICCINNI

JEAN BAPTISTE DE LULLY

WOLFGANG MOZART

MOZART, AT VIENNA, PLAYING HIS OPERA "DON JUAN" FOR THE FIRST TIME

LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN

BETTINA BRENTANO VON ARNIM

COUNTESS THÉRÈSE VON BRUNSWICK

CARL MARIA VON WEBER

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

FREDERICK CHOPIN

GEORGE SAND

COUNTESS POTOCKA

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF GREAT MUSICIANS

VOLUME I. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE OVERTURE

Musicians as lovers! The very phrase evokes and parades a pageant ofamours! The thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keysthat might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched whilehe dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "theinexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlityouth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; thedead-marches; the nocturnes; the amorous waltzes; the duets; the trillsand trinkets of flirtatious scherzi; the laughing roulades; the discordsmelted into concord as solitude into the arms of reunion--these aremusic's very own. 

So capable of love and its expression is music, indeed, that you almostwonder if any but musicians have ever truly loved, or loving haveexpressed. And yet--! Round every corner there lurks an "and yet. " Andif you only continue your march, or your reading, you always reach thatcorner. 

Your first thought would be, that a good musician must be a good lover;that a broken heart alone can add the Master's degree to the usualconservatory diploma of Bachelor of Music; that all musicians must besentimental, if musicians at all; and finally that only musicians canknow how to announce and embellish that primeval theme to which allexistence is but variations, more or less brilliant, more or less intune. 

But go a little further, and closer study will prove that some of theworld's greatest virtuosos in love could neither make nor carry a tune;and that, by corollary, some of the greatest tunesters in the world weretyros, ignoramuses, or heretics in that old lovers' arithmetic whichbegins: 1 plus 1 equals 1. 

If you care to watch the cohort of musicians, good, bad, and worse, thatI shall have to deploy before you, you shall see almost every sort andcondition of love and lover that humanity can include. Andincidentally--to tuck in here a preface that would otherwise beskipped--let me explain that in the following affairs I have preferredto give you the people as accurately as I can make them out. 

In place of the easy trick of stringing together a number of gorgeousfairy stories founded on fact, I have preferred the long labour ofhunting down the truth and telling only what I have found and believe tobe true. Fact and not fancy; presentation and not fiction; have been theaim throughout. Where the facts are sparse, I have not hesitated to sayso; have not stooped to pad out gaps, with graceful and romanticimaginings; and have indeed never hazarded a guess or an inferencewithout frankly branding it as such. 

Furthermore, as far as space permits and documents exist, the musicianstell their own stories in their own words. 

For the making of this little book, I have not been able to include allthe men who ever wrote one note after or above another; nor to read allthe books ever published in all the world's languages: and yet, that Ihave been decently thorough will appear, I think, in the list of booksat the back. This does not claim to be a complete bibliography of thesubject, but, omitting hundreds of books I have ransacked in vain, itcatalogues only such works as I have consulted with profit, and thereader could consult with pleasure. 

It may be well to say that, with the exception of the occasionalnecessity or seeming-necessity for taking one side or the other in amatter of dispute, I have avoided the facility of bandying highly moralverdicts and labelling these victors or victims of life with tagsmarking their destinations in the next world. He who gets into another'sheart with understanding, will find it impossible to indulge inwholesale blame--"_tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner_. " So, withoutpretending to have comprehended any of these human hearts altogether, Ihave learned enough to lean almost always a little toward the defence, and still more nearly always toward the praise of the woman in the case. And yet, the whole effort and viewpoint of the work will be found, Ithink, to be based upon a deep belief that one love is better than two, and that earnestness and honesty and altruism are more blessed andblissful, even with poverty and suffering, than any wealth of money, orof fame, or of amorous experience. 

As a last chapter to this series of "true stories, " I have ventured tosum up the conclusions, to which the study of all these affairs hascompelled me, and to state a general opinion as to the effect of musicon character. It might have been more exciting to some readers, if Ihad started out with a hard and fast theory, and then discarded orwarped everything contradictory to it, but it would have been adishonest procedure for one who believes that musicians are neithersaints of exaltation nor fiends of lawless ecstasy; but only ordinaryclay ovens of fire and ashes like the rest of us. He who generalises islost, and yet I make bold to believe that the conclusion of this book istrue and reasonable and in accordance with such evidence as could becollected. 

And now after this before-the-curtain lecture, it is high time, asArtemus would say, to "rise the curting. "

CHAPTER II. 

THE ANCIENTS

The very origins and traditions of the trade of music seem to enforce acertain versatility of emotion and experience. Apollo, the particulargod of music, was not much of a lover, and what few affairs he had werehardly happy; his suit was either declined with thanks, or, if accepted, ended in the death of the lady; as for himself--being a god, he wasdenied the comfortable convenience of suicide. Daphne, as every oneknows, took to a tree to escape his attentions; and Coronis, as so manyanother woman, was soon blasé of divine courtship, and, for variety, turned her eyes elsewhere. She was punished with death indeed; but herson was Aesculapius. Which explains the medicinal value music has alwaysclaimed. 

Old Boetius--who had affection enough for both a first and a secondwife--tells, in his treatise on music, many anecdotes of the art'sinfluence, not only upon sickness but upon wrathful mobs bent onmischief. He quotes Plato's statement that "the greatest caution is tobe taken not to suffer any change in well-moraled music, there being nocorruption of manners in a republic so great as that which follows agradual declination from a prudent and modest music; for whatevercorruptions are made in music, the minds of the hearers will immediatelysuffer the same, it being certain that there is no way to the affectionsmore open than that of hearing. "

The musician proverbially both plays upon and is a lyre. Thisinstrument, as is well known, was first made out of a vacantturtle-shell, by Mercury, the god of gymnastic exercises and of theft, that is to say, of technic, and of plagiarism. Mercury was nimble withhis affections also; among his progeny was the great god Pan, who isfrequently reported, and commonly believed, to be dead. Pan was so farfrom beautiful that even his nurse could not find a compliment for him, and in fact dropped him and ran. Considering what one usually expects ofa new-born infant, Pan must have been really unattractive. His lack ofpersonal charm was the origin of the invention of Pan's pipes or syrinx. Miss Syrinx of the Naiad family--one of the first families ofArcadia--was so horrified when Pan proposed to her, that she fled. Hepursued and she begged aid of certain nymphs who lived in a houseboaton the river Ladon. When Pan thought to seize her, he found his armsfilled with reeds. How many a lover has pursued thus ardently somecharmer, only to find that when he has her, he has but a broken reed!But Pan, noting that the wind was sighing musically about the reeds, cutseven of them with a knife and bound them together as a pastoral pipe. Awise fellow he, and could profit even from a jilt. 

The eminent musician Arion, the inventor of glee clubs--a fact whichshould not be cherished against him--seems to have loved no one excepthimself, and therein to have had no rivals. The famous fish story to theeffect that when he was compelled to leap into the sea, by certainmariners, he was carried to shore on the back of a dolphin, is onlyJonah's adventure turned inside out. 

Another early soloist was Orpheus, the beautiful love story of whoselife is common property. He was torn to pieces by frantic women, a fatethat seems always to threaten some of our prominent pianists andviolinists at the hands of the matinée Bacchantes. 

The patron saint of Christian music, Saint Cecilia, had a remarkablemarried life, including a platonic affair with an angel; which causedher pagan husband a certain amount of natural anxiety. Geoffrey Chaucercan tell you the legend of her martyrdom with the crystal charm of allhis poesy. 

The early Christian Church with its elaborate vocal worship accomplishedmuch for the cause of music, but also, with its vast encouragement tothe monastic life and to celibacy, coerced a great number of musiciansto be monks. This banishes them from a place here--not by any meansbecause their being monks prevented their having love affairs, butbecause it greatly prevented a record of most of them--though happilynot all. Abélard, for instance, was a monk, and his Héloise became anun, and their love letters are among the most precious possessions inliterature. Liszt, that Hungarian rhapsodist in amours, was he not alsoan abbé? There was a priest-musician, George de la Hèle, who about 1585gave up a lucrative benefice to marry a woman dowered with the nameMadalena Guabaelaraoen. But most of them kept their benefices and theirsweethearts both, though we find it noted as worthy of mention in theepitaph of the composer and canon, Pierre de la Rue, in the 16thcentury, that as an "adorateur diligent du Très-Haut, ministre duChrist, il sut garder la chastété et se preserver du contact de l'amoursensuel. " But because you see it in an epitaph, it is not alwaysnecessarily so. 

Sir John Hawkins, in his delightsome though ponderous history of music, tells of the disastrous infatuation of Angelus Politianus, whoflourished in 1460 as a canon of the Church, and the teacher of thechildren of Lorenzo dei Medici. 

"Ange Politien, " he says, "a native of Florence, who passed for thefinest wit of his time in Italy, met with a fate which punished hiscriminal love. Being professor of eloquence at Florence, he unhappilybecame enamoured of one of his young scholars who was of an illustriousfamily, but whom he could neither corrupt by his great presents, nor bythe force of his eloquence. The vexation he conceived at thisdisappointment was so great as to throw him into a burning fever; and inthe violence of the fit he made two couplets of a song upon the objectwith which he was transported. He had no sooner done this than he raisedhimself from his bed, took his lute, and accompanied it with his voicein an air so tender and affecting that he expired in singing the secondcouplet. "

Which reminds one of the actor Artemus Ward describes as having playedHamlet in a Western theatre, where, there being no orchestra, he wascompelled to furnish his own slow music and to play on a flute as hedied. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE MEN OF FLANDERS

The Belgian historian, Van der Straeten, has illuminated the crowdedshelves of his big work, "La Musique aux Pays-Bas avant Le XIXe Siècle, "with various little instances of romance that occurred to the numberlessminstrels and weavers of tangled counterpoint in the Netherlands of theold time. Some of these instances are simply hints, upon which thefervid imagination will spin imaginary love yarns in endless gossamer. Thus of Marc Houtermann (1537--1577) "Prince of musicians" at Brussels. All we know of his wife is from her epitaph. She died the same year hedied--so we fancy it was of a broken heart she died; and she was onlytwenty-six at the time--so we can imagine how young and lithelybeautiful she must have been. Her name, too, was Joanna Gavadia--a sweetname, surely never wasted on an ungraceful woman; and on her tombstoneshe is called "pudicissima et musicis scientissima. " So she was goodand she was skilful in music, like Bach's second wife; and doubtless, like her, of infinite help and delight to her husband. 

Van der Straeten's book is cluttered up with documents of mustyinterest. Among them are a number that gain a pathetic interest by thefrequence of the appeals of musicians or their widows for a pittance ofcharity from the hand of some royal or ducal patron. If there be inthese democratic days any musician who feels humiliated by the strugglefor existence with its necessities for wire-pulling and log-rolling andsly advertisement, and by the difficulty of stemming the tide of publicignorance and indifference, let him remember that at least he is a freeman, and need lick nobody's boots; and let him cast an eye upon thechronicles of shameful humiliation, childish deference, grovellingservility, and whimsical reward or punishment, favour, or neglect, thatmarked the "golden age" when musicians found patrons from whose conceitor ennui they might wheedle a most uncertain living. 

Among the most pathetic of such instances is that of Josse Boutmy(1680--1779), court organist at Brussels, and famous in his day, --whichwas a long day. When he was at the age of eighty and the father oftwelve children, he had to stoop to appeals for charity; again atninety-seven he appeals. At ninety-eight he pleads to be retired with apension; at ninety-nine he dies. Three days after his death his son isasking a pension for the mother of that dozen children. She also writesa pitiful letter still preserved. 

"My husband, Judocus Boutmy, had the happiness of serving, forthirty-five years, as first organist of the chapel of Your Highness. Infirmities, the result of old age, and twelve children raised at greatcost, to enable them to earn their bread, have left me at his death inindigence the greater since my son Laurent Boutmy, who for many yearsgave with approbation assistance to his father, in the hope ofsucceeding to his post, has been deprived of this boon by others. 

"The hope of finding subsistence in the heritage of my ancestors made mego back to Germany, where unhappily the death of my brothers, myabsence, the disorder of war, of law, and a faithless administration, have prevented, at least during my lifetime, all that I could hope. Savefor the tenderness of a daughter, who is herself hardly in easycircumstances, having a family, I should lack the necessaries of life. The infirmities, resulting on an age of seventy, passed in adversity andwork, prevent me from gaining my own living. "

Van der Straeten says that her name was Katrina, that she came fromWestphalia. Save a few titles of his works and a few accounts of thispathetic struggle, this is all we know of poor Josse Boutmy and his oldwife. Then there is Jacques Buus, who makes various appeals for aid forhis increasing family. A refreshing novelty in these annals of sordidpoverty is given us of H. J. De Croes, court-organist at Brussels in theeighteenth century, who was forced to make an appeal for charitybecause the son whom he had sent abroad to study did not return tosupport his father, but decided to marry a woman he met at Ratisbon; itis pleasant to add that the appeal was granted. 

Adrian Couwenhoven, who died in Spain in 1592, left there a widow, AnaWickerslot, who implored the king to grant her money to go back home toFlanders with her children. 

The Brebos family were famous organ-builders in the fifteenth century;they were famous marriers, too, --but one of them met his match, Jean, called to Spain, married there a widow, Marianna Hita, with one son. Thewidow outlived the husband and her son succeeded him in business. GillesBrebos, the best organ-builder in Europe, according to his son, whoought to have known, married in Spain a woman who was also Flemish. Whenhe died she was a widow raised to the third degree, and she wascompelled to appeal to the king for charity. In her quaint appeal shenaïvely points with pride to the fact that in thirty years she hadmarried with three of his Majesty's servants. (_Casada con tres criadosde V. M. _) These three were a royal mathematician, a captain in the royalnavy, killed in the Flanders rebellions, and finally a royalorgan-builder. We are not told what further royal alliances sheachieved. 

Among the most famous of early Flemish musicians is Adrian Willaert(1480?-1562), who was born in Bruges, and was counted the founder of theVenetian school. He was a pupil of that "Prince of Music" JosquinDesprès (of whom too little is known save that the Church got him), Willaert was the teacher of Zarlino, and of Ciprien de Rore (who fromhis epitaph seems to have left a son, though nothing is known of hismarriage). 

We know nothing of Willaert's life-romance, but he must have beenhappily married, for he made six wills before he died, and they are allpreserved. In every one of them he mentions his wife Susana, though henever gives her family name. In each of his wills he leaves her the bulkof his fortune; in the fourth will he says the last word in devotion bybequeathing his widow his fortune to enjoy whether she remarries or not. 

As Van der Straeten says, "it appears that the affection the old manvows for his wife grows greater and greater the nearer the fatal dayapproaches. The most minute dispositions are made in her regard. "

Strangely enough Willaert never mentions either his compositions or hisdaughter Catharine, who was a composer, too. Perhaps this gifteddaughter had a little romance of her own and found herselfdisinherited. 

One of the darkest of the royal English tragedies concerns a musician, one David Ricci or Rizzio, who was born at Turin, the son of a poormusic-teacher, and who, when grown, managed to join the train of theCount de Moretto, then going as ambassador to Scotland. There, thrownupon his own resources in a far cold country, this forlorn Italianmanaged to ingratiate himself among the musicians of Mary, the unhappyQueen of Scots. She eventually noticed him and engaged him as a singer. He gradually rose higher in her political and personal favour till hebecame secretary for French affairs, and conducted himself with suchodious pride and grew so rich and so powerful that at last he wasdragged from the very presence of the queen and slain. And this was inthe year 1566. 

CHAPTER IV. 

ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA

A contemporary of the Rizzio, so humble as a musician and so soaring inhis intrigues, was the great Roland de Lattre, better known as Orland diLassus or Orlandus Lassus, the "Belgian Orpheus, " "_le Prince desMusiciens_. " There is as much dispute over the date of his birth as overthe early conditions of his life. But he was born in either 1520 or 1530at Mons in Hainault, and, according to the old Annales du Hainault, hechanged his name from Roland de Lattre to Orland di Lassus because hisfather had been convicted of making spurious coin and, as a "falsemoneyer, " had to wear a string of his evil utterances round his neck. 

Rarely in history has a composer held a more lofty position than that ofthis son of a criminal, and even to-day he rivals Palestrina in theesteem of historians as one of the pillars of his art. 

He was in the service of the Duke of Bavaria, who gave him as muchhonour as the later King of Bavaria gave Wagner; he stood so high atcourt that a year later he won the hand of a maid of honour, ReginaWeckinger. She bore him two daughters and four sons. One of thedaughters was named after her, Regina, and when she grew up married acourt painter. Two of the sons became prominent composers. The motherwas probably beautiful, since an old biographer, Van Ouickelberg, described her children as _elegantissimi_. 

There is every reason to believe that the wedded life of these two wasthoroughly happy, save that Lassus was an indefatigable fiend of work. As his biographer Delmotte says, "His life indeed had been the mosttoilsome that one could think of, and his fecund imagination, alwaysalert, had _enfanté_ a multitude of compositions so great that theirvery number astounds us (they exceeded two thousand), and forbids usalmost to believe them the work of one man. This incessant tension ofsoul made imperious demands for the distraction of repose; far fromthis, he redoubled his work till nature, worn out, refused to Lassus theaid she had lavished. His mental powers abandoned him abruptly. 

"Regina, one day when she returned, found him in a very precariousstate; he had lost his mind and knew her no more. In her terror, shesent word at once to the Princess Maximilienne, sister of the DukeWilliam, who sent at once to the invalid her own physician, the doctorMermann. Thanks to his care, the health of Orland improved, but hisreason did not return. From that moment he became sad, dreamy, absorbedin melancholy. 'He is no longer, ' said Regina, 'what he was before, gayand content; but is become sombre, and speaks always of death. '"

While Lassus was in this sad condition he grew petulant over hisimagined ill-treatment at the hands of the new duke, and wrote a letterbitterly complaining that he had not carried out his father's promises. In fact, Orland in his condition of semi-insanity threatened to resign, and when the insulted Duke Maximilian showed signs of accepting theresignation, it was the wife that saved the family from disgrace andpoverty. Regina made a fervent appeal (quoted in Mathieu's poem onLassus) that "his _Altesse Sérénissime_ be pleased not to heap on thepoor family of Orland the wrongs that the unhappy father may havedeserved through his _fantaisies bizarres_, the result of too muchthought for his art and too incessant zeal; but that the duke deign tocontinue his former treatment; for to put him out of the service of thecourt chapel would be to kill him. "

He was left undisturbed in his post, but, before long, death forced theacceptance of his resignation. Over his grave was placed a tomb on whichbesides the effigy of himself, are shown also his devoted wife and someof their children. 

Regina two years later founded a perpetual annual funeral service forhim. By a later intercession, she secured for her son, Ferdinand, thesuccession to his father's dignities at the court of Bavaria. She diedJune 5, 1600, and on her tomb she is named, "la noble et vertueuse dameRegina de Lassin, veuve de feu Orland de Lassus. " She had been a goodwife to a good husband. The sadness of her latter years with her belovedand demented husband reminds one of the pathetic fate of Robert Schumannand his wife. 

CHAPTER V. 

HENRY AND FRANCES PURCELL

If Lassus deserved the name of the Netherlandish Orpheus, Henry Purcelldeserved the name his "loveing wife Frances Purcell" gave him when shepublished after his death a collection of his songs under the name of"Orpheus Britannicus. " The analogy holds good also in the devotion ofthese married couples, for Henry willed to Frances the whole of hisproperty absolutely. 

Yet the legend of the cause of his death would verify the old theoryabout the joltiness of the course of true love. For Sir John Hawkinspasses along the gossip that Purcell met his death by "a cold which hecaught in the night waiting for admittance into his own house. It issaid that he used to keep late hours, and that his wife had given ordersto his servants not to let him in after midnight; unfortunately he camehome heated with wine from the tavern at an hour later than thatprescribed him, and, through the inclemency of the weather, contracteda disorder of which he died. If this be true, it reflects but littlehonour on Madam Purcell, for so she is styled in the advertisements ofhis works; and but ill agrees with those expressions of grief for herdear lamented husband which she makes use of to Lady Elizabeth Howard inthe dedication of the "Orpheus Britannicus". It seems probable that thedisease of which he died was rather a lingering than an acute one, perhaps a consumption; and that, for some time at least, it had no wayaffected the powers of his mind, since one of the most celebrated of hiscompositions, the song 'From Rosy Bowers, ' is in the printed book saidto have been the last of his works, and to have been set during thatsickness which put a period to his days. "

Hawkins guesses that Purcell was married young, because at the age oftwenty-five he was advertising the sale of his first sonatas at his ownhouse; also that, musician-like, he left his family dependent upon thefavour of his benefactors, particularly upon the graciousness of hispupil and patroness, Lady Elizabeth Howard, who placed on his tomb inWestminster Abbey the famous inscription often credited to Dryden: "Herelyes Henry Purcell, Esq. ; who left this life, and is gone to thatblessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded. "

We now know that Purcell's marriage was either in 1680 or 1681, when hewas twenty-two or twenty-three years old. August 2d, 1682, Purcell'sfather, a venerable and distinguished musician and a friend of Pepys, the diarist, was buried in Westminster Abbey, where later his moredistinguished son was laid. A few days after the elder Purcell's burial, Henry and his wife came to Westminster Abbey again, for the baptism of ason new-born. He died in a few months and a third time they came to thesad old abbey to lay their child in the cloisters there. 

The next year, 1683, a second son died, and in 1687 a third boy twomonths old was buried in the cloisters of the abbey. This monotonousreturn of the hand of death must have embittered the life of these two, who seem to have remained lovers always. But in May, 1688, a daughterwas born, named Frances after her mother; and she outlived both parents. She married a poet, when she and her lover were each nineteen, and nameda child Frances after the grandmother. On Sept. 6th, 1689, HenryPurcell's son Edward was baptised, and he also lived to attain somedistinction as an organist. In 1693 a daughter, Mary Peters, was born. 

Two years later, on May 21st, 1695, the young father died--on the eve ofSt. Cecilia's Day. At his bedside were his old mother, his young wife, and the two little children. Purcell was buried under the organ ofWestminster Abbey and the anthems he had composed for the funeral ofQueen Mary were sung at his own. And there he rests near his fellowmusician, Pelham Humphries, who lies, as Runciman says, "by the side ofhis younger wife in the Thames-sodden vaults of Westminster Abbey. "

Purcell's will, made the very day of his death, was as follows:

"In the name of God, Amen. I, Henry Purcell, of the Citty of Manchester, gent. , being dangerously ill as to the constitution of my body, but ingood and perfect mind and memory (thanks be to God), doe by thesepresents publish and declare this to be my last Will and Testament. 

"And I do hereby give and bequeath unto my loving Wife, Frances Purcell, all my Estate both reall and personall of what nature and kind soever, to her and to her assigns for ever. And I doe hereby constitute andappoint my said loveing Wife my sole Executrix of this my last Will andTestament, revokeing all my former Will or Wills. Witnesse my hand andscale this twentieth first day of November, Annoq. Dni. One thousand sixhundred ninety-five, and in the seventh yeare of the Raigne of KingWilliam the Third, &c. 

H. PURCELL. "

As to Hawkins's theory that Purcell left his wife in needycircumstances, Cummings, his biographer, believes the thought refuted bythe will left by the widow herself, who outlived her husband by elevenyears, and on St. Valentine's Day, 1706, was buried at his side. In herwill she says that: "According to her husband's desire she had givenher deare son (Edward) a good education, and she alsoe did give him allthe Bookes of Musicke in generall, the Organ, the double spinett, thesingle spinett, a silver tankard, a silver watch, two pair of goldbuttons, a hair ring, a mourning ring of Dr. Busby's, a Larum clock, Mr. Edward Purcell's picture, handsome furniture for a room, and he was tobe maintained until provided for. All the residue of her property shegave to her said daughter Frances. "

Cummings also assails Hawkins's story that Purcell was dissipated andcaught his death from being locked out. But Runciman objects that ifPurcell had not been dissipated in those days, he would have been calleda Puritan, and says: "I picture him as a sturdy, beef-eating Englishman, a puissant, masterful, as well as lovable personality, a born king ofmen, ambitious of greatness, determined, as Tudway says, to excel everyone of his time. "

The love Frances Purcell bore her husband was kept green by her anxietyfor his fame. She was, in her littler way, a Cosima Wagner. In 1696 shepublished a collection of harpsichord lessons by her husband; threeeditions being sold quickly. The next year she issued ten sonatas and a"Collection of Ayres. " In 1698 she issued (or reissued) the "OrpheusBritannicus. " In all of these she wrote dedications breathing devotionto her husband. In an ode printed in the second volume of the "Orpheus, "in 1704, Purcell's personality is thus limned:

 "Nor were his Beauties to his Art confin'd So justly were his Soul and Body join'd You'd think his Form the Product of his Mind. A conquering sweetness in his Visage dwelt, His Eyes would warm, his Wit like lightning melt. But those must no more be seen, and that no more be felt. Pride was the sole aversion of his Eye, Himself as Humble as his Art was High. "

Purcell died at the age of thirty-seven--being granted only two yearsmore of life than Mozart and only six years more than Schubert. He isthe moon of English music and his melodies are as exquisite and assilvery and as full of enamoured radiance as the tintinnabulations ofthe moonbeams themselves. But unfortunately for English music thisbeautiful moon, who is the most nearly great of all the composersEngland has furnished the world, was speedily obscured in the blindingglare of the sun of English music which came shouldering up from theeast, and which has not yet sunk far enough in the west to cease fromdazzling the eyes of English music-makers. But of Händel as a lover, wemust postpone the gossip till we have mouthed one of the most deliciousmorsels in musical scandal, a choice romance that is said to haveaffected Purcell very deeply. 

The story concerns the strenuous career of Alessandro Stradella, andwhen you read it you will not wonder that it should have made a greatsuccess as an opera, or that it gave Flotow his greatest popularity nextto "Martha, " even though its conclusion was made tamely theatrical. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF STRADELLA

There are historians, sour and cynical, who have tried to contradict thetruth of the life story of Stradella as Bourdelot tells it in his"Histoire de la Musique et de ses Effets, " but they cannot offer us anysatisfactory substitute in its place, and without troubling to givetheir merely destructive complaints, and without attempting to improveupon the pompously fascinating English of old Sir John Hawkins, I willquote the story for your delectation. 

Certain it is that there was a composer named Stradella, and that he wasan opera composer to the Venetian Republic, as well as a frequent singerupon the stage to his own harp accompaniments. He occupies a position inmusical history of some importance. The following story of hisadventures is no more improbable than many a story we read in the dailynewspapers--and surely no one could question the credibility of thedaily newspapers. But here is the story as Hawkins tells it. As thecook-books say, salt it to your taste. 

"His character as a musician was so high at Venice, that all who weredesirous of excelling in the science were solicitous to become hispupils. Among the many whom he had the instruction of, was one, a younglady of a noble family of Rome, named Hortensia, who, notwithstandingher illustrious descent, submitted to live in a criminal intimacy with aVenetian nobleman. The frequent access of Stradella to this lady, andthe many opportunities he had of being alone with her, produced in themboth such an affection for each other, that they agreed to go offtogether for Rome. In consequence of this resolution they embarked in avery fine night, and by the favour of the wind effected their escape. 

"Upon the discovery of the lady's flight, the Venetian had recourse tothe usual method in that country of obtaining satisfaction for real orsupposed injuries: he despatched two assassins, with instructions tomurder both Stradella and the lady, giving them a sum of money in hand, and a promise of a larger if they succeeded in the attempt. Beingarrived at Naples, the assassins received intelligence that those whomthey were in pursuit of were at Rome, where the lady passed as the wifeof Stradella. Upon this they determined to execute their commission, wrote to their employer, requesting letters of recommendation to theVenetian embassador at Rome, in order to secure an asylum for them tofly to, as soon as the deed should be perpetrated. 

"Upon the receipt of letters for this purpose, the assassins made thebest of their way toward Rome; and being arrived there, they learnedthat on the morrow, at five in the evening, Stradella was to give anoratorio in the church of San Giovanni Laterano. They failed not to bepresent at the performance, and had concerted to follow Stradella andhis mistress out of the church, and, seizing a convenient opportunity, to make the blow. The performance was now begun, and these men hadnothing to do but to watch the motions of Stradella, and attend to themusic, which they had scarce begun to hear, before the suggestions ofhumanity began to operate upon their minds; they were seized withremorse, and reflected with horror on the thought of depriving of hislife a man capable of giving to his auditors such pleasure as they hadjust then felt. 

"In short, they desisted from their purpose, and determined, instead oftaking away his life, to exert their endeavours for the preservation ofit; they waited for his coming out of the church, and courteouslyaddressed him and the lady, who was by his side, first returning himthanks for the pleasure they had received at hearing his music, andinformed them both of the errand they had been sent upon; expatiatingupon the irresistible charms, which of savages had made them men, andhad rendered it impossible for them to effect their execrable purpose;and concluded with their earnest advice that Stradella and the ladyshould both depart from Rome the next day, themselves promising todeceive their employer, and forego the remainder part of their reward, by making him believe that Stradella and his lady had quitted Rome onthe morning of their arrival. 

"Having thus escaped the malice of their enemy, the two lovers took animmediate resolution to fly for safety to Turin, and soon arrived there. The assassins being returned to Venice, reported to their employer thatStradella and Hortensia had fled from Rome, and taken shelter in thecity of Turin, a place where the laws were very severe, and which, excepting the houses of embassadors, afforded no protection formurderers; they represented to him the difficulty of getting these twopersons assassinated, and, for their own parts, notwithstanding theirengagements, declined the enterprise. This disappointment, instead ofallaying, served to sharpen the resentment of the Venetian: he had foundmeans to attach to his interest the father of Hortensia, and, by variousarguments, to inspire him with a resolution to become the murderer ofhis own daughter. With this old man, no less malevolent and vindictivethan himself, the Venetian associated two ruffians, and dispatched themall three to Turin, fully inspired with a resolution of stabbingStradella and the old man's daughter wherever they found them. TheVenetian also furnished them with letters from Mons. L'Abbé d'Estrades, then embassador of France at Venice, addressed to the Marquis ofVillars, the French embassador at Turin. The purport of these letterswas a recommendation of the bearers of them, who were thereinrepresented to be merchants, to the protection of the embassador, if atany time they should stand in need of it. 

"The Duchess of Savoy was at that time regent; and she having beeninformed of the arrival of Stradella and Hortensia, and the occasion oftheir precipitate flight from Rome; and knowing the vindictive temper ofthe Venetians, placed the lady in a convent, and retained Stradella inher palace as her principal musician. In a situation of such security asthis seemed to be, Stradella's fears for the safety of himself and hismistress began to abate, till one evening, walking for the air upon theramparts of the city, he was set upon by the three assassins abovementioned, that is to say, the father of Hortensia, and the tworuffians, who each gave him a stab with a dagger in the breast, andimmediately betook themselves to the house of the French embassador asto a sanctuary. 

"The attack on Stradella having been made in the sight of numbers ofpeople, who were walking in the same place, occasioned an uproar in thecity, which soon reached the ears of the duchess: she ordered the gatesto be shut, and diligent search to be made for the three assassins; andbeing informed that they had taken refuge in the house of the Frenchembassador, she went to demand them. The embassador insisting on theprivileges which those of his function claimed from the law of nations, refused to deliver them up. In the interim Stradella was cured of hiswounds, and the Marquis de Villars, to make short of the question aboutprivilege, and the rights of embassadors, suffered the assassins toescape. 

"From this time, finding himself disappointed of his revenge, but notthe least abated in his ardour to accomplish it, this implacableVenetian contented himself with setting spies to watch the motions ofStradella. A year was elapsed after the cure of his wounds; no freshdisturbance had been given to him, and he thought himself secure fromany further attempts on his life. The duchess regent, who was concernedfor the honour of her sex, and the happiness of two persons who hadsuffered so much, and seemed to have been born for each other, joinedthe hands of Stradella and his beloved Hortensia, and they were married. 

"After the ceremony Stradella and his wife having a desire to visit theport of Genoa, went thither with a resolution to return to Turin: theassassins having intelligence of their departure, followed them close attheir heels. Stradella and his wife, it is true, reached Genoa, but themorning after their arrival these three execrable villains rushed intotheir chamber, and stabbed each to the heart. The murderers had takencare to secure a bark which lay in the port; to this they retreated, andmade their escape from justice, and were never heard of more. 

"Mr. Berenclow says that when the report of Stradella's assassinationreached the ears of Purcell, and he was informed jealousy was the motiveto it, he lamented his fate exceedingly; and, in regard of his greatmerit as a musician, said he could have forgiven him any injury in thatkind; which, adds the relater, 'those who remember how lovingly Mr. Purcell lived with his wife, or rather what a loving wife she proved tohim, may understand without farther explication. '"

CHAPTER VII. 

GIOVANNI AND LUCREZIA PALESTRINA

Almost exactly a century before Purcell died in England, there died inItaly, at Rome, a composer who has made his birthplace immortal, thoughhis own name has almost been lost to public recognition in the process. That is the man whose name in English would be John Peter Lewis, or ashis father called him, Giovanni Pier Luigi, who was born at Palestrina, at some date between 1514 and 1530, and who died in the fulness of hisfame February 2, 1594, when Shakespeare was thirty years old, and was, it seems, just getting into print for the first time. 

The man whom all posterity knows by the name of his birthplace, asPalestrina, was the greatest composer the Catholic Church ever had. Hewas a younger contemporary of Willaert's, but was born an Italian. Andall his glory belongs to Italy. Of his youth nothing is known. He firstappears as the organist and director at the chief church in Palestrinafrom 1544 to 1551. 

Of his early love-making nothing is known; it is only certain that hemarried young, and it would seem very happily. Yet this marriage broughthim the greatest shock of his life. His wife's name was Lucrezia, "hisequal and an honest damsel" (_donzella onesta e sua para_), according tothe biographer Baini, who adds:

"With her, Giovanni divided the pleasure of seeing himself elected thefirst Maestro of the Vatican; with her he suffered the most straitpenuries of his life; with her he sustained the most cruel afflictionsof his spirit, and with her also he ate the hard crust of sorrow: yetwith her again he rested in the sunlight that beamed from time to timeto his glory and to his gain. And so they passed together, these twofaithful consorts, nearly thirty years. "

Lucrezia bore him four children, all sons, Angelo, Ridolfo, Silla, andIgino. The first three died in early manhood, after showing themselvesin some sort heirs of their father's genius: in the second book of hismotets Palestrina has included some of their compositions. The last son, Igino, outlived his parents and his own welfare; he was "_un' animadisarmonica"_ After his father's death he attempted to complete andmarket an unfinished and rejected composition of his father's, but hewas legally restrained. He lost some of his father's unpublished works, while certain noddings of genius, better lost, and refused even by thePope, Palestrina dedicated them to, still remain, with a dedication toyet another Pope, put on them by the scapegrace Igino. 

A certain writer Pitoni, by a bit of careless reading, multipliedPalestrina's wives by two, and divided his sons by the same number, claiming that Lucrezia, the first wife of Palestrina, was the mother ofAngelo, that after her death he married one Doralice, and that she wasthe mother of Igino. But Baini exposes Pitoni's carelessness, proves theexistence of Ridolfo and Silla by the inclusion of their works in thefather's book, and shows that Doralice was the wife of Palestrina's sonAngelo. 

It being established, then, that Palestrina was married but once, and itbeing assumed that he was happily married, it is strange to see how thishappy marriage came near proving fatal to him. Palestrina, who was, likeMichelangelo, intimate with various Popes, dedicated in 1554 his firstprinted book of masses to Pope Julius III. As a reward, the carelesspontiff made him one of the singers of his Sistine Chapel, omitting theusual severe examination, and overlooking as a small matter the factthat Palestrina was so far from being a priest that he was very muchmarried and very much the father, and furthermore had no voice. ButPalestrina resigned his post as maestro at Saint Peter's and enteredthe chapel. The Pope died shortly afterward and was succeeded by acardinal who was a patron of Palestrina's and continued his favour asPope Marcellus II. Three weeks later this Pope also died, and wasfollowed by Paul IV. 

Unfortunately for Palestrina, the new Pope was a strict constructionist, and he found it "indecent that there should be married men(_ammogliati_) interfering in holy offices. " In spite of the action ofthe two previous pontificates, he determined to expel the threeBenedicks who had entered the choir, Leonardo Barè, Domenico Ferrabosco, and Palestrina, "uomini ammogliati, e chi con grandissimo scandalo, edin vilipendio del divin culto, contro le disposizioni dei sagri canoni, e contro le costituzioni e le consuetudini della cappella apostolicacantano i medesimi tre ammogliati imitamente ai capellani cantori. " Hethen declares that, after mature deliberation, "cassiamo, discacciamo, etogliamo" from the list of chappellary singers these three, and thatthey ought to be "cassati, discacciati, e tolti dalla cappella, " andthat after the present order they "cassino, discaccino, e tolgano. " Andexcommunication was threatened if any more married men (_uxorati_) werereceived in the chapel. 

This was on the 30th of July, 1555, just six months after Palestrina hadresigned his important post at Saint Peter's. He was a young man with afamily, and apparently keenly sensitive, for when this sonorousthunderbolt was launched at his head, he immediately fell ill of a feverand came nigh to death. But he recovered, and two months later foundanother post as canon of the Lateran, of which by the 1st of October, 1555, he was maestro. Eleven years later, a year after he had writtenhis immortal Improperia, we find him begging on account of the needs ofhis family to be given an increase of salary, or the acceptance of hisresignation. They gave him the acceptance. Again he found another post, and ten years later was back again as maestro of the Vatican after hismany wanderings and vicissitudes. 

In the meanwhile he had written his famous mass named after his oldfriend, Pope Marcellus II. The ten years between 1561 and 1571 hadmarked an epoch not merely in the life of Palestrina, but in the historyof religious music. 

The reform Palestrina undertook, or was entrusted with, was the endingof the old scandal brought upon the Church by the elaborate lengths towhich contrapuntal composers had gone in using popular melodies, andoften even street songs of an obscene nature, as a foundation melody orcantus firmus for their vocal gymnastics. The churchmen of that day didin a more elaborate fashion what Wesley did in his day and theSalvation Army in ours for the popular ballad of the streets. Thetrouble was that many of the congregation would think only of theoriginal words of these catchy tunes, and in the general uproar some ofthe priests would sing the actual texts, thinking that the people wouldnot hear them, and forgetting that they were supposed to be for anall-hearing ear. 

I find an interesting example of this custom in the career of amusician, a contemporary of Palestrina's mentioned by Van der Straeten;his name was Ambrosio de Cotes. He was the Maestro de Capilla of theKing's Chapel at Grenada; he was of either Flemish or English birth, and, though he was a churchman, was a gambler and drunkard; he kept amistress, who ought to have been pretty to fit her pretty name, Juana deEspinosa. Besides, De Cotes caroused miscellaneously, he ran the streetsat night, in bad company, and singing bad songs. In 1591 he wasofficially reproved for these habits, and for singing improper words tosacred music (_y cantan muchos rezes letras profanas, yndecentes_). 

So great was the scandal throughout the whole world of church music thatcontrapuntal music came near being abandoned entirely. It was given alast chance in a proposition to Palestrina to see if it were worthy andcapable of redemption. He composed three masses, and the third of them, dedicated to the memory of Pope Marcellus II. , was accepted, not only asthe rescue of the old school of vocal worship, but also as the finalword and ultimate model for future church music. 

Some years later, at the very height of his glory, Palestrina's heartsuffered its final blow. In the words of Baini, "Lucrezia, _la sua dolceconsorte_, after having piously accompanied the solemn procession forthe transport of the body of Saint Gregory Nazianzeno from the church ofthe monks of S. Maria Campa Marzo to the Vatican the fourth of June, 1580, was assailed by a most oppressive malady. "

The attentions of her husband and the remedies of the medical art ofthat day kept her alive up to the first of July. Then the sickness begananew and "neither the tears nor the voice of the loving companionprevailed against the inexorable scythe of death. " On the 21st of JulyLucrezia died. The next day her body was received at the Vatican, Giovanni watching in the schoolroom of the chapel. 

It is easy to picture the wild grief of this man, whom a previousanxiety had thrown into an almost mortal fever. Yet he lived fourteenbusy years, and in his old age he felt both fatigue and want, and wascompelled to join the long list of those musicians who have appealed totheir patrons for charity. But at least his life, like Bach's and thatof many another, had proved that marriage is not always and necessarilya failure when set to music. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

BACH, THE PATRIARCH

The genealogy of the Bachs shows them to have been in the habit ofmarrying at least two or three times apiece, and of being very prolific. 

Johann Ambrosius Bach, the father of "the Father of Modern Music, " had atwin brother, Johann Cristoph. They were astonishingly alike in mind andmanner and mien. They suffered the same disorders and died nearlytogether. Their wives, it is said--_horresco referens_!--could not tellthem apart. J. Christoph was sued for breach of promise by a girl whomhe said he had discussed matrimony with and exchanged rings with, buttired of. The Consistory ordered him to marry her, but he appealed to ahigher court and was absolved from the tenacious woman whom he said he"hated so that he could not bear the sight of her. " He married anotherwoman four years later. 

The great Bach, Johann Sebastian, was the youngest of six children. Hismother died when he was nine years old, but with Bachic haste hisfather remarried; the new wife was a widow and seemed to be in the habitof it, for she buried J. Ambrosius two months after the wedding. The boySebastian was put in charge of an uncle. 

At eighteen he was organist at Arnstadt--at twenty-one he went on footfifty miles to Lübeck to hear the great Buxtehude play the organ. He hadbeen given four weeks' leave and took sixteen. He was severely reprovedfor this by the Consistory; and the reproof is in existence still. Whilethey were about it, they reproved him for his wild modulations andvariations, also for having played too long interludes, and then, whenrebuked, playing them too short. He was given eight days to answer, andwaited eight months. Then they remonstrated with him mildly again, adding, that they "furthermore remonstrate with him on his havinglatterly allowed the stranger maiden to show herself and to make musicin the choir. " His answer to this was simply that he had spoken about itto the parson. Further explanation we have none. 

Spitta speculates on the identity of this "stranger maiden. " In theolder church-cantata women did not sing: in the newer form theyoccasionally did. She might have been a professional from the Brunswickopera. But Spitta decides that it must have been Maria Barbara Bach, hiscousin from a neighbouring town. She is known to have had relatives andfriends in Arnstadt, and Bach married her a year later. Assuming this tobe true, Spitta notes that a delightful episode in the courtship of theyoung couple is disclosed to our view. Perhaps, too, when Bach "spoke tothe parson, " he confessed his love and his betrothal. 

Further Spitta comments: "The plan on which Bach wished to found his ownfamily shows how he, too, was filled with that patriarchal feeling bywhich his race was distinguished and brought to such flourishingconditions. Without straying into foreign circles he found, in arelation who bore his name, the person whom he felt to be the mostcertain of understanding him. If we must call it a coincidence, it is, at any rate, a remarkable one, that Sebastian, in whom the gifts of hisrace reached their highest perfection, should also be the only one ofits members to take a Bach to wife. If we are right in regarding themarriage union of individuals from families not allied in blood as thecause of a stronger growth of development in the children, Bach's choicemay signify that in him the highest summit of a development had beenreached, so that his instinct disdained the natural way of attemptingfurther improvement, and attracted him to his own race. His second wife, indeed, was not allied with him in blood, but that with the first hefound, in some respects, his more natural development may perhaps beconcluded from the fact that the most remarkable of his sons were allthe children of his first marriage. "

Upton says that Bach loved Maria Barbara when he was only eighteen andthey agreed to wait till he got a better post. This was not till threeyears had passed and then his salary was only eighty-five gulden (about£7, or $35) besides a little corn and wood and some kindling-wood. 

It was on October 17, 1707, that, according to the record, "therespectable Herr J. S. Bach, the surviving lawful son of the late mostrespectable Herr Ambrosius Bach, the famous town-organist and musicianof Eisenach, was married to the virtuous maiden Maria Barbara Bach, theyoungest surviving unmarried daughter of the late very respectable andfamous artist Herr Johann Michael Bach. "

A little inheritance of fifty gulden (£4 or $20) aided the new couple. But it is small wonder that we find Bach sighing later: "Modest as is myway of life, with the payment of house-rent and other indispensablearticles of consumption, I can with difficulty live. " A year after hismarriage, however, he was appointed court organist to the Grand Duke ofWeimar, a post he held nine years. Then he became musical director withthe Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. In 1720 he went to Carlsbad with hisprince. When he returned to the bosom of his family, he found that hiswife was not only dead, but buried. Spitta imagines his grief as hestood over the grave of the woman who had followed him from humility tosuccess and had not been able to wish him a last Godspeed. She had bornehim seven children, three of whom died; of the sons were WilhelmFriedemann, the father's favourite, and Karl Philipp Emanuel, whom theworld long preferred to Sebastian himself, and whom later timesspitefully underrate. 

The shock of coming home to his dead wife did not annul Bach's powers, and his next cantata with the suggestive title, "He that exaltethhimself shall be abased, " shows a larger grasp of resource and power. Inthe same year he made a sensation by his playing in Hamburg, winning thehigh praise of the eminent organist Reinken (whom by the way Matthesonaccused of being "a constant admirer of the fair sex, and much addictedto the wine-cellar of the Council"). 

For all they may say of the superior genius of Bach's first wife'schildren, it was in his second wife that he seems to have found his morecongenial and appreciative helpmeet. Bach's father had remarried afterseven months of widowering, and lived two months longer. Bach waitedfrom July 7, 1720, to December 3, 1721, and he lived nearly thirty yearsmore. His new wife bore him thirteen children, six of them sons, none ofwhom were remarkable musically, though their mother was more musicalthan the mother of Bach's first children. Perhaps the newcomers thoughtit time to take the name out of the rut. 

Anna Magdalena Wülken was the daughter of the court trumpeter in theducal band at Weissenfels. She was twenty-one years old while Bach wasthirty-six. They were betrothed as early as September, 1721, andtogether stood sponsor to the child of the prince's cellar-clerk. Thewedding took place at Bach's own house. 

The new wife was very musical, a gifted singer and a devoted student. She made the Bach home a little musical circle. It is evident that shekept up her singing, for October 28, 1730, he wrote of his family, "Theyare one and all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can alreadyform a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my eldestdaughter joins in bravely. "

Soon after the marriage Sebastian and Anna started to keep a musicalbook together. Her name appears in her own hand, then her husband'scheery note that it was "_Anti-Calvinismus_ and _Anti-Melancholicus_. "In this book and another begun in 1725 are compositions by himself andother men, copied in the handwritings of both husband and wife. Thereare arias written apparently for Anna Magdalena, and when in anunusually domestic humour he wrote in a song, "Edifying Reflections of aSmoker" in D minor, she transposed it up to G minor in her ownhand--doubtless that she might sing it to him while he puffedcontentment in uxorious ease. Later on is a wedding-poem, gallantlybeginning, "Irh Diener, werthe Jungfer Braut Viel Glücke zur heutgen Freude!"

and exclaiming that at the sight of her in her garland and wedding-garbthe heart laughs out in rapture;--and what wonder that lips and breastoverflow with joy. There are rules he wrote out for her instruction inthorough-bass with a note that others must be taught orally, and thereis a love-song for soprano, which he must have written for her, to judgefrom the words, "Willst du dein Herz mir schenken. " Upton declares thissong to have been written during and for their first courtship. Aportrait of this ideal wife was painted by Cristofori and passed intothe keeping of her stepson, Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, but alas, it islost while so many a less interesting face is repeated in endlesspictures. 

Twenty-eight years after her marriage this faithful woman stood by herhusband's side in his blindness and through the two operations by theEnglish surgeon in Leipzig. How must she have rejoiced when on July 18, 1750, he suddenly found that he could see and endure with delight theblessed sunshine! How her heart must have sunk when a few hours later hewas stricken with apoplexy and a high fever that gave him only ten moredays of life! At his death-bed stood his wife, his daughters, hisyoungest son, a pupil, and a son-in-law. An old chorale of his was, asSpitta says, "floating in his soul, and he wanted to complete andperfect it. " The original name had been, "When we are in the highestneed, " but he changed the name by dictation now to "Before thy thronewith this I come" (_Vor deiner Thron tret ich hiemit_). The preachersaid he had "fallen calmly and blessedly asleep in God, " and he wasburied in St. Thomas' churchyard; but later the grave was lost sight of, and his bones are now as unhonoured as his memory is revered. 

It is a dismal task to write the epilogue to the beautiful life anddeath of this father of music. The woman who had made his life so happyand aided him with hand and voice and heart, --what had she done todeserve the dingy aftermath of her fidelity?

Bach left no will, and his children seized his manuscripts; what littlemoney remained from his salary of 87 thalers a year (£13 or $65) theydivided with the widow, now fifty years old. Her husband's salary wascontinued half a year longer, but the sons all went away to other towns, some of them to considerable success. The mother and three daughterswere left to shift for themselves. Two years later they must sell a fewmusical remains and the town must aid them out of its funds. 

In the winter ten years after her husband's death, on Feb. 27, 1760, Anna Magdalena died, an alms-woman. Her only mourners were her daughtersand a fourth of the public school children, who were forced by thecustom of the day to follow to the grave the body of the very poor. In1801 Bach's daughter Regina was still living, a "good old woman, " whowould have starved had there not been a public subscription, to whichBeethoven contributed the proceeds of a composition. 

Gradually the name and fame of Johann Sebastian Bach were obliteratedalmost from man's memory. Half a century of oblivion was followed by thegreat revival and the apotheosis of his genius. In that apotheosis someradiance must always be vouchsafed the sweet memory of her to whom heowed so much of his life's delight and his art's inspiration, to whomalso he dedicated his life and his music--Anna Magdalena. 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN

"Such music by such a nigger!" exclaimed one prince. Another called hima Moor. And two others could not endure him at all. He was undersizedand slender as well; and his legs were so very short that they hardlyreached the ground. His nose was long and beaked and disfigured, withnostrils of different shape, and he was undershot like a bulldog, andunusually pitted with smallpox even for those ante-vaccination days, when it was the ordinary thing to show the marks of this plague. Healways wore a wig, too; beginning when he was a child of six, "for thesake of cleanliness"! and continuing to the day of his death, even whenwigs were out of style. 

This does not read like the portrait of a man particularly successful inhis love affairs. It does not certainly read like a description of thehero of a novel written by The Duchess or even by Miss Jane Austen. Yetthis is the picture of a man plentifully beloved, large-minded butstrangely naïf; a revolutionist of childlike directness. 

Everybody knows the story of the early life of Joseph Haydn, one of thetwelve children of a journeyman wheelwright, and throughout his youth ashuttlecock of ill treatment and contempt. 

Love seems to have reached his heart at a late day but with compensatingsuddenness. It is nearly incredible that a man whose after life was soheart-busy should not have felt the tender passion till he was nearlythirty, but stranger things have happened, and the anecdote given by hisfriend Griesinger of his wild agitation when at the age of twenty-sevenhe was accompanying a young countess, and her neckerchief becamedisarranged for a moment, would seem to indicate a remarkablyunsophisticated nature. 

A year later he found himself somewhat relieved of the burden of povertythat had always hampered him, and he remembered him of the two daughtersof a Viennese wig-maker named Keller. Keller had frequently been kind toHaydn, and the younger daughter seems to have inspired him with anardent love, but she took the veil. Elise Polko has worked up anelaborate fiction on this affair with her usual saccharinity. When theconvent closed the younger Keller from the world, her father ingeniouslysuggested to Haydn that he might marry the elder sister. 

As Louis Nohl says, "Whatever may have been the reason, gratitude, ignorance, helplessness in practical matters, or wish to have a wife atonce--whatever may have been the motive, he married, and sorelysuffered for it. "

Anna Keller was older than Haydn, and the family religiousness that ledthe younger daughter to enter the convent, led Anna to contribute moreof money to the Church, of food and society to the churchmen, and of herhusband's compositions to the choir, than even so pious a Catholic asHaydn could afford or endure. 

An account of the married life of these two is given by Haydn's friendCarpani, which incidentally brings up a bit of literary thievery ofunusual quaintness. Carpani wrote his "Le Haydine" in the form ofletters from Vienna; they were published in Milan. Some time after oneMarie Henri Beyle published in Paris what purported to be an originalseries of "Letters written from Vienna. " He published these under thepen name of L. A. C. Bombet. Carpani exposed the theft, but a little laterthe imperturbable Beyle published a second edition of his work under thename De Stendhal. An English translation from the French work iscommonly seen, though never with credit to Carpani. Carpani, in hisaccount of the home life of the Haydns, says they were happy for ahoneymoon. 

 * * * * *

"But soon the caprices of Mrs. Anna turned the knot to a chain, thebliss to torment, and affairs went so far that, after suffering manyyears, this new Socrates ended by separating from his Xantippe. Mrs. Anna was not pretty, nor yet ugly. Her manners were immaculate, but shehad a wooden head, and when she had fixed on a caprice, there was no wayto change it. The woman loved her husband but was not congenial. Anexcess of religious piety badly directed came to disturb this happyharmony. Mrs. Anna wanted the house always full of priests, to whom shefurnished good dinners, suppers, and luncheons. Haydn was a biteconomical; but rather for cause than desire. At this time he had hardlyenough to live on discreetly, and he began to look with evil eye on thisendless procession of holy grasshoppers (_locuste_) who ravaged hislarder. Nor was it appropriate to the house of a studious man, thisceaseless clatter of a numerous, genial, and lazy society; therefore, solidly religious as he was, he could not enjoy these sacred repasts andhe had to close the door of the refectory. After that the deluge (_indeiræ_). Mrs. Anna had a religious brother. Haydn couldn't keep him fromvisiting his sister. 

"Monks are like cherries; if you lift one from the basket, ten comealong with it. Haydn's convent was not depopulated. Nor did the demandsdecrease. Every now and then Mrs. Anna had a new request; to-day aresponsory, to-morrow a motet, the day after a mass, then hymns, thenpsalms, then antiphons; and all _gratis_. If her husband declined towrite them, there appeared on the scene the great confederates ofcapricious women; the effects of hysteria, spleen (_gli insulti distomaco_), spasms; then shrieks, then criminations, weepings, quarrels, and bad humour unceasing. Haydn ended with having to appease the woman, to lose his point, and pay the doctor and the druggist to boot. He hadalways drouth in his purse and despair in his mind. It is a truemiracle that a genius in such a contrast could create the wonderfulworks that all the world knows. 

"It was at this time that, seeking solace in friendship, he contractedthat bond of sentiment which lasted till death with Boselli, a singer inthe service of Prince Esterházy. This friendship, rousing jealoussuspicions in the mind of Mrs. Anna, ended by rendering her unendurable. The hostile fates willed that no fruit should be borne of Haydn'smarriage. " [On this point Haydn once opened his heart to Griesinger, saying: "My wife was incapable of bearing children, and therefore I wasless indifferent to the charms of other womankind. "] "Lacking its mostsolid link, the marital chain could not stand such shocks, and grewfatally weaker. The pair ceased to live together, and only thatsacramental knot remained indissoluble and strong, which Haydn hadcontracted at the age of twenty-seven. Mrs. Anna lived to seventy yearson a sufficient pension which her husband faithfully paid, and she diedin 1800. These vicissitudes in great part explain why Haydn, though heearned much, could not for a long while put aside a penny and makehimself a little ease. "

It is not a pretty picture that Carpani draws of this home life, andAnna is made out to be far from a lovable creature. She is compared tothe patron saint of shrews, Xantippe. But even Xantippe had her side ofthe story to tell; and with all possible admiration for that manSocrates, of such godlike wisdom and such great heart, it must beremembered that Socrates had many habits which would not only causeostracism from society to-day, but would have tried the temper of evensuch a wife as the meek Griselda of Chaucer's poem. 

We constantly meet these husbands who are seemingly rich in genialityand yet are mysteriously unhappy at home. It is the custom of theacquaintances of these fellows to put all the blame on the wife. Butthere is a distinct type of mind which always enjoys dining abroad andappreciates a few herbs in a stranger's house more than a stalled ox athome. These people are gentle and genial and tender only out-of-doors. You might call them extra-mural saints. 

I have a strong suspicion that Haydn, who was so dear and good a soulthat he was commonly called "Papa" by his friends and disciples, was oneof the souls that shrivel up inside the house. In any case he can neverbe forgiven for publishing his domestic miseries as he did. He talkedinexcusably to his friends about his wife; he complained everywhere ofher extravagances and of her quarrelsomeness. When Griesinger wished tomake Haydn's wife a present, Haydn forbade him, saying:

"She does not deserve anything! It is little matter to her whether herhusband is an artist or a cobbler. "

As he passed in front of a picture of her once, he seized the violinistBaillot by the arm, and pointing to the picture said, "That is my wife. Many a time she has maddened me. "

In 1792 he wrote to his mistress from London:--"My wife, the infernalbeast" (_bestia infernale_--Pohl translates this _höllische Bestie_)"has written so much stuff that I had to tell her I would not come tothe house any more; which has brought her again to her senses. "

This was thirty-two years after his marriage, and a year later he writesagain:

"My wife is ailing most of the time and is always in the same miserabletemper, but I do not let it distress me any longer. There will sometimebe an end of this torment. "

Louis Nohl speaks of this as written in a gentle and almost sorrowfultone! As his biographers find gentleness in such writing, it is easy tosee why Mrs. Haydn has had few defenders. 

Heaven forbid that I should be considered as throwing all the blame forthe unhappiness upon the husband. Anna Keller had a remarkably long andsharp tongue whose power she did not neglect; she once complained to herhusband that there was not money enough in the house to bury him in casehe died suddenly. He pointed to a series of canons which he had writtenand framed. When he was in London revelling in his triumph, she sent hima letter in which she asked him for money enough to buy a certain littlehouse she had set her heart on, naïvely adding that it was just a cosysize for a widow. 

Haydn bought it later for himself, and lived in it several years as awidower. Carpani in his thirteenth letter draws a pleasant picture ofHaydn's life with his mistress Boselli, and incidentally describes howvarious composers composed: Gluck with his piano in a summer meadow andthe bottled sunshine of Champagne on each side; Sarti in a dark room atnight with a funereal lamp pendant from the ceiling; Salieri in thestreets eating sweets; Paer while joking with his friends, gossiping ona thousand things, scolding his servants, quarrelling with his wife andchildren and petting his dog; Cimarosa in the midst of noisy friends;Sacchini with his sweetheart at his side and his kittens playing on thefloor about him; Paesiello in bed; Zingarelli after reading the holyfathers or a classic; Anfossi in the midst of roast capons, steamingsausages, gammons of bacon and ragouts. 

"But Haydn, like Newton, alone and obscure, voyaged the skies in hischair; on his finger the ring of Frederick like the invisible ring ofAngelica. When he returned among mortals, Boselli and his friendsdivided his time. For thirty years he led this life, _monotona madolcissima_, not knowing his growing fame nor dreaming of leavingEisenstadt, save when he mused on Italy. Then Boselli died and he beganto feel the ennui (_le noje_) of a void in his days. It was then that hewent to London. "

This mistress of Haydn's, whom Carpani and Fétis call Boselli and whomDies calls Pulcelli, is now generally called Polzelli, following thespelling in Haydn's own handwriting. The pleasant legend Carpani givesof Haydn's life with this woman, undisturbed by ambition until herdeath, is as much upset by later writers as is the spelling of her name. Pohl, closely followed by Haydn's recent biographer, Schmidt, describesLuigia Polzelli as a Neapolitan who was nineteen when she was engaged tosing at the theatre of the Prince Esterházy. She was the wife of AntonPolzelli, an insignificant and sickly violinist, with whom she wasapparently not in love. Luigia is pictured--doubtless by guesswork--asnot beautiful, but of a pleasing appearance, showing the indications ofher Italian birth in "her small slim face, her dark complexion, herblack eyes, her chestnut-coloured hair; her body of medium height andelegant form. "

"To this woman, " says Schmidt, "Haydn fetched his own deep and lastingsorrow. Polzelli was in the same position as he: she lived unhappilywith her spouse. Whether she honestly returned Haydn's love cannot beknown. Facts hint that she often abused and took advantage of his goodnature. But for all that she beautified his life, so often joyless, bythe tenderness which she awoke in him; and the woman who throughouttwenty years could do that, deserved well of the man whose friend shewas; and she earns our consideration and sympathy besides. From Londonthe master wrote her the tenderest letters. Both, as theircorrespondence shows, only postponed their union, till the day when'four eyes shall be closed, '

"Yet when finally both were free, Time had worked his almightyinfluence; Haydn had grown gray; outwardly as well as spiritually anestrangement had widened between them, and of their once so dear adesire there is no more word. Yet Haydn never ceased to provide for hisfriend, as well as to care for the education and the success of hersons. The elder, Pietro, Haydn's favourite, on whom he hung with hiswhole heart, died early. " [Pohl quotes many allusions to him in Haydn'sletters. ] "The younger, Anton, who was reported without properfoundation to be Haydn's natural son, later became musical director ofthe prince's chapel, but then gave up music and turned farmer, finallydying of the plague in sad circumstances. "

Pohl is somewhat fuller upon this alliance than Schmidt, who, in fact, merely condenses and paraphrases him. He says that Polzelli's maidenname was Moreschi [which, being interpreted, is "Moor, " a name oncegiven to Haydn]; she was a mezzo-soprano, who played secondary rôles inthe operas. She earned the same salary as her husband, 465 gulden ayear. The letters Haydn wrote her were always in Italian, and in one ofthem he wishes her better rôles, and "a good master who will take thesame interest as thy Haydn. " Haydn had come to her for sympathy, since, as Pohl says and we have seen, "thanks to his wife he had hell at home"[_die Holle im House_]. 

When increasing fame took Haydn by the hand and led him away to royaltriumphs in London, he did not take jealousy along with his otherluggage. He seems to have heard that his place was promptly filled inPolzelli's heart, but with all his geniality, he could write of therumoured rival as "this man, whose name I do not know, but who is to beso happy as to possess thee. " Then there was a recrudescence of the oldardour:

"Oh, dear, dear Polzelli, thou lingerest always in my heart; never, never shall I forget thee (_O cara Polzelli, tu mi stai sempre nelcore, mal, mal scordeo di te_). "

When some one in London told him that Polzelli had sold the piano he hadgiven her, he could not believe it, and only wrote her, "See how theytease me about you" (_vedi come mi seccano per via di te_). Still lesswill he believe that she has spoken ill of him, and he writes:

"May God bless thee, and forgive thee everything, for I know that lovespeaks in thee. Be careful for thy good name, I beg thee, and thinkoften of thy Haydn, who cherishes and tenderly loves thee and to theewill always be true. "

Even to Bologna, whither Polzelli went with her two sons, says Pohl, "followed Haydn's love--and his gold. " He intended after his firstLondon visit to go to Italy to visit her, and wrote further:

"I cherish thee and love thee as on that first day, and am always sadthat I cannot do more for you. Yet have patience. Surely the day willcome when I can show thee how much I love thee. "

Loisa's choice of a spouse had been unhappy, as so many marriages havebeen where the wife is a singer on the stage, and the husband a fiddlerin the band. Haydn seems to have sympathised with Loisa in her unhappydomestic affairs, as cordially as she had sympathised with him in his. He had sympathy, too, for her similarly ill-matched sister, ChristineNegri, for he writes of her as--

"Already long separated from her husband, that beast, she has been asunhappy as even you, and awakes my sympathy. "

Also in March, 1791, he wrote Loisa about her husband in a mannerimplying that he was a brute or a maniac: "Thou hast done well to havehim taken to the hospital to save thy life. " Haydn and Loisa, beingCatholics, never thought of seeking divorce: their only hope ofcelebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutishhusband and his shrewish wife--"when four eyes shall close. " Loisa'shusband was the first to oblige, for in August, 1791, his death wrings acharitable word from even Haydn:

"Thy poor husband! I tell thee that Providence has managed well infreeing thee from thy heavy burden, for it is better to be in the otherworld, than useless in this one. The poor fellow has suffered enough. "

Later he writes:

"DEAR POLZELLI:--Probably that time will come which we have so oftenlonged for. Already two eyes are closed. But the other two--ah, well, asGod wills!" Eight years more, and the reluctant and wide-eyed AnnaHaydn was foiled of her desire to be a widow in the snug cottage of herchoice. The lovers at last were both single. But now, freed of theirshackles, why do they not rush to each other's arms? The only answer wereceive is this chill and shocking document found long after Haydn'sdeath; it is written in Italian and dated shortly after Frau Haydn'sdeath:

"I, the undersigned, promise Signora Loisa Polzelli (in case I shall bedisposed to marry again) to take no other for wife than the said LoisaPolzelli; and if I remain a widower, I promise the said Loisa Polzelliafter my death to leave her a life pension of 300 gulden, that is 300florins in Vienna money. Valid before every court. I sign myself, "JOSEPH HAYDN, "_Maestro di Cappella of his Highness, the Prince Esterhazy_. 

Vienna, May 23, 1800. "

On this sad and icy postscript to the ardent love affair, Schmidtcomments: "The form of this writing leaves the conclusion plain, thatHaydn was forced to this act by the Polzelli. This throws a poor lighton her character, and we dare not evade the conclusion that, for twentyyears in this love affair for life, she had in mind a businessarrangement with the master. "

Thus cynically writes Schmidt of the woman who for a score of yearsoccupied Haydn's affections. And all of the biographers are inclined toheap upon her more or less contempt; but as you shall see a littlelater, the genial master himself was not above reproach, and Loisa'sanxiety was not unfounded, for her Joseph was casting amorous glanceselsewhere. Thus after the long ardour, the love letters have frozen intoa hard and fast negative betrothal in which Haydn promises to marry noone else. This, Schmidt says, was dragged out of Haydn. But, if such abond were necessary, it speaks surely as ill for Haydn as for the womanwho had given her life and her good name to brighten his joyless heart. 

Yet, dead as his love was, honour remained with him, though it was arather close-reckoning honour. Three months later he answered with moneyher request for house-rent, and in a will dated May 5, 1801, occurs thisclause, cancelling his former agreement, and making new provisions:

"To the widow Aloysia Polzelli, formerly singer at Prince NikolausEsterházy's, payable in ready money six months after my death, 100florins, and each year from the date of my death, for her life . .. 150florins. After her death her son, Anton Polzelli, to receive 150 florinsfor one year, having always been a good son to his mother and a gratefulpupil to me. N. B. --I hereby revoke the obligation in Italian, signed byme, which may be produced by Mme. Polzelli; otherwise so many of my poorrelations with greater claims would receive too little. Finally Mme. Polzelli must be satisfied with the annuity of 150 florins. " Two yearslater we find him writing to her (and, rumour said, his) son: "I hopethy mamma finds herself well. " In a new will, dated 1809, the year ofhis death, Haydn withdraws the cash gift to Loisa, and leaves her only150 florins annuity. She still remains, however, his chief heir. Meanwhile, without waiting for his death, she had married again to LuigiFranci, like herself a singer and an Italian. She outlived him and Haydnalso, only to die in poverty and senility, far away in Hungary. Poor, eighty-two year old Loisa! Her affairs had been sadly mismanaged. 

Why had Loisa given up all hope of marrying Haydn, even when his wifewas dead and she was possessed of his agreement, signed, sealed, anddelivered, to marry no one but her? Awhile ago I stooped to repeatingthe scandal that during Signora Polzelli's life, Haydn had been castingsheep's eyes elsewhere. But it is such a pretty scandal! Besides, theseold contrapuntists were trained from youth to keep two or more tunesgoing at once. 

I am not referring to Haydn's friendship with Frau von Genzinger. It wasKarajan who discovered and published this pleasant correspondence withher. She was the wife of a very successful physician, a "ladies' doctor"(_Damen Doktor_). She was the daughter of the Hofrath von Kayser; hername was Maria Anna Sabina; she was born Nov. 6th, 1750, and had beenmarried some seventeen years, and was the mother of five children whenHaydn began taking his every Sunday dinner with the family. Karajan saysthat she was an _ausgezeichnete_ singer and pianist. 

A deep friendship sprang up at once between them and they correspondedfreely. Haydn's letters to her were published by Nohl, and you may readthem in Lady Wallace's translation. They are full of the mostinteresting lights upon Haydn's life and experiences, and are brimful ofaffection for Frau von Genzinger. But the husband and the children arealmost always referred to in the letters, and the friendship seems tohave been entirely and only a friendship, --as Schmidt calls it, "_einetiefe und zugleich respectvolle Neigung_. "

Mr. Upton, who accepts the friendship as "honourable, " finds in Frau vonGenzinger the only true feminine inspiration Haydn ever had forcomposition. "We owe much of his music to his wife; but the savage andtruculent manner in which she inspired him was not conducive to the bestwork of his genius. There is no record that the Polzelli was of anybenefit to him musically; certainly she was not morally. "

But there was another woman who idolised Haydn the musician, and withHaydn the man conducted a quaint and curious love duet embalmed in manya billet-doux fragrant with charm. 

It was not, then, Frau von Genzinger that threatened Polzelli'ssupremacy. Nor was it Madame Bartolozzi, for whom Haydn wrote a sonataand three trios; nor Mrs. John Hunter, who wrote words for many of hiscanzonets. Nor yet Mrs. Hodges, for whom he composed, and whom he called"the loveliest woman I ever saw. " Nor yet again the fascinating actress, Mrs. Billington, of whom the pleasant story is told, that Haydn, when hewent to London, called on Sir Joshua Reynolds at his studio, found himpainting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels, " andprotested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angelslistening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately afervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. Theskeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil a goodand famous story. 

The true woman in the case makes her _entrée_ in this innocent style:

"Mrs. Schroeter presents her complements to Mr. Haydn, and informs himthat she is just returned to town, and will be very happy to see himwhenever it is convenient to him to give her a lesson. 

"James-st. , Buckingham gate, Wednesday, June the 29th, 1791. "

This little note was the first of a series of genuine love letterspreserved for many years by Haydn. His answers to them seem to have beenlost, though the whimsical spade of time that has recently brought tolight the works of Bacchylides, after two thousand years and more ofoblivion, may with equal speed unsod Haydn's letters to this interestingpersonage. May we be there to see!

Just nineteen years before this little preludising note, Mrs. Schroeterwas an Englishwoman of wealth and aristocracy. In that year there cameto London a German musician, Johann Samuel Schroeter, a brother ofCorona Schroeter, one of that Amazonian army of beauties to whom Goethemade love and wrote poetry. He became music-master to the English queenas successor to that son of Sebastian Bach who is known as "the EnglishBach. " He speedily won pupils and esteem among the higher circles ofLondon society. But being welcomed as a musician was one thing and as ason-in-law quite another. When, therefore, he made one of his mostaristocratic pupils his wife by a clandestine marriage, there was, according to Fetis, such scandal and such a threat of legal proceedingsthat he consented to the annulment of the marriage in consideration of apension of five hundred pounds, and retired from the city to escapenotoriety. Sixteen years after his entry into London Schroeter died ofconsumption. 

Three years later another German musician, Joseph Haydn, appears inLondon, and is taken up by society. Mrs. Schroeter, apparently not satedby her first experience, proceeds to repeat it pat. Just as before, shebecomes a pupil in music, and later a pupil in love of the newcomer. Butwhereas her husband had died at the age of thirty-eight, her new loverHaydn was fifty-nine when she met him. 

Dies quoted Haydn's own words as saying, "In London, I fell in love witha widow, though she was sixty years old at the time. " But Mr. Krehbielshows good reason for believing that Dies must have misunderstood Haydn. To me it occurs as a possibility that Haydn said to Dies, not "thoughshe was sixty years old, " but "though I was sixty years old. " I think weare safe in assuming with Mr. Krehbiel that she was not more thanthirty-five or forty, an age not yet so great, according to statistics, as that of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Marian Delorme, at the timesof their most potent beauty. 

Let us also dismiss as unauthorised and gratuitous the words of PaulineD. Townsend, in her biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeterthat she was "an attractive, although, according to modern taste, asomewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is nodisguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn. Her letters toHaydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her havenot been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmerin tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between himand Frau Haydn in Vienna. " We know how little Frau Haydn had had to dowith Haydn's life in his own town. You may judge for yourself as to thecharge of "vulgarity. "

The existence of Mrs. Schroeter's veritable Love Letters of anEnglishwoman was known for many years, and Pohl in his book on "Mozartund Haydn in London" quoted from them. But for their completepublication in the original English, we are indebted to Mr. Krehbiel's"Music and Manners in the Classical Period. " This captivating workcontains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled withamusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of thetime, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity ofPepys. 

I cannot do better than let these letters speak for themselves throughsuch quotations as I have room to make. There are twenty-two of them inall, in Mr. Krehbiel's book. The abbreviations are curious and explainthemselves. M. L. Is "my love, " D. L. Is "dear love, " M. D. Is "my dear, "and M. Dst. Is its superlative. The abbreviations were possibly due tothe fact that the letters exist only in Haydn's own handwriting, copiedinto his note-book without attention to their proper order. Or they mayhave been simply the amorous shorthand of that day. 

Two of them are signed R. S. And this leads me to believe that Mrs. Schroeter's first name began with R. , though we know neither that norher maiden name. In the first letter Mrs. Schroeter says that sheencloses him "the words of the song you desire. " This letter is datedFebruary 8th. In his note-book there is an entry on February 13, 1792, and just preceding it a little Italian poem in which I have been pleasedto see what was possibly this very song, its first lines beingsuggestively like the first line of Mrs. Schroeter's letter. 

 "Io vi mando questo foglio Dalle lagrime rigato, Sotto scritto dal cordoglio Dai pensieri sigillato Testimento del mio amore (Io) vi mando questo core. "

Among the letters there are many anxious allusions, which may indicatethat Haydn was suffering from insomnia, unless you are inclined to givethem a more subtle significance. But to the quotations, with regretsthat they must be incomplete. 

"Wednesday, Febr. 8th, 1792. 

"M. D. Inclos'd I have sent you the words of the song you desire. I wishmuch to know _how you do_ to day. I am very sorry to lose the pleasureof seeing you this morning, but I hope you will have time to cometomorrow. I beg my D you will take great care of your health and do notfatigue yourself with too much application to business. My thoughts andbest wishes are always with you, and I ever am with the utmost sincerityM. D. Your &c. "

"March the 7th 92. 

"My D. I was extremely sorry to part with you so suddenly last night, our conversation was particularly interesting and I had a thousandaffectionate things to Say to you. My heart was and is full of_tenderness_ for you but no language can express _half_ the _Love_ and_Affection_ I feel for you. You are _dearer_ to me _every Day_ of mylife. I am very Sorry I was so dull and Stupid yesterday, indeed my_Dearest_ it was nothing but my being indisposed with a cold occasionedmy Stupidity. I thank you a thousand times for your Concern for me. I amtruly Sensible of your goodness and I assure you my D. If anything hadhappened to trouble me, I wou'd have open'd my heart and told you withthe greatest confidence, oh, how earnestly I wish to See you. I hope youwill come to me tomorrow. I shall be happy to See you both in theMorning and the Evening. God Bless you my love. My thoughts and bestwishes ever accompany you and I always am with the most Sincere andinvariable Regard my D, "Your truly affectionate--

"my Dearest I cannot be happy till I see you if you Know do tell me whenyou will come. "

"April 4th 92. 

"My D: With this you will receive the Soap. I beg you a thousand pardonsfor not sending it sooner. I know you will have the goodness to excuseme. I hope to hear you are quite well and have Slept well. I shall behappy to See you my D: as soon as possible. I shall be much obliged toyou if you will do me the favor to send me Twelve Tikets for yourConcert. May all _success_ attend you my ever D H that Night and alwaysis the sincere and hearty wish of your "Invariable and Trulyaffectionate--"

"James St. Thursday, April 12th

"M. D. I am so _truly anxious_ about _you_. I must write to beg to know_how you do_? I was very sorry I _had_ not the pleasure of Seeing youthis Evening, my thoughts have been _constantly_ with you and my D. L. Nowords can express half the tenderness and _affection I feel for you_. Ithought you seemed out of Spirits this morning. I wish I could alwaysremove every trouble from your mind, be assured my D: I partake with themost perfect sympathy in _all your sensations_ and my regard is_Stronger every day_. My best wishes always attend you and I am ever myD. H. Most sincerely your Faithful etc. "

"M. D. I was extremely Sorry to hear this morning that you wereindisposed. I am told you were five hours at your Studys yesterday, indeed _my D. L. _ I am afraid it will hurt you. Why shou'd you who havealready produced So many _wonderful_ and _Charming_ compositions Stillfatigue yourself with Such close application. I almost tremble for yourhealth let me prevail on you my _much-loved_ H. Not to keep to yourStudys so long at _one time_, my D. Love if you could know how veryprecious your welfare is to me I flatter myself you wou'd endeaver topreserve it for my sake as well as _your own_. Pray inform me how you doand how you have Slept. I hope to see you to Morrow at the concert andon Saturday I shall be happy to See you here to dinner, in the mean timemy D: my Sincerest good wishes constantly attend you and I ever am withthe _tenderest_ regard your most &c. 

"J. S. April the 19th 92"

"April 24th 1792. 

"My D. I cannot leave London without Sending you a line to assure you mythoughts, my best wishes and tenderest affections will inseparablyattend you till we meet again. The Bearer will also deliver you theMarch. I am very Sorry I could not write it Sooner, nor better, but Ihope my D. You will excuse it, and if it is not passable I will send youthe _Dear_ original directly. If my H. Would employ me oftener to writeMusic I hope I should improve and I know I should delight in theoccupation, now my D. L. Let me intreat you to take the greatest care ofyour _health_. I hope to see you Friday at the concert and on Saturdayto dinner, till when and ever I most sincerely am and Shall be yoursetc. "

"M. D. If you will do me the favor to take your dinner with me tomorrow Ishall be very happy to see you and _particularly_ wish for the pleasureof _your_ company _my Dst Love_ before our other friends come. I hope tohear you are in _good Health_. My best wishes and tenderest Regards areyour constant attendants and I _ever_ am with the _firmest_ Attachmentmy Dst H most sincerely and Affectionately yours, "R. S. "

"James S. Tuesday Ev. May 22d. "

"M. D. I can not close my eyes to sleep till I have return'd you tenthousand thanks for the inexpressible delight I have received from _yourever Enchanting_ compositions and your _incomparably Charming_performance of them, be assured my D. H. That among _all_ your numerousadmirers no one has listened with more profound attention and no one canhave Such high veneration for your most _brilliant Talents_ as I _have_, indeed my D. L. No tongue _can express_ the gratitude I _feel_ for theinfinite pleasure your Musick has given me. Accept then my repeetedthanks for it and let me also assure you with heart felt affection thatI Shall ever consider the happiness of your acquaintance as one of the_Chief_ Blessings of my life, and it is the _Sincer_ wish of my heart topreserve to cultivate and to merit it more and more. I hope to hear youare quite well. Shall be happy to see you to dinner and if you _can_come at three o'Clock it would give me a great pleasure as I shou'd beparticularly glad to see you my D. Befor the rest of our friends come. God Bless you my h: I ever am with the firmest and most perfectattachment your &c. 

"Wednesday night, June the 6th 1792. "

"My Dst, Inclosed I send you the verses you was so Kind as to lend meand am very much obliged to you for permitting me to take a copy ofthem, pray inform me _how you do_, and let me know my _Dst L_ when youwill dine with me; I shall be _happy_ to _See_ you to dinner eithertomorrow or tuesday whichever is most Convenient to you. I am _trulyanxious_ and _impatient_ to _See you_ and I wish to have as much of_your company_ as possible; indeed _my Dst H_. I _feel_ for you the_fondest_ and _tenderest_ affection the human Heart is capable of and Iever am with the _firmest_ attachment my Dst Love

"most Sincerely, Faithfully

"and most affectionately yours

"Sunday Evening, June 10, 1792"

"M. D. 

"I was _extremely sorry_ I had not the pleasure of _seeing you to-day, _indeed my Dst Love it was a very great disappointment to me as everymoment of your company is _more_ and _more precious_ to me now your_departure_ is so near. I hope to hear you are _quite well_ and I shallbe very happy to see you my Dst Hn. Any time to-morrow after oneo'clock, if you can come; but if not I shall hope for the pleasure ofSeeing _you_ on _Monday_. You will receive this letter to-morrowmorning. I would not send it to-day for fear you should not be at homeand I _wish_ to have your answer. God bless you my Dst. Love, once moreI repeat let me See you as _Soon_ as possible. I _ever_ am with the most_inviolable attachment_ my Dst and most beloved H. 

"most faithfully and most

"affectionately yours

"R. S. "

"I am just returned from the concert where I was very much Charmed withyour _delightful_ and enchanting _Compositions_ and your Spirited andinteresting performance of them, accept ten thousand thanks for thegreat pleasure I _always_ receive from your _incomparable_ Music. My D:I intreat you to inform me how you do and if you get any _Sleep_ toNight. I am _extremely anxious_ about your health. I hope to hear a goodaccount of it. God Bless you my H: come to me to-morrow. I shall behappy to See you both morning and Evening. I always am with thetenderest Regard my D: your Faithful and Affectionate

"Friday Night, 12 o'clock. "

This is the last of these letters to which one could apply so fitly thebarbarous word "yearnful, " once coined by Keats. After Haydn's return toLondon, in 1794, there are no letters to indicate a continuance of theacquaintance, but it doubtless was renewed, judging from the sagaciousguess based upon the fact that Haydn did not come back to his oldlodgings but took new ones at No. 1 Bury Street, St. James's. 

This much more pleasantly situated dwelling, he probably owed to theconsiderate care of Mrs. Schroeter, who, by the same token, thus broughthim nearer to herself. A short and pleasant walk of scarcely ten minutesthrough St. James's Palace and the Mall (a broad alley alongside of St. James's Park) led him to Buckingham Palace, and near at hand was thehouse of Mrs. Schroeter. Perhaps he preferred the walk toletter-writing. When he went away from London for ever, he left behindhim the scores of his six last symphonies "in the hands of a lady, "probably Mrs. Schroeter. It was this same woman to whom Haydndedicated three trios, his first, second, and sixth. It was undoubtedlyshe to whom he referred when he made that little speech which Diesprobably misquoted, in telling the answer Haydn gave him when he wasasked what the letters were. "They are letters from an English widow inLondon who loved me; she was, though she already counted her sixtyyears, still a pretty and lovely woman, whom I would very probably havemarried had I then been single. "

Let us remember that these old love letters, so fragrant with fadedaffections, were being received by Papa Haydn even while he was writingto Polzelli, rejoicing in the closing of two of those four baleful eyesthat forbade their union. And let us not judge too harshly the Italianwoman who had given this unbeautiful Austrian of such beautiful geniusso much of her sunshine and tenderness. Nor let us judge too harshly theenamoured English widow. Why indeed need we judge harshly at all?

When Haydn died he had no child to leave his wealth to--even the fablethat Anton Polzelli was his natural son is taken away from us by Pohl, who points out how small and temporary was the provision made for him inHaydn's will. 

Among the heirlooms left by Haydn was a watch given to him by thatAdmiral of Admirals, Lord Nelson--and that points to us as a by-path, which it were pleasant, though forbidden now, to wander, the story ofNelson's fervent amour with Lady Hamilton, that beautiful work of art, that pet of artists. 

As a postscript to Haydn's story we may tag on here a concise statementin his note-book, of the domestic affairs of one whom we do not think ofnow as a musician. 

"On June 15th, I went from Windsor to Slough to Doctor Herschel, where Isaw the great telescope. It is forty feet long and five feet indiameter. The machinery is vast, but so ingenious that a single man canput it in motion with ease. There are also two smaller telescopes, ofwhich one is twenty-two feet long and magnifies six thousand times. Theking had two made for himself, of which each measures twelve Schuh. Hegave him one thousand guineas for them. In his younger days DoctorHerschel was in the Prussian service as an oboe player. In the sevenyears' war he deserted with his brother and came to England. For manyyears he supported himself with music, became organist at Bath, turned, however, to astronomy. After providing himself with the necessaryinstruments he left Bath, rented a room not far from Windsor, andstudied day and night. His landlady was a widow. She fell in love withhim, married him, and gave him a dowry of £100, 000. Besides this he has£500 for life, and his wife, who is forty-five years old, presented himwith a son this year, 1792. Ten years ago he had his sister come; she isof the greatest service to him in his observations. Frequently he sitsfrom five to six hours under the open sky in the severest cold. "

CHAPTER X. 

THE MAGNIFICENT BACHELOR

Two young and flamboyant musickers, boon companions, one twenty-two andthe other eighteen, strike the town of Lübeck in 1703. They are drawnthither by a vacancy in the post of town-organist. And their competitionis to be friendly. 

Two flamboyant young musickers leave the town of Lübeck as soon as canbe. For they have learned that the successful candidate must marry thedaughter of the man in whose shoes they would fain have trodden thepedals. One look at the daughter was enough. She was not fair to see, and her years were thirty-four--just six years less than the total yearsof the two young candidates. 

Back to Hamburg the two friends go, and the next year their friendshipsuffers a serious strain. The elder, now aged twenty-three, is producing"Cleopatra, " an opera of his own composition, and incidentally playingthe role of Antony. The younger of the friends is the conductor, andpresides, as is the custom of the time, at the clavecin. There isanother custom in the performance of that opera, a curious one, too. Forit is the wont of the composer-singer, when he has died as Antony, tocome to life again and conduct the rest of his opera at the clavecin. 

But the younger friend, now full of the importance of nineteen years, and being the successor to the great Reinhard Keiser, is not disposed toyield the clavecin, even to his versatile friend. A quarrel thatnarrowly escapes ruining the melodious swan-song of Cleopatra, ispostponed till after the final curtain. Then it takes the form of aduel. The composer manages at last to elude the parry of the conductor;he throws all his weight and venom into a lunge that must provefatal, --but a large brass button sheds the point of the sword and savesits wearer for a better fate. 

By the strange medicinal virtue of duels, the wound in the friendship ishealed, honour is poulticed, and the friendship begins again, lastingwith healthful interruptions until the younger musician goes his waytoward the fulness of his glory; the elder his way along the lines ofversatility--which leave him in the eyes of posterity rather valued as awriter than aught else. 

The old organist whose death had brought these two younkers on theirwild-goose chase was Dietrich Buxtehude, the famous man whom JohannSebastian Bach walked fifty miles on foot to hear, and whosecompositions he studied and profited from. Old Buxtehude, himself theson of an organist, had himself married the daughter of the organist whohad preceded him. The daughter he left behind to frighten away aspiringcandidates did not languish long. According to Chrysander, a certainJ. C. Schieferdecker, who is famous for nothing else, wed the daughter, and "got the pretty job" ("_erhielt den schönen Dienst_"). 

The elder of the two young men was Johann Mattheson (1681--1764), a sortof "Admirable Crichton, " who married in 1709 Catherine Jennings, daughter of an English clergyman and the relative of a British admiral. That is all of his story that belongs here. 

The younger man, whose life hung on a button, was that great personagewhose name has been spelled almost every way imaginable between Hendtlerand Handel--the later form being preferred by the English, who, assomebody said, love to speak learnedly of "Handel and Glück. " It is notneedful here to tell the story of his brilliant life and the big eventsit crowded into the four and seventy years between 1685 and 1759. Hisfriend Mattheson, like Beethoven, spent his later years in the dungeonof deafness. Händel, like his great rival Bach (who was born the sameyear), spent seven years in almost total blindness, three operationshaving failed. In almost every other respect the careers of these twomen were unlike, particularly in the obscure and prolific married lifeof the one and in the almost royal prominence of the other'sbachelorhood. 

Händel never married, and seems never even to have been in love, thoughhe was an unusually pious son and a fond brother. 

The only time on record when he took a woman into his arms was theoccasion when the great singer, Cuzzoni, refused to sing an air of histhe way he wished it. He seized her, and, dragging her to a window, threatened to throw her out, thundering, "I always knew you were adevil, but I'll show you that I am Beelzebub, the prince of devils. "

Händel's greatest love seems to have been for things to eat. In thememoirs of him, published anonymously [by Doctor Mainwaring] in 1760, the author says that Händel was "always habituated to an uncommonportion of food and nourishment, " and accuses him of "excessiveindulgence in this lowest of gratifications. "

"He certainly paid more attention to it than is becoming in any man; butit is some excuse that Nature had given him so vigorous a constitution, so exquisite a palate, so craving an appetite, that fortune enabled himto obey these calls, and to satisfy these demands of nature. .. . Had hehurt his health or fortune by indulgences of this kind, they would havebeen vicious; as he did not, they were at the most indecorous. "

A story is told of him that he once ordered up enough dinner for three. Noting that the servant dawdled about, Händel demanded why; the servantanswered that he was waiting for the company to come, whereupon Händelstormed, in his famous broken English, "Den pring up der tinnerprestissimo. I am de gombany. "

In his later years Händel was not so beautiful as he might have been, and Queen Anne, alluding to his bulk, said that his hands were feet andhis fingers toes. Mrs. Bray, however, says that "in his youth he was themost handsome man of his time. "

Handel resembles Lully somewhat in his reputation for being a lover ofthe table and a neglecter of womankind. Schoelcher in his biographystates "that not one woman occupies the smallest place in the longcareer of his life. " And yet contradicts himself in his very nextsentence, for he adds:

"When he was in Italy a certain lady named Vittoria fell in love withhim and even followed him from Florence to Venice. Burney describesVittoria as 'a songstress of talent. ' Fetis calls her the ArchduchessVittoria, but both agree that she was beautiful and that she filled thepart of the prima donna in 'Roderigo, ' his first Italian score. At thatperiod, and even later, it was not uncommon to find princes andprincesses singing in the pieces which were produced at their courts. Artist or archduchess, either title was enough to turn the head of ayoung man twenty-four years old; but Händel disdained her love. All theEnglish biographers say that he was too prudent to accept an attachmentwhich would have been ruin to both. This is calumny, for he was neverprudent. "

This Vittoria is an interesting problem in romance. Doctor Mainwaringsays that Händel was Apollo and she Daphne. Chrysander in his greatbiography properly notes that the legend has been twisted, andrepresents here the god as fleeing from the nymph. Coxe says thatVittoria was "an excellent singer, the favourite mistress of the GrandDuke of Tuscany"--which gives a decidedly different look to Händel's"prudence. "

Chrysander tries to prove that this Vittoria was no other than thefamous singer, Vittoria Tesi, "a contralto of masculine strength, " asone listener describes her voice. She was very dramatic, and made herchief success in men's roles, singing bass songs transposed an octavehigher. She was born at Florence in 1690, and would have been seventeenyears old when Händel's "Roderigo" was produced there in 1707. That sheshould be capable of so ardent a love at that age need hardly bementioned when we remember that Romeo's Juliet was only twelve at thetime of her immortal amour. Love _à l'Italienne_ is precocious. 

Wild stories are told of the escapades of this brilliant singer, whomHändel never brought to London among all his importations--and withgood reason, if she had once pursued him as legend tells. No strangeraccount is given than that of Doctor Burney, who describes her peculiarmethod of escaping the proposals of a certain nobleman who implored herto marry him. She had no prejudices against the nobleman, but strongprejudices against marriage. Finally, to quiet her lover's conscientiousappeals, she went out into the street and bribed the first labouring manshe met with fifty ducats to marry her. Her new husband sped fromdumbfounded delight to amazed regret, for he found that with her moneyshe bought only his name and a marriage document, as a final answer tothe count when next he came whimpering of conventional marriage. 

In London Händel reigned as never musician reigned before or since. Heis still reigning to the lasting detriment of English musicalindependence. 

He was a lordly man in his day was Händel; and dared to cut thatterrible Dean Swift, whose love affairs are perhaps the chief riddle ofall amorous chronicle. Dean Swift is said to have said: "I admire Händelprincipally because he conceals his petticoat peccadillos with suchperfection. " This statement may be taken as only a proof either that thedean had so tangled a career of his own that he could not see any otherman's straight; or that Händel was really more of a flirt thantradition makes him out. 

Rockstro said that Händel was engaged more than once; once to theaforementioned Vittoria Tesi--this in spite of the tradition that womanproposed and man disposed; and later to two other women. Rockstro basesthis last doubtless on the account given in that strangely named book, "Anecdotes of Händel and J. C. Smith, with compositions by J. C. Smith. "This was published anonymously in London, in 1799, but it is known tohave been written by Dr. William Coxe. Smith _(né_ Schmidt) was Händel'ssecretary and assistant. He was something of a composer himself, and onhis death-bed advised his widow to consult Doctor Coxe in everyemergency; whereupon, to simplify matters and have the counsellor handy, in due time she married him. 

Doctor Coxe indignantly denies Hawkins' statement that Händel lackedsocial affection; he says that two rich pupils loved him. The firstwould have married him, but her mother said she should never marry afiddler. After the mother's death, the father implied that all obstacleswere now removed, but too late. He never saw the girl again, and shefell into a decline, which soon terminated her existence. The secondwoman was a personage of high estate, and offered to marry Händel if hewould give up his career. But when he declined, she also declined, anddied after the fashion of the eighteenth century. 

In his will Händel left money to two cousins, also to two widows, andone other woman. 

He brought many singers to London for his operas, and their romanceswould fill ten volumes. There is the famous tenor, Beard, for instance, the creator of "Samson. " He created Samsonian scandal by marrying LadyHenrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave; she diedfourteen years later, and he built her a fine monument. Six years laterhe married the daughter of a harlequin. 

Then there was the singer Senesino, and Farinelli, whose heart and brainwere real though his voice was artificial. He became finally a sort ofvocal prime minister to Spain. To start one of these romances of singerswould be like throwing a match in a fireworks factory. 

CHAPTER XI. 

GLUCK THE DOMESTIC, ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR, AND THE AMIABLE PICCINNI

While Händel was in London at the height of his autocracy, he wasvisited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as arevolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance. To the lordly Händel, however, he was more or less contemptible, andpeople who know nothing else of either genius, know that Händel said, "Gluck understood about as much counterpoint as my cook. "

Gluck did not make a success on his London visit, and began to criticiseboth his own work and contemporary schools of opera, with a thoroughnessthat resulted in a determination to "reform it altogether. " From Londonhe went to Vienna in 1748, and there he was soon a figure of importance, moving in the best families, and entertained at the best homes. Amongthe homes in which he was most cordially received, was that of the richbanker and wholesale merchant, Joseph Pergin, who had a large businesswith Holland. Both daughters of the house were, according to Reissman'snot particularly novel expression, "passionately fond of music. " Gluckwas soon made thoroughly at home there. 

"Soon also he was bound in most intimate affection to the elderdaughter, Maria Anne. She reciprocated the feelings, and the mother gaveher consent to the betrothal. Gluck dared to deem the year 1749, inwhich this change took place, the happiest of his life; but it alsoturned out to be his saddest, for the father refused his consent. Thisman, haughty with his wealth, rejected the honoured artist, since he wasonly a musician, and since, besides, his art offered no sufficientpromise or surety for the proper support of a young woman. The loversaccepted the separation thus enforced, with patience, promisingthemselves that it should not be for long, and that they would preserveunbroken fidelity. "

Gluck was called to Rome the next year, and there he had the news thatthe stern father was dead. Accordingly, as soon as he could releasehimself from his engagements, he hastened back to Vienna--as Schmid putsit--"_auf dem Flügeln der Liebe nach Wien zurück_" On the 15th ofSeptember, he was married to his Maria Anne, "with whom to his death hedwelt in the happiest wedlock, and who went with him on his triumphaljourneys four years later. " In 1754 the Pope knighted him; made himCavaliere, and henceforth this once poverty-smitten street fiddler andstrolling singer was known as Ritter von Gluck, the friend and protégéof his countrywoman, Marie Antoinette. 

No children were born to the couple, but they took into their home aniece, and Gluck's wife devoted much of her time to the poor. 

"He left his wife the chief heir. He even left it to her pleasurewhether his brothers and sisters should have anything or not, and saidin his will, 'Since the fundamental principle of every testament is theappointment of an heir, I hereby appoint my dear wife, M. Anne vonGluck, _née_ Pergin, as my sole and exclusive heir; and that no doubtsmay arise, as to whether the silver and other personal property be mineor my wife's, I hereby also declare all the silver and other valuablesto be the sole property of my wife, and consequently not included in myprevious bequests, '"

None of the letters of Gluck, that I have been able to find, concern hismarried life, though many of them are in existence concerning hisoperatic warfare. 

Burney met him in 1773 in Paris, where he was living with his wife andniece. In 1775, on his way back home from Paris, he stopped off atStrasburg to meet the poet Klopstock. D. F. Strauss quotes a descriptionby a merchant of Karlsruhe of this scene: "Old Gluck sang and played, _con amore_, many passages from the 'Messiah' set to music by himself;his wife accompanying him in a few other pieces. " On the 15th ofNovember, 1787, when Gluck was seventy-three years old, he was at hishome in Vienna under doctor's care. After dinner, it was his custom totake coffee out-of-doors, in the free, fresh air and the goldensunlight, where he used to have his piano placed when he would compose. Two old friends from Paris had dined with him, and they were soon toleave. Frau von Gluck left the guests for a moment, to order thecarriage. While she was gone, one of the guests declined the liqueur setbefore him. Now Gluck was always addicted to looking upon the champagnewhen it was yellow; in fact, he used always to have a bottle at eachwing of his piano, when he composed, and was wont to end hiscompositions, his bottles, and his sobriety in one grand _Fine_. But nowhe was forbidden to take wine, for fear of heating his blood. 

On this day, however, he pretended to be angry at his guest for refusingthe choice liqueur. In a burlesque rage, he seized the glass, drained itat a gulp, and jokingly begged the guests not to tell his wife. She cameback to the room to say that the carriage was ready. Frau von Gluck andthe guests left him for half an hour, and he bade them a cheerfulfarewell. Fifteen minutes later his third stroke of apoplexy attackedhim, and his horrified wife returning found him unconscious. In a fewhours he was dead. This wife, with whom he lived so congenially, andwhose money gave him even more luxury than his operatic success couldhave procured, --indeed, the very house he died in she had bought foreleven thousand florins, --outlived him less than three years, dyingMarch 12, 1800, at the age of seventy-one. She was buried near him, andher tomb, built by her nephew, has the following epitaph:

"Here rests in peace, near her husband, Maria Anne, Edle von Gluck, bornPergin. She was a good Christian, and without ostentation a mother tothe poor. She was loved and cherished by all who knew her. "

ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR

During the fierce battles Gluck fought in Paris, one of his most ardentpartisans was Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was a musician in a small way, wrote songs, an enormously successful opera, "Le Devin du Village, " andother musical works, besides making an attempt to reform musicalnotation, and writing a dictionary of music. The world, however, doesnot accept him as a musician but as a writer, and his numerous andcurious love affairs are told in so much detail in his immortal"Confessions, " that I cannot attempt to treat them here. Vandam, in hisbook on "Great Amours, " dissects Rousseau's heart ruthlessly. For hisability to do this, he must thank Rousseau most, for the unequalledfrankness of his own biography, Francis Greble, dissecting "Rousseau'sfirst love, " has neatly dubbed him "the Great High Priest of those whokiss and tell. "

THE AMIABLE PICCINNI

In this same war of operatic schools and composers which raged in Parisupon the reforms of Gluck, the Italian composer Piccinni was haled tothe front as an unwilling opponent of Gluck. 

The world is needlessly cruel to those who happen to interfere in anyway with the favourites of posterity, and Piccinni's name is a byword inthe history of music. We hear much of the unscrupulous opposition thathis partisans made to the reforms of Gluck, but we should also take intoconsideration the unscrupulous opposition that the partisans of Gluckmade to the prosperity and honest endeavours of Piccinni, a man of nomean talent, whose misfortune and not whose fault it was, that he wasnot a genius of the first order. 

But we are not concerned here with the history of music, only with theintimate history of musicians. Piccinni's domestic life was sobeautiful, that it makes it all the more pitiable that he should havebeen dragged willy-nilly into a contest for which he had neitherinclination nor ability. Piccinni fell in love with a pupil, like him anItalian, Vicenza Sibilla. When he was twenty-eight he married her. Hisbiographer Ginguené says: "She joined to the charms of her sex, a mostbeautiful and touching voice. All that happy disposition, assiduousstudy under so good a master could accomplish, especially when teacherand pupil loved each other passionately, and were equally impassionedfor the art, which one taught, and the other learned, it is all thatwhich you must imagine, to get an idea of the talent of Mme. Piccinni. He did not wish her to go on the stage, where everything promised herthe greatest success and the most brilliant fortune; but at home almostevery evening, at the private concerts, or, as the Italians say, in allthe 'academies' where one is glad to be invited, she sang only herhusband's music. She rendered it with the true spirit of the master; andI have it from him, that he never heard his works, especially his 'CaraCecchina' sung with such perfect art, and what would put it above art, so much soul, and expression, as by his wife. "

In 1773 Piccinni found himself suddenly deprived of the fickle supportof the Roman public. Worst of all, it was his own pupil and protégé, Anfossi, who supplanted him. The tender-hearted Piccinni, likePalestrina, was so overcome with this humiliation, that he fell ill, andkept his bed for several months. Two years later, the Prince ofBrunswick's younger brother went to Naples to visit him, and there hehappened upon a domestic scene which gives us a pretty notion ofPiccinni's home life. 

"He surprised Piccinni in the midst of his family, and was amazed at thetableau. Piccinni was rocking the cradle of his youngest child, bornthat same year; another of his children tugged at his coat to make himtip over the cradle; the mother revelling in the spectacle. She fled indismay at seeing the stranger, who stood at the door, enjoying the scenehimself. The young prince made himself known, begged pardon for hisindiscretion, and said with feeling, 'I am charmed to see that so greata man has so much simplicity, and that the author of "The Good Daughter"[one of his most successful operas] can be so good a father. '"

The next year, 1776, Piccinni was called to Paris as an unwillingconscript in the musical revolution, which was raging no less fiercelythan the American Revolution of the same time. It was a bitter Decemberday when Piccinni arrived in Paris with his wife, and his eldestdaughter, aged eighteen. "Devoted to his art, foreign to all intrigue, to all ambition, to the morals, tastes, customs, and language of thecountry, Piccinni lived in his family circle, and devoted himselfquietly to his work, in oblivion of the efforts that the Gluckists madeto thwart the success, and even to prevent the representation, of hiswork. It must be said that Gluck himself stooped to be the instigator ofthese intrigues. "

In spite of all, the day came for the presentation of Piccinni's opera, "Roland, " and the family broke into tears when he went to the theatre. He alone was calm in the midst of this desolation, reassured his wife, and departed with his friends. He returned home in a triumph, which wasperhaps greater than the work deserved, but certainly not greater thanso good a man merited. 

Piccinni was large-hearted enough to cherish no malice against either ofhis rivals, Sacchini or Gluck. When Sacchini died, Piccinni deliveredthe funeral oration, and when, a year later, Gluck died in Vienna, Piccinni made a vain effort to organise a fitting memorial festival. 

He remained upon the field of battle, and the victory for the time mustbe granted him, in spite of certain defeats. Then the French Revolutionbroke out, and he lost his favour with the public, and the friendship ofthe aristocracy became a danger to his very life. He went to Naples, where he found some success, and was well received by the court. Buteverything seemed now to conspire against him. The Republicans of Parishad driven him to Italy, into the arms of the aristocracy there;whereupon, in 1792, his daughter married a French Republican. Thisbrought him into such disgrace with the Italian court that he did notdare leave his house, and fell into neglect and poverty. 

In 1798 he made his way back to Paris, and there his reunited familygave little operas, sung by his wife and daughters. Here "one heard withpleasure always new airs taken from his Italian operas, sung by Mme. Piccinni, with a voice that age had rendered more grave and less light, without making it less beautiful or touching, and with a method as wiseas it was learned, and well opposed to these pretentious displays, theseeternal embroideries which disfigure Italian song to-day, and whichPiccinni never admitted into his school, but which he always detested. "So says Ginguené of the theories of Piccinni, which are not, as we see, so opposed to the theories of Gluck as we are sometimes urged tobelieve. In the course of time Napoleon took up Piccinni, but he was tooold to revive under this new favour, and Ginguené has this last pictureof him:

"It was in this state that he had the courage to give a concert at hishome. The small number of amateurs who gathered there will long rememberthe impression of that which one may call the last song of the swan. They were profoundly moved to hear Mme. Piccinni sing with dueexpression the beautiful air from 'Zendia, ' _Lasciami, o ciel pietoso_!composed in all the vigour of youth, by this illustrious man, now oldand unfortunate. He accompanied it now with a languishing hand, but witheyes relighted by this beautiful production of his genius. They will notforget the admirable 'Sommeil d'Atys, ' nor the trio from 'Iphigenia inAulis' executed, as it had been in Naples, by the mother and the twodaughters, grouped behind a husband and father who seemed, inaccompanying them, to be reborn in the touching accord of those voices, so tender and so dear, and to feel again some spark of that fire whichhad animated him when he produced those sublime works. "

Poor old Piccinni died in 1800 at the age of seventy-two, and his tombsaid that he was "_Cher aux Arts et à l'Amitie_. " He left to his widowand six children no property but the memory of his genius. MadamePiccinni was given a pension, but she proudly declined to accept itpurely as a charity, and asked that four pupils of the Conservatoire beassigned to her for instruction, which was done. Piccinni left twosons; the younger had some success as an opera writer, and the elder hada natural son, who was quite successful as a composer of operas. 

Of the other participants in the Gluck-Piccinni feud there is not muchto say. Sacchini was a man of notoriously luxurious and voluptuous life, but I do not find that he married. Salieri--whom Gluck assisted in themost generous manner, even to the extent of having one of Salieri'soperas produced under his own name, and declaring the true author whenit was a success--was married, and had many daughters, who lavished uponhim much affection. Méhul was befriended by a Doctor Gastoldi, andmarried a daughter of his benefactor. They had no children, but adopteda nephew. 

It may be well here, while we are in the midst of opera composers, totake a glance at some of the predecessors of these men, beginning withthe first of all opera composers, who, in his declaration of what operashould be and do, very curiously foreshadowed almost the exact words ofGluck and Wagner, revolutionists, who were really reactionists. 

CHAPTER XII. 

A FEW TUNESTERS OF FRANCE AND ITALY--PERI, MONTEVERDE, ET AL. 

Though it sounds strange to speak of the "invention" of opera, that isthe word which may be applied to the work of Jacopo Peri and hisfriends. They, however, thought of it rather as a revival of the mannerof the ancient Greek tragedy, which was, in a sense, a crude form ofWagnerian recitation, with musical accompaniment. 

As the English novel owes its origin to the commission given to Mr. Samuel Richardson to prepare a Ready Letter Writer, which he decided toput in the form of a story told in letters, so grand opera, which hasalmost rivalled the novel in the world's favour, found its origin in aconference among certain aristocratic gentlemen, of the city ofFlorence, concerning the possibility of reviving part of Greek tragedy. As an experiment, they prepared a small work called "Dafne" for privatepresentation at the palace of the Corsi. Rinuccini was the first of along and usually incompetent lineage of librettists. The music waswritten by Peri and Caccini. It was appropriate that they should havechosen the love affairs of the first musician Orpheus and the coyDaphne, seeing what a vast amount of love-making, pretended and real, the school of opera has handed down upon the world. Reissman hasreckoned it out that twenty thousand lovers are joined or are partedevery night in the world's theatres. 

Peri played the part of Apollo, and he was fitted to play the sun-god byhis aureole of notoriously ardent hair. According to Fétis, Peri wasvery avaricious. Of noble birth himself, he grew rich on the favour ofthe Medicis, and added to his wealth by marrying a daughter of the houseof Fortini, who incidentally brought with her a very handsome dot. Shebore him a son, who won an early fame by his mathematics, his temper, and his dissipations, which led his tutor, the famous Galileo, to callhim his demon. And this is all I know of the love affairs of the fatherof modern opera. 

His collaborator, Caccini, who was more famous among his contemporariesthan Peri, states in the preface to a book of his, that he was marriedtwice, both times to pupils. His former wife was a well-known singer, and his daughters were musicians, the elder, Francesca, being also acomposer. 

The name of Monteverde is immortal in the history of music, because, although no one sings his songs now, or hears his operas, even thestrictest composers make constant use of certain musical procedures, which were in his time forbidden, and which he fought for tooth andnail. Irisi says that he entered the Church after the death of his wife, and as he entered the priesthood in 1633, it would seem that she diedwhen he was about sixty-five years of age. He had two sons, the elder ofwhom became a priest, and a tenor in his father's church; the youngerson became a physician--a good division of labour, for those patientswhom the doctor lost could send for the priest. 

Monteverde's successor at St. Mark's was Heinrich Schütz, a greatrevolutionist in German music, whose chief work, and the first Germanopera, was "Dafne, " written to a libretto by Rinuccini, possibly thesame one used by Peri. When he was thirty-four, he married on June 1, 1619, a girl named Magdalena, who is described as "Christian Wildeck ofSaxony's land steward's bookkeeper's daughter, " which descriptionHawkins compares to that of "Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid'ssister's hat. " She died six years later, having borne him two daughters. He lived the rest of his eighty-seven years as a widower, and joinedthe pathetic line of musicians who have gone deaf. 

LULLY THE IMP

French opera, which was reformed by the Austrian Gluck, had been createdby the Italian Signor Lulli, who later, as Monsieur Lully, became mostFrench of the French. Though he was the son of a gentleman of Florence, he was not gifted with wealth, and was taken to France to serve in thekitchen of Mlle. De Montpensier, the chief princess of the French court. The impishness which characterised his whole career inspired him to turna highly improper couplet on an accident that happened in public toMademoiselle, --and worst of all, he set it to music. She did not see thefun of the joke, and dismissed him, but the king laughed so much at hiswit, that he had him presented, and interested himself in his musicalcareer. 

The kitchen lad was a born courtier and revelled in the "atmosphere ofpassion, love, and pleasure, that radiant aurora. " He was always a verydissipated man, but in July, 1662, "regularised" his life by marryingMadeleine Lambert, daughter of the music-master of the court. "Thehonour of the new family, and the dot of twenty thousand francs which hereceived, made Lully a personage, and the second phase of his lifecommenced. " His wife bore him three sons and three daughters, who aresaid to have shared his stinginess, though they built him a magnificentmonument. 

It was a brilliant circle Lully moved in. He had the honour of beinghated by Boileau and La Fontaine, and of being first the friend andcollaborator, and later the enemy, of Molière. His contract of marriagewas signed by the king, queen, and the queen-mother. Of his marriage, Fétis says: "Never was a union better arranged, for if Lully was quickto procure riches, his wife knew how to fructify them by the order andthe economy that reigned in her house. Lully reserved for his _menusplaisirs_ only the price of the sale of his works, which amountedannually to seven or eight thousand francs. "

His dissipations, like those of Händel, were chiefly confined toexcesses in eating and drinking, but for all his doubtful fidelity tohis wife, he cannot have been an ideal husband, for he was of a miserlydisposition, and his temper was enforced by a ruthless brutality. On oneoccasion the singer Rochis, being in a condition that compelled apostponement of "Armide, " he demanded, angrily, "_Qui t'a fait cela_?"and gave her a kick _qui lui fit faire une fausse couche_. This poorwoman was revenged upon him by his own temper, for at the age offifty-four, while conducting his orchestra, he grew indignant, and inwildly brandishing his bâton struck his own foot so fierce a blow thatgangrene set in and he died of the wound. While he was on his death-bed, he was called upon by one of his old friends, whom his wife reproachedwith having been the last to get him drunk. Whereupon the dying manspoke up with the gaiety for which he was famous, "That's true, my dear, and when I get well he shall be the first to get me drunk again. "

In his will he named his wife as executrix, and took great care that sheand the children should preserve the royal monopoly in the Academy ofMusic. Lully had been reconciled only eight days before his death, withhis son, whom he had previously disinherited. His wife outlived himtwenty-three years, and died May 3, 1720, at the age of seventy-seven. 

When the superb mausoleum was built for Lully by his widow, some unknownpoet, who hated him for his _moeurs infames_, scrawled on his tomb theseterrific lines:

 "Pourquoi, par un faste nouveau, Nous rappeler la scandaleuse histoire D'un libertin, indigne de memoire, Peut-être même indigne du tombeau. "

It was in some of his operas, I believe, that certain rôles were sung byMlle. De Maupin, whose incredibly wild, scandalous, and ambiguous loveaffairs, and duels in male costume, made the material for Gautier'sfamous romance. 

THE TACITURN RAMEAU

The next great master in French opera was Rameau (1683--1764), whoresembled Lully in his stinginess, but not in his brilliant socialqualities. As a boy he neglected his lessons in language for hismusic-books. His parents' efforts were in vain, and his teachers gavehim up as hopeless; but at the age of sixteen or seventeen he fell inlove with a young widow, who was a neighbour of his. His letters to her, brought from her the crushing statement:

"You spell like a scullion. "

This rebuke woke him to his senses as far as orthography was concerned, but his father did not approve of the widow as a teacher, and sent himto Italy to break off the relation. Some years later he returned to thetown, but as he remained only a short time, he evidently did notreillumine his first flame. 

He did not wed until he was forty-three years old, and then on February25, 1726, he married the eighteen-year-old Marie Louise Mangot. Of herMaret says: "Madame Rameau is a virtuous woman, sweet and amiable, andshe has made her husband very happy. She has much talent for music, avery pretty voice, and good taste in song. " They had three children, one a son, who became equerry to the king, a daughter who became a nun, and another who married a musketeer. 

Baron Grimm accuses Rameau of being "a savage, a stranger to everysentiment of humanity. " The great Diderot, in a book called "The Nephewof Rameau, " referred caustically to Rameau's experiments and theories inacoustics, and added:

"He is a philosopher in his way; he thinks only of himself, and the restof the universe is as the puff of a bellows. His daughter and his wifehave only to die when they please; provided the bells of the parishwhich toll for them continue to sound the 12th and the 17th overtones, all will be well. "

Fétis credits these feelings to men who loved neither Rameau nor Frenchmusic. He paid a pension to his invalid sister. "Sombre and unsociablehe fled the world, and kept, even amid his family, a silence almostabsolute. " I do not know whether or not Rameau's wife survived him. 

PERGOLESI

In his old age Rameau said that if he were twenty years younger, hewould go to Italy and take Pergolesi for his master in harmony. Thisbrilliant genius, Pergolesi, died in 1736, at the age of twenty-six. Itwas consumption that carried him off, and I find no record of any loveof his. The saccharine romance-monger, Elise Polko, has a rathermawkish story which she connects with his name, though on whatauthority, I am ignorant. As Lincoln said, "For those that like thatsort of thing, it is about the sort of thing they'll like. "

KEISER

A contemporary of his was Reinhard Keiser, who died three years later atthe age of sixty-six, and who wrote one hundred and sixteen operas forthe German stage. Like his contemporary, Händel, he attemptedmanagement, and like Händel went into a magnificent bankruptcy, butquite unlike the woman-hater Händel, he married his way out of poverty. In 1709 he entered into a matrimonial and financial partnership with thedaughter of an aristocratic town musician of Oldenburg, Hamburg. She wasa distinguished singer, and her talent brought new charm to theproduction of his works, and restored prosperity. She seems to have diedbefore him, for twenty years after his marriage he went to Moscow withhis daughter, who was a prominent singer, and had an engagement there. She married a Russian violinist, Verocai, and her father spent his lastyears at her home. 

BONONCINI AND THE SCARLATTIS

Of that exquisite and elegant scamp Bononcini, who was the great rivalof Händel in the London operatic war, I find no amorous gossip, thoughHawkins says he was the favourite of the Duchess of Marlborough, whogave him a pension of £500 per year, and had him live in her home untilhe was compelled to leave London, by various scandals attached to hisrepute as an honest gentleman. He had been in his youth a great admirerof the style of Alessandro Scarlatti, an eminent composer, both in operaand sacred music, of whom little is known, except his work; he left ason, Domenico, who was hardly less famous. But he was a confirmedgambler, and left his family in great destitution, from which the famousartificial soprano, Farinelli, rescued them. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

MOZART

As we come nearer to our own day, the documents concerning the personallives of composers begin to multiply. Of the love of Bach we have onlythat tantalising allusion to the "stranger maiden. " Of Haydn we haveamorous documents enough to make a brochure. When we reach Mozart, hisletters alone fill two comfortable volumes. Of Beethoven there are stillmore numerous possessions. By Wagner and Liszt we are fairlyoverwhelmed. 

Search not for the artist's self in his works of art. This is goodcautious advice. But there are occasional exceptions, and of theseMozart is the most radiant. The qualities of eternal youth and ofjuventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while itswaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and oftragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror, --all those qualities that arefound scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his variousoperas--all the qualities that are combined in "Don Giovanni, " are thequalities of Mozart's own nature, always excepting the ruthlessness andthe fanatic libertinism of his Don Juan. 

Schopenhauer says that the genius is he who never quite outgrows thechildhood of his attitude toward the world. Mozart was always thesublime child. 

All the qualities of youth give life and personality to his letters, andplace them consequently among the most delightful letters in existence. Ludwig Nohl collected most of them into two volumes, and Lady Wallacehas translated them into English, with a certain amount of inaccuracy, but a surprising amount of spirit withal. They may be picked up withoutmuch difficulty, though they are out of print; and any one interested inmusicians or in lovers or in letters, should make haste to add these twogolden volumes to his library. 

As the first letter was written in his thirteenth year and the last inthe thirty-fifth and final year of his life, and as they constitute twovolumes of the size of this one, it is manifest that I am here empoweredonly to make a skimming summary of his heart-history--woe's me!

The human affections grow by exercise. Mozart was so devoted and soenthusiastic in his fondness for his father and mother and his sisterthat his heart was graduated early for any demand. The most unmusicalpeople know that Mozart stands unrivalled among infant prodigies, thathe was a pocket-Paderewski, at a period when most children cannot eventrundle a hoop, and that he was deep in composition before the usualchild is out of kilts. Everybody has seen the pictures of the littlerMozart and his little sister perched like robins on a piano stool andgiving a concert before crowned heads, with the assistance of the fatherand the mother, themselves musicians. 

The elder Mozart made a life-work out of the career of his children, though he was a gifted musician and a shrewd and intelligent man on hisown account. He was in no sense one of your child-beating brutes whomake an easy livelihood by turning their children into slaves. Hebelieved that his son was capable of being one of the world's greatestmusicians, and he gave a splendid and permanent demonstration of histheory. Through all his vicarious ambition he kept his son's love andkept it almost to the point of idolatry. Indeed the boy once wrote, "Next to God comes papa. "

The domestic relations of the family were indeed as happy as they wellcould be. Mozart's letters to his sister, Maria Anna, who was nicknamed"Nannerl, " are brimful of cheerful affection and of sprightly interestin her own love affairs. His relations with his mother and father werefull, not only of filial piety, but of that far better proof of realaffection, a playful humour. 

Mozart's mother died in Paris when her son and she were there alonetogether. He wrote the news of her death to a friend of his father's andbade him tell the father only that she was seriously ill but wouldprobably recover, and gradually to prepare him for the worst. Thisletter he wrote at two o'clock in the morning; the same night he wrotehis father a long letter full of news, incidentally saying that hismother was very ill, but that he hoped for the best, and that, in anycase, resignation to the will of God was imperative. A few days later hewrote another letter telling the bitter truth, and telling it with mostdevout concern for his father's health and reconciliation with thedivine dispensation. In this letter he seems rather the father to hisown father than the young gallant of twenty-two. It was a good heart theboy had. 

Mozart had been so much caressed and flattered by court beauties as achild that he was precocious in flirtation. His sister was theconfidante and messenger of all sorts of boyish amours. There is a finemysteriousness in the letters he wrote his mother while he was making amusical conquest of Milan like a veteran musician, and betraying hisfourteen-year-old boyishness only in such phrases as this: "I kissyour hand a thousand times, and have a great deal to say to my sister;but what? That is known only to God and myself. Please God I hope soonto be able to confide it to her verbally. "

This does not sound like the writing of a composer who was adding in aletter a few days later, "Pray to God that my opera may be successful. "The opera was successful, and the Pope gave him a knighthood; and he wasonly fourteen years old!

Perhaps this mysterious sweetheart is the same one he alludes to lateras Annamindl, and concerning whom he sends his sister such solemnmessages as these:

"Don't, I entreat, forget about _the one other_, where no other can everbe. "

"Say to Fraulein W. Von Mölk that I rejoice at the thought of Salzburg, in the hope that I may again receive the same kind of present, for theminuets which was bestowed on me at a similar concert. She knows allabout it. "

"Carissima Sorella, --Spero che voi sarete stata dalla Signora, che voigià sapete. "

"My dearest Sister, --I entreat you not to forget before your journey, toperform your promise, that is, to make a certain visit. I have myreasons for this. Pray present my kind regards in that quarter, but inthe most impressive and tender manner, --the most tender; and, oh, --but Ineed not be in such anxiety. I beg my compliments to Roxalana, who is todrink tea this evening with the Sultan. All sorts of pretty speeches toMadlle Mizerl; she must not doubt my love. I have her constantly beforemy eyes in her fascinating _négligé_. I have seen many pretty girlshere, but not one whose beauty can be compared with hers. " Thedaughter of Doctor Barisani, the family physician, was for a time hisheart's queen. Later Rosa Cannabich was "the magnet. " And Wendling'sdaughter paid her visit to his heart's best room. 

These instances of puppy-love can have given little anxiety to thefather and mother; but soon old Leopold began to fear that this amorousactivity might interfere with his son's wedlock to his art. When, therefore, he was sixteen years old and began to take a solemn interestin an opera singer at Munich, to weep over the beauty of her singing, and to seek her acquaintance, the father began to protest. This wasMlle. Keiserin, the daughter of a cook, and Mozart was later a littleashamed of his easy enthusiasm. 

There seems to be an implied affair, perhaps more serious, in thisletter to his father, dated 1777--he was born in 1756:

"As to the baker's daughter, I have no objection to make; I foresaw allthis long ago. This was the cause of my reluctance to leave home, andfinding it so difficult to go. I hope the affair is not by this timeknown all over Salzburg. I beg you, dear papa, most urgently to keep thematter quiet as long as possible, and in the meantime to pay her fatheron my account any expense he may have incurred by her entrance into theconvent, which I will repay gladly when I return to Salzburg. "

Meanwhile he was well immersed in his dalliance with his Bäsle, orcousin. In 1777, when Mozart was twenty-one and travelling on aconcert-tour with his mother, he met, at Augsburg, Marianne Mozart, thedaughter of his uncle, a book-binder. His experience at Augsburg withcertain impertinent snobs disgusted him with the place, and he wrote hisfather that the meeting with his fair cousin was the only compensationof visiting the town. He found her "pretty, intelligent, lovable, clever, and gay, " and, like him, "rather inclined to be satirical. "

They struck up a correspondence which shows him in most hilarious moods. His letters are full of that _possenhaften Jargon_ with which hesprinkled his letters to his sister. He calls his cousin by the pet nameof Bäsle, with which he rhymes "Häsle, " a colloquial word for "rabbit. "His first letter to her overflows with nonsense and meaningless rhymes, puns, and quibbles, such as:

"Ich hoffe, Sie werden auch meinen Brief--trief, welchenich Ihnen aus Mannheim geschrieben erhalten haben--schaben. Desto besser, besser desto!"

Lady Wallace has made a translation which reproduces well the nonsenseif not literally the sense. This is a sample:

"My dear Coz-Buzz:--I have safely received your preciousepistle--thistle, and from it I perceive--achieve, that myaunt--gaunt, and you--shoe, are quite well--bell. I haveto-day a letter--setter, from my papa--ah-ha, safe in myhands--sands. "

A week later he writes her a letter beginning:

"My dear niece, cousin, daughter! mother, sister, and wife!--PotzHimmel! Croatians, demons, witches, hags, and cross batteries! PotzElement! air, earth, fire and water! Europe, Asia, Africa, and America!Jesuits, Augustines, Benedictines, Capucins, Minorites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carthusians, and Knights of the Cross! privateers, canonsregular and irregular, sluggards, rascals, scoundrels, imps, andvillains all! donkeys, buffaloes, oxen, fools, blockheads, numskulls, and foxes! What means this? Four soldiers and three shoulder-belts! Sucha packet and no portrait!"

It seems that she had promised him her picture! She sends it later, andit is still in the Mozart Museum, showing her, as Jahn declares, to havea good-natured and cheerful face, and rather a stocky figure; he adds, "Without being beautiful she seems right pleasing. " It is certain thatin whatever butterfly humour Mozart regarded her, she took him and hiskisses and his flowery declarations seriously. Had he not said in thisvery letter, "love me as I love you, and then we shall never ceaseloving each other?" Had he not thence broken into French?

"Je vous baise vos mains, --vôtre visage--afin, tout ce que vous mepermettez de baiser. Je suis de tout mon coeur, " etc. 

His sister later had a target painted for a club of Salzburg friends whomet for crossbow practice, and the target represented "the melancholyfarewell of two persons dissolved in tears, Wolfgang and the Bäsle. "

His flirtations with his cousin seemed to have angered his father, whowas eager for him to go to France and conquer Paris. The father was themore indignant as Mozart was at the same time becoming entangled withAloysia Weber--of whom more later. Mozart loved his father and treatedhim with the utmost respect, but he could rise to a sense of his owndignity when the occasion demanded, and he wrote him:

"The bitter way in which you write about my merry and innocentintercourse with your brother's daughter, makes me justly indignant; butit is not as you think. I require to give you no answer on the subject. "

A few days later he writes to his cousin with all the old hilarity, hisletter being mostly in doggerel rhyme beginning:

"You may think or believe that I have croaked (_crepirt_)or kicked the bucket (_verreckt_). But I beg you not to thinkso, for how could I write so beautifully if I were dead?"

Nearly a year later he writes to her regretting that he could not haveher visit him at Kaisersheim, and begging her to meet him in Munich. 

In Munich it was Mozart's fate to find a tragedy awaiting him, forAloysia (whom he had loved as solemnly as he had loved his cousinfrivolously, and to whom he looked forward longingly after his longabsence) showed herself indifferent. He had planned that his cousinshould "have a great part to play in this meeting with Aloysia. " This Iwould rather interpret as evidence that Mozart was quite ignorant of anydeep affection in his cousin. There is nothing in his life that showshim as anything other than the most tender-hearted of men, and it isinconceivable that he should have brought his cousin to Munich simply todrag her at the chariot of his triumph with Aloysia. 

And yet his flirtation with the Bäsle certainly went past mere banteringand repartee. She stayed several weeks in Munich and must have furnishedMozart grateful diversion from his humiliation. She went with him toSalzburg and later, when she returned to her own home, we find himwriting with the same exuberance, addressing her as--

"Dearest, best, lovingest, fairest, enticingest, by-an-unworthy-cousin-to-harness-broken. "

With her name he puns on _Bäsle_ and _Bass_, thence, "_Bäschen oderVioloncellchen_"--a little bass-viol or violoncelline. He writes, as hesays, to appease her "alluring beauty (_visibilia et invisibilia_)heightened by wrath to the height of your slipper-heel. " Then he writesher a passionate parody on a poem of Klopstock's, and writes it incircular form around his own sketch of her portrait, which impliesneither beauty on her part nor art on his. 

This is the last letter he seems ever to have written her excepting abusiness letter two years later. And this marks the end of a flirtationwhich he seems to have regarded as sheer frivolity. But this was not hermood. Biographer Jahn says:

"The Bäsle seems to have taken her cousin's courtship seriously; atleast all the neighbours thought from the way she spoke of him thatthere was something of deluded expectation in her tone. She spokeneither gladly nor often of this time. She was not musical and could nothave had a proper appreciation of Mozart's artistic value. His vivacityand velocity of musical performance seemed comical to her. Of her laterlife nothing is known to me; she lived later with the Postmaster Streitein Bayreuth and died there Jan. 25, 1841, at the great age ofeighty-three. "

So much for the Bäsle. Poor girl! But while the hollyhock was taking thebee's fickleness so solemnly, a rose was revenging her upon him. A moreserious--for Mozart a very serious--affair, was his infatuation withAloysia Weber, a fifteen-year-old girl with much beauty and littleheart. 

When Mozart was in Manheim in 1778, writing flowery letters to theBäsle, he had occasion to have certain music copied, to be sung beforethe Princess of Orange, who had become interested in his work. Thecopyist was also a prompter in the theatre and a very poor, buthospitable man. His name was Weber, and his brother became the fatherof Carl Maria von Weber, the composer. 

The fact that Weber was poor was the first recommendation to Mozart. Another magnet was, that Weber had a daughter fifteen years old who wasgifted with a voice and seemed capable of a great artistic career. Itwas this vicarious ambition that had interested him in the young singerKeiserin some years before. And now we find him writing to his father onJan. 17, 1778, the following description of the Weber family:

"He has a daughter who sings admirably, and has a lovely pure voice; sheis only fifteen. She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it notfor that, she might be the prima donna of any theatre. Her father is adownright honest German who brings up his children well, for which veryreason the girl is persecuted here. He has six children, --five girls anda son. He and his wife and children have been obliged to live for thelast fourteen years on an income of 200 florins, but as he has alreadydone his duty well, and has lately provided a very accomplished singerfor the Elector, he has now actually 400 florins. My aria for De' Amicisshe sings to perfection with all its tremendous passages. "

He and his mother had been living with the Wendlings. Frl. Wendling, whohad engaged Mozart's interest for a time, turned out to be adisreputable character and the father to be devoid of all religion. Thedeeply pious Mozart writes in the same letter to his father, "Friendswho have no religion cannot long be our friends. " Then, with man's usualconsistency, he outlines the white lie by which he is going to breakoff the association with the Wendlings; and goes on to say that hewishes to form a similar connection with the Weber family. The daughterAloysia is improving vastly in her singing under his tuition; he haswritten an aria especially for her, and he plans a trip to Italyprincipally for her benefit. They could live very comfortably, he says, because Aloysia's eldest sister could cook. The father Weber reminds himgreatly of his own father, and Aloysia will be, he is sure, a congenialfriend for Nannerl. 

Mozart is so much in love with Aloysia that in this long letter to hisfather he declares:

"I am so deeply touched with this oppressed family that my greatest wishis to make them happy, and perhaps I may be able to do so. .. . I will beanswerable with my life for her singing, and her doing credit to myrecommendation. .. . I will gladly write an opera for Verona for thirtyzeccini, solely that Madlle. Weber may acquire fame by it; for if Idon't, I fear she may be sacrificed. .. . I have now written you of whatis in my heart; my mother is satisfied with my plans. "

How well the mother was satisfied with the plans is evident from thepostscript in her own hand, added secretly to the letter and displayinga slight touch of motherly jealousy:

"No doubt you perceive by the accompanying letter that when Wolfgangmakes new friends he would give his life for them. It is true that shedoes sing incomparably; still, we ought not to lose sight of our owninterests. I write this quite secretly while he is at dinner, for Idon't wish him to know it. "

Five days afterwards Mozart recurs to the subject, referring to a friendwho married for money and commenting:

"I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, butnot to become rich by her means. .. . The nobility must not marry fromlove or inclination, but from interest, and all kinds of otherconsiderations. It would not at all suit a grandee to love his wifeafter she had done her duty, and brought in to the world an heir to hisproperty. But we poor humble people are privileged not only to choose awife who loves us, and whom we love, but we may, can, and do take such aone, because we are neither noble, nor high-born, nor rich, but, on thecontrary, lowly, humble, and poor; we therefore need no wealthy wife, for our wealth, being in our heads, dies with us, and these no man candeprive us of, unless he cut them off, in which case we need nothingmore. "

Next week he writes again asking his father to concern himself for theWebers. The poor father had been imploring Wolfgang to go to Paris forfame and fortune's sake. Now he finds him so far from being willing topursue his own promising career, that he wishes to give up all thoughtof Paris and subordinate his genius to the task of boosting into famethe daughter of a poverty-stricken music-copyist!

Leopold answers in the violent tone he could adopt on occasions, andtries to distract his son's attention by appealing to his ambition. Heasks him to decide whether he wishes to become "a commonplace artistwhom the world will forget, or a celebrated capellmeister of whomposterity will read years after in books, --whether, infatuated with apretty face you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife andchildren in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christianlife, you die in honour and independence and your family well providedfor. .. . Get to Paris without delay, take your place by the side ofreally great people. _Aut Caesar ant nihil_. "

Little the father could have realised how much truth there was to be inthe dark side of his prophecy; and that, too, in spite of the fact thathis son took his advice. Leaving Aloysia behind, the son and his motherwent to Paris. 

He landed there in the very midst of the tempest raging around Gluck. Paris did not at all please Mozart, and the French people disgusted him. For this Paris was not entirely to blame, seeing that Mozart had gonethere unwillingly and was parted from his beloved Aloysia. It was inParis, too, that his mother died. And now, while he was so deeplyconcerned for Aloysia's career and was trying so desperately to secureher an engagement in Paris, she was blandly forgetting him. Of this, however, he had no suspicion until he reached Munich, where she, thestar of his heart and of his ambition, was waiting for him. 

What the change was that had come over Aloysia it is impossible to tell. The first thought is that, having risen to prominence by Mozart'stuition and assistance, she spurned the ladder that had uplifted her. But Nohl's theory that her head was turned by her admission to thefavour that quickly surrounds the successful prima donna is hardly to beheld, in view of the fact that in rejecting a man of Mozart's prominenceshe took the actor Lange, who had little, if any, more prominence. Itwas doubtless simply the old story of the one who loves and the otherwho lets herself be loved, just to keep up practice, until she learns tolove elsewhere. 

When Mozart reached Munich, he was still in mourning for his mother, anddressed according to the French custom of the time, in red coat withblack buttons. He hurried to meet Aloysia and felt at once the chill ofher jilt. The lips once so warm under his gave him merely the formalGerman kiss. She seemed scarcely to recognise the one for whose sakeonce she shed so many tears. Whereupon Mozart immediately flung himselfupon the piano stool and sang, in a loud voice, with forced gaiety, "Ichlass das Mädel gern das mich nicht will, "--which you might translate, "Gladly I give up the girl that gives up me. " It was on Christmas Daythat Mozart had hastened to the presence of his beloved. For theChristmas gift she gave him back his heart! and right gallantly he tookit. But his gaiety was hollow, and when he went to the house of a friendhe locked himself in a room and wept for days. 

Still he continued to live with the Webers and to brave out his despairbefore them all. He feared to turn to his father for full sympathy, andhis fears were apparently justified, for his father seemed only to haveanswered with rebuking him for his foolish "dreams of pleasure. " To thisill-timed reproof Mozart answered:

"What do you mean by dreams of pleasure? I do not wish to give updreaming, for what mortal on the whole compass of the earth does notoften dream? above all, dreams of pleasure--peaceful dreams, sweet, cheering dreams, if you will--dreams which, if realised, would haverendered my life (now far rather sad than happy) more endurable. "

In a few weeks, however, he returned home to Salzburg, and there hiscousin the Bäsle, who had brightened a part of his trial in Munich, followed him. And this was in the month of January of the year 1779. 

As for Aloysia, she had cause enough to regret jilting one of thegreatest, as well as one of the most gentle, souls in the world. Shemarried the actor Lange and lived unhappily with him. According toJahn, each both gave and received cause for jealousy. Years after, Mozart drifted back into her vicinity under curious circumstances. Thelovers became good friends, and such friends, that for him, at least, Lange could not feel jealousy, according to Jahn, who adds, "Otherwisehe would hardly have taken the rôle of Pierrot in the pantomime in whichhis wife played Columbine and Mozart the Harlequin. "

Nohl thus sums up the whole affair: "Neither happiness nor richesbrightened Aloysia's path in life, nor the peace of mind arising fromthe consciousness of purity of heart. Not till she was an aged woman, and Mozart long dead, did she recognise what he had really been; sheliked to talk about him and his friendship, and in thus recalling thebrightest memories of her youth, some of that lovable charm seemed torevive that Mozart had imparted to her and to all with whom he had anyintercourse. Every one was captivated by her gay, unassuming manner, herfreedom from all the usual virtuoso caprices in society, and herreadiness to give pleasure by her talent to every one, as if a portionof the tender spirit with which Mozart once loved her had passed intoher soul and brought forth fresh leaves from a withered stem. But yearsof faults and follies intervened for Aloysia. Meanwhile, he parted fromher with much pain, though the esteem with which he had hithertoregarded her was no longer the same. "

 * * * * *

Of all strange things in the strange history of lives upon this earth, there cannot be many more strange than this, that Mozart, after being sosadly treated by this woman, should have his next love affair with heryoungest sister. A novelist would not dare tax the credulity of hisreaders with such a plot. But such impossibilities and implausibilitiesbelong exclusively to the historian. 

The Webers moved to Vienna where Aloysia was highly successful as aprima donna. In March, 1781, the Archbishop, to whom Mozart played thepart of musical lackey, summoned him to the same city. The Archbishopwas one whose petty malicious and grinding temper almost drove the piousMozart to contempt of all churchmen. At least he drove him finally to adeclaration of independence which, in our modern eyes, he was very longin reaching. The Archbishop's brother, Count Arco, was so infuriated atthe impertinence of a mere musical flunkey, like Mozart, daring topresent a formal resignation, that he heaped abuse upon him and finallykicked him out of the room. Everybody knows about this kick, butseemingly ignores the fact that Mozart was restrained from retaliationonly by the fact that he was in the apartment of the prince, and thatit was the dream of his life and his very definite plan to meet CountArco and return the kick with interest. But the Archbishop and the countwent back to Salzburg and the opportunity did not occur. 

The portrait usually presented of Mozart meekly accepting thehumiliation is of a piece with the legend that Keats died of a brokenheart because of a bitter review of his poetry. The fact being, ofcourse, that Keats' death was due to constitutional weakness, and thatthe emotion inspired by the attack upon his art was a burning desire topunch the critic's head. 

Strange to say, Mozart could not convince his pusillanimous father thathe did not owe an apology to the Archbishop for being kicked. But he wasso deeply offended that he never returned to Salzburg. So much for thosewho cherish the pathetic belief that the days of patrons were of benefitto the artist and his art. 

Mozart did not starve upon being left positionless in Vienna. Theemperor desired to establish a national opera, and Mozart took up thecomposition of his "Die Entführung aus dem Serail. " In the first momentof his quarrel with the Archbishop Mozart had left the retinue andsought rooms outside. Where could he go for a home but back to thehousehold of the Webers?--now more than ever in poverty since the goodfather had died and Aloysia had married soon after obtaining her newengagement. 

The very name of Weber was a red rag to Leopold Mozart, and he began aseries of bitter rebukes, which the son answered with ample dignity andgentleness. 

"What you write about the Webers, I do assure, is not the fact. I was afool about Madame Lange, I own; but what is a man not when he is inlove? But I did love her truly, and even now I feel that she is notindifferent to me; it is perhaps, therefore, fortunate that her husbandis a jealous booby and never leaves her, so that I seldom have anopportunity of seeing her. Believe me when I say that old Madame Weberis a very obliging person, and I cannot serve her in proportion to herkindness to me, for indeed I have not time to do so. "

A little later one of Mozart's letters is interrupted and is finished ina strange hand as follows:

 "Your good son has just been summoned by Countess Thun, and he has not time to finish the letter to his dear father, which he much regrets, and requests me to let you know this, for, being post-day, he does not wish you to be without a letter from him. Next post he will write again. I hope you will excuse my P. S. , which cannot be so agreeable to you as what your son would have written. I beg my compliments to your amiable daughter. I am your obedient friend, "CONSTANZE WEBER. "

This is the first appearance in Mozart's correspondence of this name. Constanze Weber was the younger sister of Aloysia. She had no dramaticor vocal ambition, though she had musical taste and sang and playedfairly well, especially at sight. Strangely enough, she had an unusualfondness for fugues and made Mozart write down many of hisimprovisations. 

The gossips of Vienna lost no time in construing his renewal offriendship with the Webers. The buzz became so noisy that it reached thealert ears of the father in Salzburg, and he wrote demanding thatWolfgang should move at once. 

Mozart answered that he had been planning to move, but only to quiet thegossip that he is to marry Constanze--ridiculous gossip, he calls it. 

"I will not say that, living in the same house with the young lady towhom people have married me, I am ill-bred and do not speak to her, butI am not in love with her. I banter and jest with her when time permits(which is only in the evenings when I chance to be at home, for in themorning I write in my room, and in the afternoon am rarely in thehouse), but nothing more. If I were obliged to marry all those with whomI have jested, I should have at least two hundred wives. "

Among the rooms elsewhere offered to Mozart was one at Aurnhammer's. Thedaughter of the family threw herself at Mozart's head with a vengeance. According to his picture of her, she was so ugly and untidy that evenMozart could not flirt with her. He draws an amusing picture of hispredicament--a sort of Venus and Adonis affair, with a homely Venus:

"She is not satisfied with my being two hours every day with her, --I amto sit there the livelong day while she tries to be agreeable. But, worse still, she is seriously smitten with me. I thought at first it wasa joke, but now I know it to be a fact. When I first observed it--by herbeginning to take liberties, such as reproaching me tenderly if I camelater than usual, or could not stay long, and similar things--I wasobliged, to prevent her making a fool of herself, to tell her the truthin a civil manner. This, however, did no good, and she became moreloving than ever. At last I was always very polite, except when shebegan any of her pranks, and then I snubbed her bluntly; but one day shetook my hand and said, 'Dear Mozart, don't be so cross; you may say whatyou please I shall always like you. ' All the people here say that we areto be married, and great surprise is expressed at my choosing such aface. She told me that when she heard anything of the sort she alwayslaughed at it. I know, however, from a third person, that she confirmsit, adding that we are to travel immediately afterwards. This did enrageme. I told her my opinion pretty plainly, and warned her not to takeadvantage of my good nature. Now I no longer go there every day, butonly every two days, so the report will gradually die away. She isnothing but an amorous fool. "

Life in Vienna has always been gay enough. In those days it was far fromprudish and Mozart was always of unusual fascination for women. He lovedfrivolity and went about much, but he seems by no means to have deservedthe reputation given him by the gossip of that time and this, that hewas a confirmed rake. It is impossible for any one acquainted withMozart's career and letters to accuse him of studious hypocrisy, andthis accusation is necessary to support the theory that he was anythingbut a serious-minded toiler, and for his time and surroundings awell-behaved and conscientious man. 

He finally left the home of the Webers and had previously written hisfather, as we have seen, that he was not at all in love with Constanze. But he was either in love with her without knowing it, or he soontumbled headlong in love with her; for, soon after leaving the house, heplighted his troth with her. 

He was some time, however, in mustering courage enough to break the newsto his father. To a letter dated December 5, 1781, he added a vague hintof new ideas. This was enough to provoke his father's curiosity. It wassatisfied in Mozart's long reply of December 15th:

"My very dearest father, you demand an explanation of the words in theclosing sentence of my last letter. Oh! how gladly long ago would I haveopened my heart to you; but I was deterred, by the reproaches I dreaded, from even thinking of such a thing at so unseasonable a time, althoughmerely thinking can never be unseasonable. My endeavours are directed atpresent to securing a small but certain income, which, together withwhat chance may put in my way, may enable me to live--and to marry! Youare alarmed at this idea; but I entreat you, my dearest, kindest father, to listen to me. I have been obliged to disclose to you my purpose; youmust therefore allow me to disclose to you my reasons also, and verywell-grounded reasons they are. 

"My feelings are strong, but I cannot live as many other young men do. In the first place, I have too great a sense of religion, too much lovefor my neighbour to do so, and too high a feeling of honour to deceiveany innocent girl. My disposition has always inclined me more todomestic life than to excitement; I never have from my youth upward beenin the habit of taking any charge of my linen or clothes, etc. , and Ithink nothing is more desirable for me than a wife. I assure you I amforced to spend a good deal owing to the want of proper care of what Ipossess. I am quite convinced that I should be far better off with awife (and the same income I now have), for how many other superfluousexpenses would it save! An unmarried man, in my opinion, enjoys onlyhalf of life. 

"But now, who is the object of my love? Do not be startled, I entreatyou. Not one of the Webers, surely? Yes, one of the Webers, --notJosepha, not Sophie, but the third daughter, Constanze. I never met withsuch diversity of dispositions in any family. The eldest is idle, coarse, and deceitful--crafty and cunning as a fox; Madame Lange(Aloysia) is false and unprincipled, and a coquette; the youngest isstill too young to have her character defined, --she is merely a goodhumoured, frivolous girl; may God guard her from temptation!

"The third, however, namely, my good and beloved Constanze, is themartyr of the family, and, probably on this very account, the kindesthearted, the cleverest, and, in short, the best of them all; she takescharge of the whole house, and yet does nothing right in their eyes. Oh!my dear father, I could write you pages were I to describe to you allthe scenes I have witnessed in that house. She is not plain, but at thesame time far from being handsome; her whole beauty consists of a pairof bright black eyes and a pretty figure. She is not witty, but hasenough of sound good sense to enable her to fulfil her duties as a wifeand mother. Her dress is always neat and nice, however simple, and shecan herself make most of the things requisite for a young lady. Shedresses her own hair, understands housekeeping, and has the best heartin the world. I love her with my whole soul, as she does me. Tell me ifI could wish for a better wife. All I now wish is, that I may procuresome permanent situation (and this, thank God, I have good hopes of), and then I shall never cease entreating your consent to my rescuing thispoor girl, and thus making, I may say, all of us quite happy, as well asConstanze and myself; for, if I am happy, you are sure to be so, dearestfather, and one-half of the proceeds of my situation shall be yours. Pray, have compassion on your son. "

This news was answered by a simoom of rage from Salzburg. The father hada partial justification for his wrath in the fact that a busybody hadcarried to him all manner of slander about Mozart and, likewise, slanderabout Constanze. He writes reminding Wolfgang of his mistake aboutAloysia, and mentions a rumour that Wolfgang had been decoyed intosigning a written contract of marriage with Constanze. To this Mozartwrites very frankly and in a manner that shows Constanze in a beautifullight:

"You are well aware that, her father being no longer alive, a guardianstands in his place. To him (who is not acquainted with me) busybodiesand officious gentlemen must have no doubt brought all sorts of reports, such as, that he must beware of me, that I have no fixed income, that Iwould perhaps leave her in the lurch, etc. , etc. The guardian becamevery uneasy at these insinuations. We conversed together, and the resultwas (as I did not explain myself so clearly as he desired) that heinsisted on the mother putting an end to all intercourse between herdaughter and myself until I had settled the affair with him in writing. What could I do? I was forced either to give a contract in writing orrenounce the girl. Who that sincerely and truly loves can forsake hisbeloved? Would not the mother of the girl herself have placed the worstinterpretation on such conduct? Such was my position. The contract wasin this form:

"'I bind myself to marry Madlle. Constanze Weber in the course of threeyears, and if it should so happen, which I consider impossible, that Ichange my mind, she shall be entitled to draw on me every year for 300florins. '

"Nothing in the world could be easier than to write this, for I knewthat the payment of 300 florins never would be exacted, because I couldnever forsake her; and if unhappily I altered my views, I would only betoo glad to get rid of her by paying the 300 florins; and Constanze, asI knew her, would be too proud to let herself be sold in this way. 

"But what did the angelic girl do when her guardian was gone? Shedesired her mother to give her the written paper, saying to me, 'DearMozart, I require no written contract from you. I rely on your promise. 'She tore up the paper. This trait endeared Constanze still more to me. "

The correspondence between father and son waxed fast and furious. Mozartdoes not attempt to defend Madame Weber or the guardian, but he will nothave a word said against the devotion and honour of his Constanze. Jealous perhaps of the activity of the prospective father-in-law, MadameWeber now began to go into training for a traditional rendition of therôle of mother-in-law. She made the life of her daughter and of Mozartas miserable as possible, and fixed in them the determination that, whatever happened, they would not live with her after they were married. Mozart and his sweetheart made a determined combination to win theaffection of Mozart's sister, and Constanze sent to Nannerl many alittle present, apologising because she was too poor to send anythingworth sending. Finally she was bold enough to enclose a letter toNannerl. The composition of such a letter under such circumstances is, at best, no easy matter, and I cannot help thinking that Constanze hasevolved a little model:

"MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND:--I never should have been so bold as toyield to my wish and longing to write to you direct, if your brother hadnot assured me that you would not take amiss this step on my part. I doso from my earnest desire to make acquaintance, by writing at least, with a person who, though as yet unknown to me, bears the name ofMozart, a name so precious to me. May I venture to say that, though Ihave not had the pleasure of seeing you, I already love and esteem youas the sister of so excellent a brother? I therefore presume to ask youfor your friendship. Without undue pride I think I may say that I partlydeserve it, and shall wholly strive to do so. I venture to offer youmine, which, indeed, has long been yours in my secret heart. I trust Imay do so, and in this hope I remain your faithful friend, CONSTANZEWEBER. 

"My compliments to your papa. "

With so much quarrelling going on around them and concerning them, it issmall wonder that the two lovers were finally nagged into the conditionof such nervousness that they fell to quarrelling with each other. Onefeud adds spice to the very first of these letters to Constanze, whichshe so carefully guarded, --Aloysia Weber seems never to have preservedany of Mozart's correspondence. It throws also a curious light on thesocial diversions of Vienna society at that time. 

"VIENNA, April 29, 1782. 

"MY DEAR AND BELOVED FRIEND:--You still, I hope, allow me to give youthis name? Surely you do not hate me so much that I may no longer beyour friend, nor you mine? And even if you do not choose henceforth tobe called my friend, you cannot prevent my thinking of you as tenderlyas I have always done. Reflect well on what you said to me to-day. Inspite of my entreaties, you have met me on three occasions with a flatrefusal, and told me plainly that you wished to have no more to do withme. It is not, however, a matter of the same indifference to me that itseems to be to you, to lose the object of my love; I am not, therefore, so passionate, so rash, or so reckless, as to accept your refusal. Ilove you too dearly for such a step. I beg you then once more to weighwell and calmly the cause of our quarrel, which arose from my beingdispleased at your telling your sisters (N. B. , in my presence) that at agame of forfeits you had allowed the size of your leg to be measured bya gentleman. No girl with becoming modesty would have permitted such athing. The maxim to do as others do is well enough, but there are manythings to be considered besides, --whether only intimate friends andacquaintances are present, --whether you are a child, or a girl oldenough to be married, --but, above all, whether you are with people ofmuch higher rank than yourself. If it be true that the Baroness[Waldstädten] did the same, still it is quite another thing, because sheis a _passée_ elderly woman (who cannot possibly any longer charm), andis always rather flighty. I hope, my dear friend, that you will neverlead a life like hers, even should you resolve never to become my wife. But the thing is past, and a candid avowal of your heedless conductwould have made me at once overlook it; and, allow me to say, if youwill not be offended, my dearest friend, will still make me do so. Thiswill show you how truly I love you. I do not fly into a passion likeyou. I think, I reflect, and I feel. If you feel, and have feeling, then I know I shall be able this very day to say with a tranquil mind:My Constanze is the virtuous, honourable, discreet, and faithful darlingof her honest and kindly disposed, "MOZART. "

This letter seems to have ended the quarrel--the only one we know oftheir having. For, a week later in a letter to his father, Mozartimplies that Constanze and he are once more on excellent terms; alsothat Nannerl had answered Constanze's letter with appropriate courtesy. 

Meanwhile, in spite of the excitement of producing his opera andfighting the strong opposition to it, Mozart is still more deeplyabsorbed in gaining his father's consent to his marriage. He brieflydismisses his account of his opera's immense success and bends all hisardour to winning over his father. The agony of his soul quivers inevery line. Vienna is alive with gossip. Some say that he and Constanzeare already married. He fears to compromise the woman he loves. He hintsthat if he cannot wed her with his father's blessing he will wed herwithout it. 

Meanwhile, the young woman's mother had by this time, got the bit fastin her teeth. Now, the Baroness Waldstädten had been touched by thetroubles of the young lovers and had invited Constanze to visit her forsome weeks. This excited the mother's apprehension, perhaps not unwiselyin view of the levity of the baroness' standards of conduct, and sheinsisted upon Constanze cutting her visit short. 

When Constanze refused this, Frau Weber sent word that if she did notreturn immediately, the law would be sent for her. This threat droveMozart to desperation, and the marriage degenerated into a race betweenthe priest and the policeman. Fortunately the priest won. The baronesswrote in person to the father for his consent, advancing Mozart 1, 000gulden to cover the 500 gulden which Constanze would have as a marriageportion; and secured their release from the delayful necessity ofpublishing the banns. 

Romeo and his Juliet were married on August 4, 1782. Shortly after thewedding the father's consent arrived. It was a rather stingy consenthowever, and warned Mozart that he could not expect pecuniary assistanceand that he ought to tell Constanze of this fact. 

There was an implied insult to the girl's love in this ungraciousremark, and it stung Mozart deeply. For Constanze, who had torn up thecontract of betrothal on a previous occasion, had not been the girl totake money into account. 

Three days after the wedding Mozart wrote to his father a long accountof it with a promise that he and his bride would take the firstopportunity of asking forgiveness in person. "No one attended themarriage but Constanze's mother and youngest sister, Herr von Thorwarthin his capacity of guardian, Herr von Zetto (Landrath) who gave away thebride, and Gilofsky, as my best man. When the ceremony was over, both mywife and I shed tears; all present (even the priest) were touched onseeing the emotion of our hearts. Our sole wedding festivities consistedof a supper, which Baroness Waldstädten gave us, and indeed it was moreprincely than baronial. My darling is now one hundred times more joyfulat the idea of going to Salzburg; and I am willing to stake--ay, my verylife, that you will rejoice still more in my happiness when you reallyknow her; if, indeed, in your estimation, as in mine, a high-principled, honest, virtuous, and pleasing wife ought to make a man happy. "

Now we enter upon the test of this romantic devotion--this wedlock ofthe twenty-six year old musician and the maiden of nineteen, who marriedin spite of the opposition of both families and in spite of the povertythat awaited them. There are many accounts of the domestic career ofthese two, written in a tone of patronage or cynicism. But this tone isgratuitous on the part of those who assume it. As thorough a study ofthe facts and documents as I can make, shows no ground whatsoever forrefusing to accept this love-match as an ideal wedding of idealcongeniality, and mutual and common devotion. 

Poverty came with all its vicissitudes and settled upon the hearth, butwe ought not to forget that both Wolfgang and Constanze had always beenpoor; that they were used to poverty, and were light-hearted in itspresence. When they had no money to buy fuel, they were found dancingtogether to keep warm. Surely, for two such hearts, poverty was only adetail, and could in no sense be counted of sufficient weight tocounterbalance the affection each found in each. 

As for Mozart's career we must feel that no amount of wealth would haveavailed against his improvidence and his extravagance in the small wayin which fate permitted him to be extravagant. Nor could a life ofbachelorhood or a life with some woman married for money conceivablyhave made him produce greater compositions--for no greater compositionsthan those he produced during his married life have ever been producedby any composer under any circumstances. Let us then read withoutconviction such accounts as we may find tending to belittle the goodnessor cheapen the virtues of Constanze or of Mozart. 

The Webers had lived at Vienna in a house called Auge Gottes, and Mozartused to refer to his elopement as "Die Entführung aus dem Auge Gottes, "as a pun on the name of the opera that had made his marriage possible, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail. " It is a curious coincidence that thename of the principal character of this opera was Constanze, and thatshe was a model of devotion through all trials. Once away from thewrangling mother-in-law, the young couple enjoyed domestic bliss to theheight. Later, mother Weber seems to have reformed and to have become awelcome guest in Mozart's house, where Aloysia herself became also acherished friend. 

Nothing could exceed the tenderness of the lovers for each other. Itcontinued to the last. Constanze was so watchful of him that she cut uphis meat at dinner when his mind was on his compositions, lest he mightcut himself. She used to read aloud to him and tell him stories and hearhis improvisations and insist upon their being written out forpermanence. While the wife was showing all this solicitude, the husband, genius though he was, was showing equal tenderness to the wife. 

All Vienna gossiped about his devotion. When she was ill, he was themost assiduous of nurses, and on one occasion got so into the habit ofputting his fingers to his lips and saying "Psst!" to any one whoentered the room where she was sleeping, that, on one occasion, on beingspoken to in the street, he involuntarily placed his finger on his lipsand gave the warning signal. When he was called away from home early, before she was awake, he would leave such a note for her as this:"_Guten Morgen, liebes Weibchen, Ich wünsche, dass Du gut geschlafenhabest_" etc. , or, as it runs in English: "Good morning, my darlingwife! I hope that you slept well, that you were undisturbed, that youwill not rise too early, that you will not catch cold, nor stoop toomuch, nor overstrain yourself, nor scold your servants, nor stumble overthe threshold of the adjoining room. Spare yourself all householdworries till I come back. May no evil befall you! I shall be homeat--o'clock punctually. "

Two weeks after the marriage we find Mozart writing to his father inthis tone:

"Indeed, previous to our marriage we had for some time past attendedmass together, as well as confessed and taken Holy Communion; and Ifound that I never prayed so fervently nor confessed so piously, as byher side; and she felt the same. In short, we were made for each other, and God, who orders all things, and consequently this also, will notforsake us. "

They looked forward with great eagerness to visiting Salzburg, and it isnot the least evidence of the kindness of Constanze's heart that one ofher chief ambitions seems to have been the winning over of the fatherand the sister. The visit home was to be in November, 1782, but theweather grew very cold, and the wife's condition forbade. Mozart writesto his father that his wife "carries about a little silhouette of you, which she kisses twenty times a day at least. " His letters are full oflittle domestic joys, such as a ball lasting from six o'clock in theevening until seven in the morning, --a game of skittles of whichConstanze was especially fond, --a concert where Aloysia sang with greatsuccess an aria Mozart wrote for her, --and financial troubles of themost petty and annoying sort. 

In June, 1783, Mozart writes his father asking him to be godfather tothe expected visitor, who was to be named after the grandfather, either"Leopold" or "Leopoldine, " according as fate decided. Fate decided thatthe first-born should be a son, and the young couple started gaily toSalzburg, for a visit. 

But fate also decided that the visit should not be in any sense asuccess. Even as they set forth, they were stopped at the carriage by acreditor who demanded thirty gulden [about $15], a small sum, but not inMozart's power to pay. At Salzburg, Mozart's father and sister seemednot to have outdone themselves in cordiality, and, worst of all, "thepoor little fat baby" died after six months of life. 

There is little profit and less pleasure in describing the financialtroubles of the young couple. They are generally blamed for extravaganceand bad management, for which Constanze is chiefly held responsible; butthere are many reasons for disbelieving this charge, perhaps the chiefof all being old Leopold Mozart's own statement that when he visitedthem he found them very economical. That was praise from Sir Hubert. 

Of Mozart's devotion to his wife in the depths of his heart, there canbe no doubt. But the circle he moved in, and his volatile, mischievous, beauty-idolising nature played havoc with his good intentions, thoughnot to the extent implied by some critics who have pictured him as areckless voluptuary. But just herein is the final proof of Constanze'sdevotion and her understanding of him, for, while there never was abreath of slander against herself, she found heart to forgive Mozart'sficklenesses. He actually made her the confessional of his excursionsfrom the path of rectitude, and found forgiveness there! "He loved herdearly, and confided everything to her, even his little sins, and sherequited him with tenderness and true solicitude. "

She always said, "One had to forgive him, one had to be good to him, since he was himself so good. "

Four children were born to the devoted couple, all sons; the first childlived, as we have seen, only six months; the second was named Carl; thethird was named Leopold; the fourth, Wolfgang Amadeus. Nohl says, "Hiswife's recovery on these occasions was always very tedious. "

In 1787 Mozart's father died, and his letters to his sister show thedepth of his grief. Nannerl had married three years before. Her firstlover had relinquished her on account of her poverty, but she hadcaptured a widower of means and position. 

Mozart's letters to Constanze are not very numerous, because he wasaway from home neither often nor long. But they make up in tendernessand radiant congeniality what they lack in numbers. In 1789 he decidedthat a concert tour was necessary to replenish his flattened resourcesand to take him out of the rut in which the emperor was graduallydropping him as a mere composer of dance music for masked balls at thecourt. Mozart travelled in the carriage of his friend and pupil, PrinceCarl Lichnowsky; and those who consider railroad travelling unpoeticalwill do well to read in Mozart's and Beethoven's letters the vividpictures of the downright misery and tedium of the traveller of thattime, even in a princely carriage, to say nothing of the commondiligence. Mozart wrote to his wife frequently, and always in the mostloverly fashion. He ends his first letter on this journey as follows:

"At nine o'clock at night we start for Dresden, where we hope to arriveto-morrow. My darling wife, I do so long for news of you! Perhaps I mayfind a letter from you in Dresden. May Providence realise this wish! [_OGott! mache meine Wünsche wahr!_] After receiving my letter, you mustwrite to me Poste Restante, Leipzig. Adieu, love! I must conclude, or Ishall miss the post. Kiss our Carl a thousand times for me, and [_ichbin Dich von ganzem Herzen küssend, Dein ewig getreuer Mozart_] I am, kissing you with all my heart, your ever faithful, MOZART. "

_"Adieu! aime-moi et gardez votre santé, si précieuse a votre époux. "_In his next, three days later, he says:

"MY DARLING WIFE:--Would that I had a letter from you! If I were to tellyou all my follies about your dear portrait, it would make you laugh. For instance, when I take it out of its case, I say to it, God blessyou, my Stanzerl! God bless you Spitzbub, Krallerballer, Spitzignas, Bagatellerl, schluck, und druck! and when I put it away again, I let itslip gently into its hiding-place, saying, Now, now, now, now![_Nu--nu--nu--nu!_] but with an appropriate emphasis on this significantword; and at the last one I say, quickly, 'Good night, darling mouse, sleep soundly!' I know I have written something very foolish (for theworld at all events), but not in the least foolish for us, who love eachother so fondly. This is the sixth day that I have been absent from you, and, by heavens! it seems to me a year. Love me as I shall ever loveyou. I send you a million of the most tender kisses, and am ever yourfondly loving husband. "

Again three days, and we find him writing at midnight to his "_liebstesbestes Weibchen_" an account of his activities:

"After the opera we went home. Then came the happiest of all moments tome; I found the long ardently wished-for letter from you, my darling, mybeloved! I went quickly in triumph to my room, and kissed it over andover again before I broke it open, and then rather devoured than readit. I stayed a long time in my room, for I could not read over yourletter often enough, or kiss it often enough. 

"Darling wife, I have a number of requests to make of you:

"1st. I beg you not to be melancholy. 2d. That you will take care ofyourself, and not expose yourself to the spring breezes. 3d. That youwill not go out to walk alone, --indeed, it would be better not to walkat all. 4th. That you feel entirely assured of my love. I have notwritten you a single letter without placing your dear portrait beforeme. 5th. I beg you not only to be careful of your honour and mine inyour conduct, but to be equally guarded as to appearances. Do not beangry at this request; indeed, it ought to make you love me stillbetter, from seeing the regard I have for my honour. 6th. Lastly, I wishyou would enter more into details in your letters. Now farewell, my bestbeloved! Remember that every night before going to bed I converse withyour portrait for a good half-hour, and the same when I awake. O _stru!stru!_ I kiss and embrace you 1, 095, 060, 437, 082 times (this will giveyou a fine opportunity to exercise yourself in counting), and am everyour most faithful husband and friend. "

Some of his letters are apparently lost, for one dated May 23d gives alist of the letters he had written to his wife--eleven in all (one ofthem in French)--between April 8th and May 23d. He complains bitterlythat in this same time he had only six from her. There is worse news yetto add, seeing how poor they were:

"My darling little wife, when I return, you must rejoice more in me thanin the money I bring. 100 Friedrichs-d'or don't make 900, but 700, florins, --at least so I am told here. 2d. Lichnowsky being in haste leftme here, so I am obliged to pay my own board (in that expensive place, Potsdam). 3d. ----borrowed 100 florins from me, his purse being at solow an ebb. I really could not refuse his request--you know why. 4th. Myconcert at Leipzig turned out badly, as I always predicted it would; soI went out of my way nearly a hundred miles almost for nothing. You mustbe satisfied with me, and with hearing that I am so fortunate as to bein favour with the king. What I have written to you must rest betweenourselves. "

His disappointment at the meagre financial returns from his tour wasembittered by the serious illness of his Constanze and the drain uponhis sympathy, his time, and his money. It was necessary for him todespatch in various directions a series of those pathetic beggingletters that make up so much of his later correspondence. 

Shortly after the failure of his concert tour, desperation goaded him toset forth again. He writes again to his _Herzens Weibchen_ or his_Herzaller-liebstes_ with renewed hope:

"I am quite determined to do the best I can for myself here, and shallthen be heartily glad to return to you. What a delightful life we shalllead! I will work, and work in such a manner that I may never again beplaced by unforeseen events in so distressing a position. Were you withme, I should possibly take more pleasure in the kindness of those I meethere, but all seems to me so empty. Adieu, my love! I am ever yourloving Mozart. 

"P. S. --While writing the last page, many a tear has fallen on it. Butnow let us be merry. Look! Swarms of kisses are flying about--Quick!catch some! I have caught three, and delicious they are. "

This tour was again unsatisfactory. He came back almost poorer than hewent. 

In March, 1791, Constanze had to go to Baden to take the waters for herhealth. Mozart wrote a letter in advance engaging rooms for her, andtaking great care that they were on the ground floor. While Constanzewas at Baden, Mozart was getting deeper and deeper into financial hotwater, but his letters betrayed great anxiety that she should not beworried, especially as she was about to become a mother again. One ofhis letters to her was as follows; part of it is French, which I havenot translated, and the rest in German, part of which also it seems morevivid to leave in the original:

"MA TRÈS-CHÈRE ÉPOUSE:--J'écris cette lettre dans la petite chambre auJardin chez Leitgeb [a Salzburg horn-player]; où j'ai couché cette nuitexcellement--et j'espère que ma chère épouse aura passé cette nuit aussibien que moi. J'attend avec beaucoup d'impatience une lettre quem'apprendra comme vous avez passé le jour d'hier; je tremble quand jepense au baigne de St. Antoine; car je crains toujours le risque detomber sur l'escalier en sortant--et je me trouve entre l'espérance etla crainte--une situation bien désagréable! Si vous n'éties pas grosse, je craignerais moins--mais abandonons cette idée triste!--Le ciel auraeu certainement soin de ma chère Stanza Maria!. .. 

"I have this moment received your dear letter, and find that you arewell and in good spirits. Madame Leitgeb tied my neck-cloth for meto-day--but how? Good heavens! I told her repeatedly, 'This is the waymy wife does it, ' but it was all in vain. I rejoice to hear that youhave so good an appetite;. .. You must walk a great deal, but I don'tlike you taking such long walks without me. Pray do all I tell you, forit comes from my heart. Adieu, my darling, my only love! I send you2, 999 and 1/2 kisses flying about in the air till you catch them. Nunsag ich dir etwas ins Ohr--du nun mir--nun machen wir dass Maul auf undzu immer mehr--und mehr--endlich sagen wir;--es ist wagenSlampi--Strampi, du kannst dir nun dabei denken was du willst das istebben die Comodität. Adieu, 1, 000 tender kisses. Ever your Mozart. "

It is evident that during her stay in Baden some person attemptedfamiliarity with Constanze and was rewarded with a box on the ears. Mozart wrote playfully to her advising her to be even more generous withher punishment, and suggesting that the man's wife would probably assisther if informed. 

It was about this time that Mozart was implicated by the gossips in adomestic tragedy. Frau Hofdämmel was a pupil of Mozart's whose husbandgrew fiendishly jealous of her, attacked her with a razor, wounded heralmost to death, and then committed suicide. The story gradually grew upthat Mozart was the cause of the man's jealousy, and Otto Jahn, in hisfirst edition of his monumental biography, accepted the story, which helater discarded after Köchel, another biographer, had succeeded inproving that the assault and suicide took place five days after Mozart'sdeath. Hofdämmel seems to have been so far from jealousy of Mozart thathe was one of the elect to whom Mozart applied for a loan. There was, however, a young and beautiful singer, Henriette Baranius, in Berlin, who seems to have woven a stray web around Mozart while he was there in1789--90. She sang in his "Entführung, " and it was said that his friendshad to help him out of his entanglement with her. But Jahn scouts theidea. 

Among the most dramatic, and therefore the most familiar incidents ofMozart's life, is the strange story of the anonymous commission hereceived to write a Requiem Mass. We are sure now that it was CountWalsegg who wished to palm off the composition as one of his own. ToMozart, however, there was something uncanny in the whole matter, and hecould not work off the suspicious dread that the death-music he waswriting was an omen of his own end. Shortly before his father had died, Mozart had written him a letter begging him to be reconciled to deathwhen it should come, and speaking of death as "this good and faithfulfriend of man, " and adding: "I never lie down at night without thinking, young as I am, that I may be no more before the morning dawns. "

Constanze, having been away for the cure at Baden, returned to find himsuddenly declining in health. To divert him, she took him for a drive, but he could talk only of his death and of his morbid conviction that hehad been poisoned. Constanze, greatly alarmed, called in the familyphysician, Doctor Closset. He blamed Mozart's state to overwork andoverabsorption in the composition of the Requiem Mass, which he toiledat and brooded over until he swooned away in his chair. 

After a brief recovery of spirits, he sank rapidly again and could notleave his bed. Constanze attended him devoutly, and her younger sister, Sophie, and her mother, now much endeared to Mozart, were verysolicitous and attentive. It is Sophie who described in a letter thelast hours of this genius, who died at the age of thirty-five. Mozart, even in his ultimate agonies, was most solicitous for his wife, and saidto Sophie that she must spend the night at the house and see him die. When she tried to speak more cheerfully, he would only answer:

"I have the taste of death on my tongue; I smell the grave. And who cancomfort my Constanze if you do not stay here?"

Sophie went home to tell her mother, and Constanze followed her to thedoor, begging her, for God's sake, to go to the priests at St. Peter'sand ask one of them to call, as if by chance. But the priests hesitatedfor some time, and she had great difficulty in persuading one of "theseunchristian Fathers" to do as she wished. 

After a long search the family doctor was found at the theatre, but hewould not come until the end of the piece, and then ordered coldapplications to Mozart's feverish head, which shocked him intounconsciousness. He died at one o'clock in the morning of November 5, 1791, and the last movement of his lips was an effort to direct wherethe kettledrums should be sounded in his Requiem. The ruling passion!

Crowds, the next day, passed the house of Mozart and wept before hiswindows. As for Constanze, her grief was boundless, and she stretchedherself out upon his bed in the hope of being attacked by his disease, thought to be malignant typhus. She wished to die with him. Her griefwas indeed so fierce that it broke her health completely. She was takento the home of a friend, and by the time of his funeral she was unableto leave the house. On that day so furious a tempest raged that thefriends decided not to follow the coffin through the driving rain andsleet. So the body went unattended to the cemetery and was thrust into apauper's grave, three corpses deep. 

It was some time before Constanze was strong enough to leave the house. She then went to the cemetery to find the grave. It could not beidentified, and never since has it been found. No one had tipped the oldsexton to strengthen his memory of the resting-place, and it was a newand ignorant sexton that greeted the anxious Constanze. 

There are those who speak ill of this devoted wife, and even Mr. Krehbiel, whose book of essays I have quoted from with such pleasure, speaks of Constanze as "indifferent to the disposition of the mortalremains of her husband whose genius she never half appreciated. "

For this and other slighting allusions to Constanze in otherbiographies, there exists absolutely no supporting evidence. But for thehighest praise of her wifely devotion, her patience and unchanginglove, and for her lofty admiration of Mozart, both as man and musician, there is a superfluity of proof. 

After his death she found herself in the deepest financial distress andwas compelled to appeal to the emperor for a small pension, which hegranted. Her nobility of character can be seen also in the concert ofher husband's works, which she arranged, and with such success that shepaid all Mozart's debts, some three thousand gulden ($1, 500). Thus shetook the last stain from his memory. She also interested herself, likeMrs. Purcell, in the publication of her husband's compositions. She wasonly twenty-seven when he died, and her interest in his honour, as wellas the conspicuous motherliness she showed to the children he had lefther, were all the more praiseworthy. Neimtschek, who published abiography of Mozart in 1798, emphasises her fidelity to "our Raphael ofMusic, " her grief still keen for him, and her devotion to the childrenhe left fatherless and penniless. 

For eighteen years Constanze mourned her husband. Indeed, she neverceased to mourn him. But, after nearly a score of years, in 1809, whenshe had reached the age of forty-five, she was sought in marriage by acouncillor from Denmark, George Nicolaus von Nissen. He undertook theeducation of her two boys, and won her hand. She lived with him inCopenhagen till 1820, when she returned to Salzburg. The quaintness ofthis affair should not blind us to the unusual depth of affection itrevealed. Constanze inspired even her new husband with such devotion toMozart's fame that Nissen wrote a biography of his predecessor in heraffections. 

There cannot be many instances of a second husband writing a eulogisticbiography of the first, but Nissen wrote his with a candour andenthusiasm that spoke volumes for his goodness and for that ofConstanze. He died, however, before the biography was completed, andConstanze finished it herself. She includes in the publication aportrait of Nissen and a tender tribute to his memory. Many of the mostbeautiful anecdotes of Mozart's life we owe to Nissen's gentleunjealousy, and Constanze could frankly sign herself "widow ofStaatsrath Nissen, previously widow of Mozart. "

She includes an anonymous poem on Mozart's death, beginning:

"Wo ist dein Grab? Wo duften die Cypressen?"

Which is in its way evidence enough that she did not hold herself, orher "indifference, " responsible for the dingy entombment of this genius, and the disappearance of his grave. As her last words to the public shesays: "May the reader accept this apologetic, this intimatelove-offering, in the spirit in which it is given. Salzburg, 1828. "What reader can refuse this sympathy to one who felt and gave so much toone who craved sympathy as the very food of his soul?

When Constanze was elderly and the second time widowed, she was, according to Crowest, visited by an English lady and her husband--aneminent musician--both of whom were anxious to converse with the relictof the great master. Notwithstanding the years that had passed, FrauNissen's enthusiasm for her first husband was far from extinguished. Shewas much affected at the regard which the visitors showed for hismemory, and willingly entered into conversation about him. 

"Mozart, " she said, "loved all the arts and possessed a taste for mostof them. He could draw, and was an excellent dancer. He was generallycheerful and in good humour; rarely melancholy, though sometimespensive. Indeed, " she continued, "he was an angel on earth, and is onein heaven now. "

Constanze outlived her second husband by sixteen years, and died inMarch, 1842, at the age of seventy-eight. Composers' widows live long. 

Taken in the entirety, in shine and shade, footlights and firelights, for poorer, for richer, for all that could torment or delight asensitive artist, a great gentle-souled creative genius, as well as atender and sympathetic woman, the married life of Wolfgang and ConstanzeMozart must be placed among the most satisfactory in the catalogue ofthe relations of man and woman. They were lovers always. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

BEETHOVEN: THE GREAT BUMBLEBEE

"No artist has ever penetrated further, for none has ever thrust thethorn of life deeper into his own heart, and won, by the surrender ofit, his success and his immortality. "

So says the profuse Ludwig Nohl in his reprint of the diary of a youngSpanish-Italian woman, Fanny Giannatasio del Rio, who knew Beethovenwell and loved him well, and as mutely as "a violet blooming at his feetin utter disregard. "

Beethoven the man would be voted altogether impossible either as friendor as lover, if he had not had so marvellous, so compulsive, a genius. He was short, pock-marked, ugly, slovenly, surly to the point offerocity, whimsical to the brink of mania, egotistic to the environs ofself-idolatry, diseased and deaf, embittered, morose--all the brutalepithets you wish to hurl at him. But withal he had the majesty of aPrometheus chained to the rocks; like Prometheus, he had stolen the veryfires of heaven; like Prometheus, he did not suffer in silence, butroared or moaned his demigodlike anguishes in immortal rhythms. 

A strange contrast he made with the versatile, the catholic, the elegantand cheerful Goethe, his acquaintance, and his rival in collectingwomen's loves into an encyclopaedic emotional life. 

Beethoven, unlike his fellow giant Händel, despised the pleasures of thetable; he substituted a passion for nature. "No man on earth can lovethe country as I do!" he wrote; and proved it in his life. His motherdied when he was young, and he found a foster-mother in Frau vonBreuning, of Bonn. Her daughter Eleonore, nicknamed "Lorchen, " seems tohave won his heart awhile; she knitted him an Angola waistcoat and aneckcloth, which brought tears to his eyes; they spatted, and he wroteher two humbly affectionate notes which you may read with much otherintimate matter in the two volumes of his published letters. He stillhad her silhouette in 1826, when he was fifty-six. 

Three years before, he had succumbed, at the age of twenty, to thecharms of Barbara Koch, the daughter of a widow who kept the café whereBeethoven ate; she made it almost a salon of intellectual conversation. Barbara later became a governess in the family of Count von Belderbusch, whom eventually she married. Next was the highborn blonde and coquettishJeannette d'Honrath, who used to tease him by singing ironical loveditties. Then came Fräulein Westerhold, whom he loved vainly in theWertherlike fashion. 

Doctor Wegeler, who married Eleonore von Breuning, said that "In Vienna, at all events while I was there, from 1794 to 1796, Beethoven was alwaysin love with some one, and very often succeeded in making a conquestwhere many an Adonis would have found it most difficult to gain ahearing. I will also call attention to the fact that, so far as I know, each of Beethoven's beloved ones was of high rank. "

To continue the catalogue. There is a picture extant of a Cupid singeingPsyche's wings with a torch; it is inscribed: "A New Year's gift for thetantalising Countess Charlotte von Brunswick, from her friend, Beethoven. "

There was Magdalena Willmann, a singer, whom he as a youth befriendedand proposed to in later days, only to be refused, "because he was veryugly and half crazy, " as she told her niece. 

An army captain cut him out with Fräulein d'Honrath; his good friendStephan von Breuning won away from him the "schöne und hochgebildete"Julie von Vering, whom Beethoven loved and by whom he was encouraged;she married Stephan in 1808, and died eleven months later, afterBeethoven had dedicated to her part of a concerto. He wrote a letterbeautiful with sympathy to poor Stephan. Then he loved Fräulein Thérèsevon Malfatti and begged her in vain to marry him. He called her the"volatile Thérèse who takes life so lightly. " She married the Baron vonDroszdick. We have a letter wherein Beethoven says: "Farewell, mydearest Thérèse; I wish you all the good and charm that life can offer. Think of me kindly, and forget my follies. " She had a cousinMathilde--later the Baroness Gleichenstein--who also left a barb in thewell-smitten and accessible target of his heart. Even Hummel, thepianist, was his successful rival in a love affair with FräuleinRoeckel. 

The Hungarian Countess Marie Erdödy (_née_ Countess Niczky) is listedamong his flames, though Schindler thinks it "nothing more than afriendly intimacy between the two. " Still, she gave Beethoven anapartment in her house in 1809, and he writes that she had paid aservant extra money to stay with him--a task servants always requiredbribing to achieve. But Thayer says that such a ménage could not last, as Beethoven was "too irritable, too freakish and too stubborn, tooeasily injured and too hardly reconciled. " Beethoven dedicated to hercertain trios, and she erected in one of her parks in Hungary a handsometemple in his honour, with an inscription of homage to him. In hisletters he calls her his "confessor, " and in one he addresses her as"Liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe Gräfin, " showing that she was his dearie tothe fourth power. 

Also there was Amalie Sebald, "a nut-brown maid of Berlin, " atwenty-five-year-old singer, of beauty and brain. In a letter to Tiedgein 1812, Beethoven says:

"Two affectionate words for a farewell would have sufficed me; alas! noteven one was said to me! The Countess von der Recke sends me a pressureof the hand; it is something, and I kiss her hands as a token ofgratitude; but Amalie has not even saluted me. Every day I am angry atmyself in not having profited by her sojourn at Teplitz, seeking hercompanionship sooner. It is a frightful thing to make the acquaintanceof such a sweet creature, and to lose her immediately; and nothing ismore insupportable than thus to have to confess one's ownfoolishness. .. . Be happy, if suffering humanity can be. Give, on mypart, to the countess a cordial but respectful pressure of the hand, andto Amalie a right ardent kiss--if nobody there can see. "

In Nohl's collection of Beethoven's letters is an inscription in thealbum of the singer, Mine. "Auguste" Sebald (a mistake for "Amalie"). The inscription reads, as Lady Wallace ungrammatically Englishes it:

 "Ludwig van Beethoven: Who even if you would Forget you never should. "

In another work, Nohl mentions the existence of a mass of short notesfrom Beethoven to her, showing "not so much the warm, effervescentpassion of youth, as the deep, quieter sentiment of personal esteem andaffection, which comes later in life, and, in consequence, is much morelasting. " One of the letters he quotes. It runs:

"What are you dreaming about, saying that you can be nothing to me? Wewill talk this over by word of mouth. I am ever wishing that my presencemay bring peace and rest to you, and that you could have confidence inme. I shall hope to be better to-morrow, and that we shall be able topass a few hours together in the enjoyment of nature while you remainhere. Good night, dear Amalie; many, many thanks for the proof you giveme of your attachment to your friend, "BEETHOVEN. "

There are other of these notes in Thayer's biography. She seems to havecalled the composer "a tyrant, " and he has much playfulness of allusionto the idea, and there is much about the wretchedness of his health. Amalie Sebald seems to have been of great solace to him, but, like allthe rest, she married some one else, Justice-councillor Krause. 

It was for her that Beethoven composed his cycle of songs, "To thefar-away love" _[An die ferne Geliebte], _ according to Thayer; and ofher that he wrote to Ries: "All good wishes to your wife. I, alas, havenone; I have found but one, and her I can never possess. "

Years later he said to his friend Giannatasio that five years before hehad loved unhappily; he would have considered marriage the happiness ofhis life, but it was "not to be thought of for a moment, almost an utterimpracticability, a chimera. " Still, he said, his love was as strong asever; he had never found such harmony, and, though he never proposed, hecould never get her out of his mind. 

In 1812 Carl Maria von Weber was in Berlin, and became ever after adevoted admirer of Amalie's virtues, her intellect, and her beauty. 

Five years later we learn of Beethoven's receiving letters and presentsfrom "a Bremen maiden, " a pianist, Elise Müller. And there was a poetesswho also annoyed him. 

In this same year, 1817, he was much in the society of "the beautifuland amiable" Frau Marie L. Pachler-Koschak, of Gratz. He had met her in1812, and admired her playing. As late as 1826 we have letters from her, inviting him to visit her in Gratz. But in 1817--he being thenforty-seven years old--the acquaintance was so cordial that Schindler, who observed it, called it an "autumnal love, " though the woman's sonlater asserted that it was only a kinship of "artistic sympathy, "--infact, Beethoven called her "a true foster-mother to the creations of hisbrain. " Thayer says, however, that Beethoven never met her till aftershe married. Beethoven is implicated in the riddle of the letters ofBettina Brentano von Arnim. This freakish young woman had someacquaintance with Goethe, and after his death published letters allegedto have been sent to her by him. She also gave the world certain letterssaid to have come to her from Beethoven. It has been pretty well provedthat the naive Bettina was an ardent and painstaking forger on a largescale. She included a series of sonnets which were written to another ofGoethe's "garden of girls" before he ever met Bettina. But she appearsto have vitiated her clever forgeries by a certain alloy of truth, andit may be that her Beethoven letters are, after all, fictions founded onfact. The language of these letters is somewhat overstrained, butBeethoven could rant on occasion, and Ludwig Nohl believed the lettersto be genuine, since a friend of his said he had seen them andrecognised Beethoven's script. Thayer accepts the entanglement withBettina as a fact, and thinks it was, at that crisis in Beethoven'slife, "a happy circumstance that Bettina Brentano came, with her beauty, her charm, and her spirit, to lead his thoughts in other paths. "

Wegeler has alluded to the fact that Beethoven's love affairs werealways with women of high degree. But others have called him a"promiscuous lover, " because he once used to stare amorously at ahandsome peasant girl and watch her labouring in the garden, only to bemocked by her; and more especially because of a memorandum of his pupilRies, who wrote: "Beethoven never visited me more frequently than when Ilived in the house of a tailor with three very handsome but thoroughlyrespectable daughters. " In 1804 Beethoven wrote him a twitting allusionto these girls. But such a flirtation means little, and besides theywere beauties, these daughters of the tailor. And Beethoven's own motherwas a cook. 

Ries describes him as a sad flirt. "Beethoven had a great liking forfemale society, especially young and beautiful girls, and often when wemet out-of-doors a charming face, he would turn round, put up his glass, and gaze eagerly at her, and then smile and nod if he found I wasobserving him. He was always falling in love with some one, butgenerally his passion did not last long. Once when I teased him on hisconquest of a very beautiful woman, he confessed that she had enchantedhim longest, and most seriously of all--namely, seven whole months!"

Ries also records a humourous scandal of an occasion when he foundBeethoven flirting desperately with a fair unknown; Ries sat down at thepiano and improvised incidental music to Beethoven's directions--"_amoroso, " "a malinconico_" and the like. 

Once a devoted admirer, wife of a Vienna pianist, longed for a lock ofthe composer's outrageously unkempt hair, and asked a friend to get herone. At his suggestion, Beethoven, who was a practical joker of boorishcapabilities, sent her a tuft from the chin of a goat. The trick wasdiscovered, and the scorned woman vented her fury in a letter; therepentant Beethoven made ample apology to her, and spent his wrath onthe head of the suggester of the mischief. 

Crowest spins a pretty yarn of Beethoven's acting as _"postillond'amour"_ by carrying love letters for a clandestinely loving couple. 

Many of his own love-longings were couched in the form of thededications prefixed to his compositions. The piano sonata, Op. 7, wasinscribed to the Countess Babette von Keglevics, later the PrincessOdeschalchi, and is called for her sake "der Verliebte. " Other"gewidmets" were to the Princesses Lichtenstein and von Kinsky, to theCountesses von Browne, Lichnowsky, von Clary, von Erdödy, von Brunswick, Wolf-Metternich, the Baroness Ertmann (his "liebe, werthe, DorotheaCäcilia"), and to Eleonora von Breuning. 

All these make a fairly good bead-roll of love-affairs for a busy, ugly, and half-savage man. It is not so long as Leporello's list of DonJuan's conquests, "but, marry, t'will do, t'will serve. " I find I havecatalogued twenty-six thus far (counting the tailor's three daughters asone). And more are to come. 

And yet, in the face of such a directory of desire, you'll find VonSeyfried and Haslinger venturing the statement, that "Beethoven wasnever married, and, what was more marvellous still, never had any lovepassages in his life, " while Francis Hueffer can speak of "his grand, chaste way. " On this latter point there is room for debate. Crowestadopts both sides at once by saying: "In the main, authorities concur inBeethoven's attachments being always honourable. There can be no doubt, however, that he was an impetuous suitor, ready to continue anacquaintance into a more serious bond on the slenderest ground, andwithout the slightest regard to the consequences on either side. " Thayertakes a middle ground, --that, in the Vienna of his time and his socialgrade, it was impossible that Beethoven should have been a Puritan, while he was, however, a man of distinctly clean mind. He could notendure loose talk, and he once boxed the ears of a barmaid who teasedhim. All his life he had a horror of intrigue with another man's wife, and he once snubbed a man who conducted such an affair. 

Why, then, thus warm-hearted and clean-hearted, thus woman-loving, didhe never marry? Ah, here is one of the sombrest tragedies of art. Tosay, "Poor Beethoven!" is like pitying the sick lion in his lair. Yetwhat is more pitiful? Love was the thorn in this lion's flesh, and therewas no Fräulein Androcles to take it away. 

Beethoven was born to the humblest station and the haughtiestaspirations, was left to a sot and a slave-driver for a father, and wasearly orphaned of his mother. In the first letter we have of his, hesays: "She was a good and tender mother to me; she was my best friend. Ah, who was more happy than I when I could still breathe the sweet nameof 'mother!' to ears that heard? Whom now can I say it to? Only to themute image of her that my fancy paints. "

This same letter, written when he was seventeen, tells three other ofhis life-long griefs--lack of funds, ill health, and melancholia. He hadno childhood; his salad days were bitter herbs; his later life was onewild tempest of ambition frustrated, of love unsated or unreturned, offriendship misprized or thought to be misprized. 

And then his deafness! When he was only thirty, the black fog of silencebegan to sink across his life; two years later he was stone-deaf, andnearly half his days were spent in the dungeon of isolation from realcommunion with man or with his own great music. He lived, indeed, as hesaid, _inter lacrimas et luctum_. 

The blind are usually placid and trustful; it is the major affliction ofthe deaf that they grow suspicious of their intimates and abhorrent ofthemselves. There is nothing in history more majestic than the battle ofthis giant soul against his doom; nothing more heartrending than hisbitter outcries; nothing loftier than his high determination to servehis turn on earth in spite of all. He was the very King Lear of music, trudging his lonely way with heart broken and hair wild in the stormsthat buffeted him vainly toward the cliffs of self-destruction. 

To such a man a home was a refuge pitifully needed, and for a whilelongingly sought. I have mentioned various women to whom he offered theglorious martyrdom that a life with him must needs have been. There weretwo others whom he deeply loved. One of these was the famous Italienne, whose very name is honey and romance as he writes it in the dedicationof his "Moonlight Sonata" (Op. 27, No. 2)--"_alla damigella contessaGiulietta Guicciardi. "_ It was in 1802, when he was thirty-two and sheeighteen, that he wrote her so luscious name on the lintel of thatsonata, so deep with yearning, so delicious in its middle mood, and sopassionately despairing in its close. She had been his pupil. She toldOtto Jahn long years after, when she was sixty-eight years old, thatBeethoven had first inscribed to her the Rondo, Op. 51, No. 2, but, inhis fickle way, he transcribed it to the Countess Lichnowsky, and puther own name over the "Moonlight Sonata" instead. 

It was probably the beauty and tender reciprocation of Giulietta thatinspired Beethoven to write to Wegeler in 1801:

"Life has been a little brighter to me of late, since I have mingledmore with my fellows. I think you can have no idea, how sad, howintensely desolate, my life has been during the last two years. Mydeafness, like a spectre, appears before me everywhere, so that I fleefrom society, and am obliged to act the part of a misanthrope, thoughyou know I am not one by nature. This change has been wrought by a dear, fascinating girl, whom I love, and who loves me. After two years, I baskagain in the sunshine of happiness, and now, for the first time, I feelwhat a truly happy state marriage might be. Unfortunately, she is not ofmy rank in life. Were it otherwise, I could not marry now, of course; soI must drag along valiantly. But for my deafness, I should long ago havecompassed half the world with my art--I must do it still. There existsfor me no greater happiness than working at and exhibiting my art. Iwill meet my fate boldly. It shall never succeed in crushing me. "

But Giulietta went over to the great majority of Beethoven'ssweethearts, and married wisely otherwise. Three years after, at herfather's behest, she wedded a writer of ballet music, the CountGallenberg, to whom Beethoven later advanced money. Twenty yearsafterward, in 1823, Beethoven wrote in one of those conversation-bookswhich his deafness compelled him to use: "I was well beloved of her, more than ever her husband was loved. She came to see me and wept, but Iscorned her. " (He wrote it in French, "J'étais bien aimé d'elle, et plusque jamais son époux. .. . Et elle cherche moi pleurant, mais je laméprisais"), and he added: "If I had parted thus with my strength aswell as my life, what would have remained to me for nobler and betterthings?"

Giulietta was long credited with being the woman to whom he wrote thosethree famous letters, or rather the one with the two postscripts, foundin the secret drawer of an old cabinet after his death, and addressed tohis "unsterbliche Geliebte. " They were written in pencil, and eitherwere copies or first draughts, or were never sent. They show his Titanicpassion in full flame, and are worth quoting entire. Thayer gives themin an appendix, in the original, but I quote Lady Wallace's translation, with a few literalising changes:

"My angel, my all, my self--only a few words to-day, and they with apencil (with yours!). My lodgings cannot be surely fixed untilto-morrow. What a useless loss of time over such things! Why this deepgrief when Necessity decides?--can our love exist without sacrifices, and by refraining from desiring all things? Can you alter the fact thatyou are not wholly mine, nor I wholly yours? Ah, God! contemplate thebeauties of Nature, and reconcile your spirit to the inevitable. Lovedemands all, and rightly; so it is with me toward you and with youtoward me; but you forget so easily that I must live both for you andfor myself. Were we wholly united, you would feel this sorrow as littleas I should. 

"My journey was terrible. I did not arrive here till four o'clockyesterday morning, as no horses were to be had. The drivers choseanother route; but what a dreadful one it was! At the last stage I waswarned not to travel through the night, and to beware of a certain wood, but this only incited me to go forward, and I was wrong. The carriagebroke down, owing to the execrable roads, mere deep rough country lanes, and had it not been for the postilions I must have been left by thewayside. Esterházy, travelling the usual road, had the same fate witheight horses as I with four. Still I felt a certain degree of pleasure, which I invariably do when I have happily surmounted any difficulty. ButI must now pass from the outer to the inner man. We shall soon meetagain; to-day I cannot impart to you all the reflections I have made, during the last few days, on my life; were our hearts closely united forever, none of these would occur to me. 

"My breast is overflowing with all I have to say to you. Ah! there aremoments when I find that speech is nothing at all. Take courage!Continue to be ever my true and only love, my all! as I am yours. Therest the gods must ordain--what must and shall become of us. 

"Your faithful LUDWIG. "

"Monday Evening, July 6th. 

"You grieve! My dearest being! I have just heard that the letters mustbe sent off very early. Mondays and Thursdays are the only days when thepost goes to K----from here. 

"You grieve! Ah! where I am, there you are also with me; how earnestlyshall I strive to pass my life with you, and what a life will it be!!!!Now!!!! without you and persecuted by the kindness of people here andthere, which I as little wish to deserve as they do deserve--theservility of man towards his fellow man--it pains me--and when I regardmyself as a part of the universe, what am I? what is he who is calledthe greatest?--and yet herein is shown the godlike part of humanity! Iweep in thinking that you will receive no intelligence from me tillprobably Saturday. However dearly you may love me, I love you morefondly still. Never disguise yourself from me. Good night! As a patientat these baths, I must now go to rest. " [A few words are here effaced byBeethoven himself. ] "Oh, God, so near! so far! Is not our love a trulycelestial mansion, but firm as the vault of heaven itself?"

"Good Morning, July 7th. 

"Even in my bed, still my thoughts throng to you, my immortalBeloved!--now and then full of joy, and yet again sad, waiting to seewhether Fate will hear us. I must live either wholly with you, or not atall. Indeed, I have resolved to wander far from you till I can fly intoyour arms, and feel that they are my home, and send forth my soul inunison with yours into the realm of spirits. Alas! it must be so! Youwill take courage, for you know my fidelity. Never can another possessmy heart--never, never! Oh, God! why must one fly from what he so fondlyloves? and yet my existence in W----was as miserable as here. Your lovemade me at once the most happy and the most unhappy of men. At my age, life requires a uniform equality; can this be found in our mutualrelations? Angel! I have this moment heard that the post goes every day, so I must conclude, that you may get this letter the sooner. Be calm!for we can only attain our object of living together by the calmcontemplation of our existence. Be calm--love me--to-day--yesterday--what longings with tears for you--you! you!--my life!--my all! Farewell!Oh! love me well--and never doubt the faithful heart of your beloved L. 

"Ever thine. 

"Ever mine. 

"Ever each other's. "

These impassioned letters to his "immortal beloved" were believed bySchindler to have been intended for Giulietta, and dated by him at firstin 1803 and then in 1806. But Thayer, after showing how carelessBeethoven was of dates, and how inaccurate, decides that these letterscould not have been written before 1804. Since Giulietta was marriedNov. 3, 1803, to Count Gallenberg, she could not have been the one whoselife he hoped to share. 

Who then remains? Thayer suggests that the woman thus honoured may havebeen another Thérèse, the Countess Thérèse von Brunswick. She was thecousin of Giulietta, whose husband said of Beethoven that Thérèse"adored him. " About the time of these letters, he wrote to her brother, "Kiss your sister Thérèse, " and later he dedicated to her his sonata, Op. 78. Some months after this he gave up his marriage scheme. OfThérèse, Thayer says that she lived to a great age--"_ça va sansdire_!--" and was famed for a noble and large-hearted, but eccentriccharacter. As for remembrance of Beethoven, one may apply to her thewords of Shakespeare, 'She died and gave no sign. ' Was it perhaps thatshe did not dare?

Even after seeing the above words in type, I am able to add somethingmore definite to Thayer's argument--if one is to believe a book Istumbled on in an old bookshop, and have not found mentioned in any ofthe Beethoven bibliographies. The book bears every sign of telling thetruth, as it makes no effort at the charms of fiction. It is by MiriamTenger, who claims to have known the Countess Thérèse well for manyyears, and who describes the adoration with which her friends regardedher, the painter Peter von Cornelius calling her "the most remarkablewoman I have ever known. "

"She was a scholar in the classics, a piano pupil of Mozart andBeethoven, " he went on, "and a woman who must have been rarely beautifulin her youth. Only a perfectly pure spirit could give the gentle look inher large, dark eyes. She spoke with inimitable beauty and clearness, because she was inwardly so transparent and beautiful, almost like abeatified spirit. "

He told Fräulein Tenger the story of an early encounter of Thérèse andBeethoven. She was a pupil who felt for him that mingled love and terrorhe instilled in women. One bitterly cold and stormy day he came to givethe young countess her lesson; she was especially eager to please him, but grew so anxious that her playing went all askew. He was under theobsession of one of his savageries. He grew more and more impatient withher, and finally struck her hand from the keys, and rushed outbareheaded into the storm. 

Her first horror at his brutality faded before her fear for his health. "Without hat! Without cloak! Good heavens!" she cried. Seizing them, she rushed after him--she, the countess, pursued the music-teacher likea valet! A servant followed her, and took the things from her hand togive to Beethoven, while she unseen returned; her mother rebuked her andordered her to her room. But the lessons continued, and in Thérèse'sdiary Beethoven appeared constantly as "mon maître, " "mon maître chéri. "

She was doomed to a long jealousy. She saw Beethoven fall in love withher cousin Giulietta Guicciardi. Giulietta came to her for advice, saying that she longed to throw over Count Gallenberg for "thatbeautiful horrible Beethoven--if it were not such a come-down. " She didnot condescend, as we have seen, and lived to regret it bitterly. 

The idolatry of the pupil finally seized the teacher. Beethoven came todote upon the large heart, the pure soul, and the serene mind ofThérèse. One night, as he extemporised as only he could, he sang a songof love to her. One day he said, suddenly:

"I have been like a foolish boy who gathered stones and did not observethe flower growing by the way. "

It was in the spring of 1806 that they became engaged. Only her brotherFranz, who revered Beethoven, was in the secret. They dared not tellThérèse's mother, but Beethoven took up life and art with a new andthorough zest. Of course, being Beethoven, he waxed wroth often at thedelay and the secrecy. But the sun broke through again. For four yearsof his life the engagement endured. Beethoven, it seems, at last grewfurious. He quarrelled with Franz, and in 1810 one day in a frenzysnapped the bond with Thérèse. As she herself told Fräulein Tenger, "Theword that parted us was not spoken by me, but by him. I was terriblyfrightened, turned deadly pale, and trembled. "

Even after this, the demon in him might have been exorcised, but Thérèsehad grown afraid of the lightnings of his wrath, and fear outweighedlove in the girl's heart. Sometimes she felt ashamed, in later years, ofher timidity; at other times she was glad that she had not hampered hisart, as any wife must have done. But now she returned him his letters. He destroyed them all, evidently, except the famous letter to his"immortal beloved, " which he had written in July, 1806, soon after thebetrothal; and with it he kept a portrait she had given him. As forThérèse, she, too, had kept a copy of this letter, and as she toldFräulein Tenger:

"I have read it so often that I know it by heart--like a poem--and wasit not a beautiful poem? I can only humbly say to myself, 'That manloved thee, ' and thank God for it. "

She also showed a sheet of old paper, with a spray of immortelles, andon it an inscription from Ludwig:

"L'immortelle à son Immortelle. LUIGI. "

These immortelles she sewed into a white silk cushion, with a requestthat it be placed under her head in her coffin. 

When Fräulein Tenger had first met the countess as a child she had beenasked to go every year on March 27th and lay a wreath of immortelles onBeethoven's grave. The acquaintance continued, and they met again atlong intervals till the countess's death in 1861. Fraulein Tenger wroteher book in her old age when she had lost her diaries, but enough of herreminiscences remain to prove Thayer's ingenious guesses correct. 

Thérèse von Brunswick was Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved, " and thepicture found with the letter was her portrait. It was painted by Lampi, when Thérèse was about twenty-eight; and on the frame can be seen stillthe words:

"To the rare genius, to the great artist, to the good man, from

T. B. "

The picture is in the Beethoven Museum at Bonn, and in the NationalMuseum at Pesth is a bust of Thérèse in her later years, erected in herhonour because she organised out of her charity the first infants'school in the Austrian empire, and did many other good works. It is bothpity and solace that the noble woman did not wed Beethoven. She was hismuse for years. That was, as she said, something to thank God for. Shewas also a beautiful spiritual influence on him. 

Once the Baron Spaun found Beethoven kissing Thérèse's portrait andmuttering: "Thou wast too noble--too like an angel. " The baron withdrewsilently, and returning later found Beethoven extemporising in heavenlymood. He explained: "My good angel has appeared to me. "

In 1813 he wrote in his diary:

"What a fearful state to be in, not to be able to trample down all mylongings for the joys of a home, to be always revelling in theselongings. O God! O God! look down in mercy upon poor, unhappy Beethoven, and put an end to this soon; let it not last much longer!"

And so Beethoven never married. The women, indeed, whom he loved, whomhe proposed to, always awoke with a shock to the risk of joining forlife a man of such explosive whims, of such absorption in his own selfand art, of such utter deafness, untidiness, and morose habit of mind. 

But Beethoven himself was not always eager to wed. He could write toGleichenstein:

"Now you can help me get a wife. If you find a pretty one--one who mayperhaps lend a sigh to my harmonies, do the courting for me. But shemust be beautiful; I cannot love anything that is not beautiful; if Icould, I should fall in love with myself. "

One feels here a touch of disdain and frivolity. Yet he could growfervid in such an outcry as that of his forty-sixth year:

"Love, and love alone, can give me a happy life. O God! let me find herwho will keep me in the path of virtue, the one I may rightly call myown. "

Again, he could coldly rejoice that he had not sacrificed any of hisindividuality, or any of his devotion to music, to Giulietta Guicciardi. And the diary of Fanny Giannatasio, whose father took care ofBeethoven's nephew, quotes a conversation Beethoven held on the subjectof wedlock. According to this, he said that marriage should not be soindissoluble, liberty-crushing a bond; that a marriage without love wasbest, but that no marriages were happy. He added:

"For himself he was excessively glad that not one of the girls hadbecome his wife, whom he had passionately loved in former days, andthought at the time it would be the highest joy on earth to possess. "

To this cynic wisdom, the poor Fanny Giannatasio del Rio, whose love forBeethoven would never have been known had not her diary enambered it forpublication after her death, adds the words: "I will not repeat myanswer, but I think I know a girl who, beloved by him, would not havemade his life unhappy. "

Ay, there's the rub! Could any one have woven a happiness about the lifeof that ferocious master of art, that pinioned, but struggling, victimof fate?

CHAPTER XV. 

VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED

 "Though thou hast now offended like a man. Do not persever in it like a devil; Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul, If sin by custom grow not into nature. "

 Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"

Few novels are so brilliantly written, or so variously absorbing, as thelife of Von Weber, written by his son, the Baron Max Maria von Weber. For years the son had resisted the urgence of his mother to undertakethe work, fearing that partiality would warp, and indelicacy stain, anysuch memorial of a father who had lived so lively a life. When at lastthe work was begun and done, it was a miracle of impartiality, offrankness which seems complete, of sins confessed and expiated in theirconfession, and of trenchant characterisation, which one will hardlyfind surpassed outside of Dickens. 

The Von Webers are the most numerous musical dynasty after the Bachs. Wehave already seen something of the fortunes of the family into whichMozart married. The father of Mozart's wife was the older brother ofFranz Anton von Weber, father of Carl Maria. This Franz Anton was astrange mixture of stalwart and shiftless qualities. He gave up hisorchestral position to fight against Frederick the Great, and broughthome a red badge of courage. It is wonderful, by the way, how manymusicians have earned distinction as soldiers--what, indeed, would thesoldiers do without music?

Later Franz Anton entered civil service, and succeeded to the positionof Court Financial-Councillor Fumetti, and married his beautifuldaughter, Maria Anna. But Franz Anton was so rabid a fiddler that heused to be seen playing his violin in public places, followed by hislarge family of children, or even sawing away in the open fields, to theneglect of his work and finally the loss of his position. Thereupon hedecided that his large family should help in its own support, anddragged them one and all upon the stage. The proud mother saw herfortune squandered, and her pride massacred. She died some years later. Franz Anton's heart was too industrious to remain idle long, and, thoughhe was now fifty years of age, he somehow won the hand of Genofeva vonBrenner, who was only sixteen years old. It is gratuitous to say thatthe young girl was not happy. In 1786 she bore him the child who was torealise the father's one great and vicarious ambition: to bring amusical genius into the world. 

While Carl Maria von Weber was still a babe, Franz Anton started oncemore after the will-o'-the-wisp of theatrical fame, with his "Weber'sCompany of Comedians. " Genofeva, sickly and melancholy, dragged herselfabout with the troupe until Carl Maria was ten years old, when herhealth gave way, and the travel was discontinued. Poverty andconsumption ended her days two years later. Within a year Franz Antonwas betrothed to a widow, whom, strange to say, he never married. 

Again Franz Anton, the Bedouin that he was, dragged his son back intothe nomad life. The boy seemed astonishingly stupid in learning music, though the father encouraged him with intemperate zeal. Meanwhile Carl'scharacter was forming, and he was becoming as brilliant as the mercuriallife he was leading, and at the same time as irresponsible. Like hisrelative, Mozart, he was precocious at falling in love. Perhaps hisfirst flame was Elise Vigitill, in whose autograph album he wrote:

"Dearest Elise, always love your sincere friend, Carl von Weber; in thesixth year of his age; Nüremberg, the 10th of September, 1792. " Wehear of no more sweethearts for eleven long years. When Carl Maria wasseventeen, Franz Anton left him in Vienna, where he plunged intodissipation at a tempo presto appassionato. As his son writes, "throughcarolling, kissing, drinking Vienna, he wandered with a troop of choicespirits, drinking, kissing, carolling. " The intoxicating draught ofpleasure quaffed in the lively capital fevered the lad's blood, and theardent imaginative temperament burst forth in that adoration of femalebeauty which strewed his life's path with roses, not without thorns. Histeacher, Abbé Vogler, however, secured him a position as conductor atthe Breslau opera, and he was compelled to tear himself away from asweetheart of rank, who was somewhat older than he. His father went withhim, and by his bumptiousness brought the boy many enemies, and, throughhis speculations, many debts in addition to those he acquired forhimself. Here another entanglement awaited him. His son tells it thus:

"Many a female heart, no doubt, both within the theatre and without itswalls, was allured by the sweet smile and seductive manners of the pale, slender, languishing, but passionately ardent young conductor; whilsthis own heart seems to have been more seriously involved in anunfortunate and misplaced attachment for a singer in the theatre. Thiswoman was married to a rough drunkard who mishandled her. The couplewere daily falling more and more into an abject state of poverty. YoungCarl Maria pitied the woman; and pity was soon transformed in thefeeling next akin. "

"That she was an unworthy object of either pity or affection is veryclear: she misused his goodness of heart, gnawed incessantly at hisslender purse, and quickly plunged him into a slough of difficultiesnigh equal to her own. "

Various misfortunes and indiscretions brought Von Weber to the loss ofhis post. But a woman intervened to save him from disaster. This was aFräulein von Belonda, maid of honour to the Duchess of Würtemberg, whotook a deep interest in Carl, and persuaded the duke to make him musicaldirector. The continual successes of the French armies overrunningEurope forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But hesecured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother, Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Würtemberg, a monster ofcorpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that hemight get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovablefigures and their ugly court Weber was thrust. 

"Thus then the fiery young artist, his wild oats not yet fully sown, plunged into a new world, where no true sense of right or wrong wasknown; where virtue and morality were laughed to scorn; where, in thechaotic whirlpool of a reckless court, money and influence at any pricewere the sole ends and aims of life; where, in the confusion of thetimes, the insecurity of conditions, and the ruthless despotism of thegovernment, the sole watchword of existence, from high to low, was'Après moi, le deluge!'" The Prince Ludwig was a great spendthrift, and was continually appealing to his brother for funds. It was poorWeber's pleasant task to be the go-between, and to receive on his headthe rage of Behemoth. Again to quote the vivid language of the BaronMax:

"The stammering, stuttering, shrieking rage of the hideously corpulentking, who, on account of his unwieldy obesity, was unable to let hisarms hang by his side, and who thus gesticulated wildly, and perspiredincessantly, and had the habit, moreover, of continually addressing hisfavourite, generally present on these occasions, with the appeal, 'Pasvrai, Dillen?' after each broken sentence, --would have beeninexpressibly droll, had not the low-comedy actor of the scene been anautocrat who might, at a wink, have transformed laughter into tears. Butthere was a demoniacal comicality about the performance, which, if itdid not convulse the spectator, made him shudder to his heart's core. 

"Weber hated the king, of whose wild caprice and vices he witnesseddaily scenes, before whose palace-gates he was obliged to slinkbareheaded, and who treated him with unmerited ignominy. He was wont, inthoughtless levity of youth, to forget the dangers he ran, and to answerthe king with a freedom of tone which the autocrat was all unused tohear. In turn he was detested by the monarch. 

"The royal treatment roused young Carl Maria's indignation to theutmost; and his irritation led him one day to a mad prank, which wasnigh resulting in some years' imprisonment in the fortress ofHohenasberg, or of Hohenhaufen. Smarting under some foul indignity, hehad just left the private apartment of the king, when an old woman methim in the passage, and asked him where she could find the room of thecourt washerwoman. 'There!' said the reckless youth, pointing to thedoor of the royal cabinet. The old woman entered, and was violentlyassailed by the king, who had a horror of old women; in her terror, shestammered out that a young gentleman who had just come out had informedher that there she would find the 'royal washerwoman, ' The infuriatedmonarch guessed who was the culprit, and despatched an officer on thespot to arrest his brother's secretary, and throw him into prison. 

"To those who have any idea how foul a den was then a royal prison, itmust appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessedsufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved artduring his arrest. But so it was. He managed to procure a dilapidatedold piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a commondoor-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808, composed his well-known beautiful song, 'Ein steter Kampf ist unserLeben. '

"The storm passed over. Prince Ludwig's influence obtained the youngman's pardon and release. But the insult was never forgotten by theking: he took care to remember it at his own right time. Nor had prisoncured Carl Maria of his boyish desire to play tricks upon the hatedmonarch, when he conceived that he could do so without danger tohimself. "

Carl proceeded to make himself an appropriate graduate of such auniversity of morals, and devoted himself to wine, women, and debts, with a small proportion of song. He belonged to a society of young men, who called themselves by the gentle name of "Faust's Ride to Hell. " Henow began also the composition of an opera, "Sylvana. " This brought himinto acquaintance with operatic people, and he fell under the charm ofthat "coquettish little serpent Margarethe Lang. "

"To stem such a passion, or even to have given it a legal form, wouldhave been merely ridiculous and absurd in the eyes of the demoralisedcircle by which he was surrounded. Gretchen possessed a little plumpseductive form, was about twenty years of age, and, in addition to herundoubted musical talent, was endowed with a fund of gay, sprightlyhumour, wholly in sympathy with the youth's own joyous nature. Shebecame the central point of all his life and aspirations. "

Thus the biographer describes the new dissipation, which carried Carlaway from his old riots; the new magnet that dragged from him all themoney he could earn, and more than he could borrow. It was a wild andreckless crew and addicted to such entertainments as the travesty onMarc Antony, with music by Carl, who played Cleopatra, while Gretchenplayed Antony. 

The last straw upon Carl's breaking back was the arrival of his father, who descended upon him with a bass viol, an enormous basket-bed for hisbeloved poodles, and a large bundle of debts, as well as an increasedluggage of eccentricities. While Weber was trying to secure loans to payoff one of his father's debts, he was innocently implicated in a scandalof bribery, by which it was made to seem that he had offered a post inthe prince's household, in return for an advance of money. The king hadbeen driven to despair by the disasters of the German army, and theincrease of discontent of the German people, and desired to gain areputation for virtue by the comfortable step of reforming his brother'shousehold. Learning of the proffered bribe, in which Weber seemed to beconcerned, but of which he was perfectly innocent, the king had himarrested during a rehearsal of his opera "Sylvana, " and had him throwninto prison for sixteen days. When at last he was examined, there wasnothing found to justify the accusation of dishonesty, he was releasedfrom the prison for criminals, and transferred to the prison for debt, and then a little later he and his father were placed into a carriageand driven across the border to exile. 

This sudden plunge from the froth of dissipation to the dregs ofdisgrace was a fall that Weber could never thereafter think or speak of, and every mention of it was forbidden. 

Almost from this moment Weber's life is one of seriousness, with anoccasional relapse into some of his old qualities, but never a completelaying aside of earnestness. He gained friends elsewhere, and finallysettled in Darmstadt, where he still found women's hearts susceptible, in spite of his small, weak frame, his great long neck, and his calflesslegs, of which he writes: "And, oh, my calves, they might have donehonour to a poodle!"

Eight months after his banishment, his opera "Sylvana" was produced atFrankfort, the first soprano being Gretchen Lang, and the part ofSylvana being taken by Caroline Brandt, of whom much more later. AtMunich the next year, he found himself in high favour with two singers. They were vying with each other for him, while two society beautiesexerted their rival charms. Weber was kept busy with his quadrupleflirtation. He was driven into cynicism, and his motto became "All womenare good for nothing" ("_Alle Weiber taugen nichts_"), which he used sooften that he abbreviated it to "A. W. T. N. " In the columns of hisaccount-book he was provoked to write: "A. Coquettes with me, though sheknows I am making love to her friend. B. Abuses N. , tells me horridstories of her, and says I must not go home with her. " He took a journeyto Switzerland, where the beautiful Frau Peyermann occupied his heartlong enough to inspire him to the scene in "Athalie, " and to his song, "The Artist's Declaration of Love. " He wandered here and there, forabout three years, and his biographer, Spitta, thus portrays him:

"Roving restlessly from place to place, winning all hearts by his sweet, insinuating, lively melodies, his eccentricities making him an imposingfigure to the young of both sexes, and an annoyance to the old, excitingthe attention of everybody, and then suddenly disappearing, his personuniting in the most seductive manner aristocratic bearing and tone withindolent dissipation, his moods alternating between uproarious spiritsand deep depression, --in all ways he resembled a figure from someromantic poem, wholly unlike anything seen before in the history ofGerman art. "

In 1813 he found himself at Prague, with the post of musical director tothe opera. In the company were two women who took hold of his heart;one, a spirit of evil, the other an angel of good. The former wasTheresa Brunetti, wife of a ballet-dancer, and mother of severalchildren, the acquisition of which had robbed her of neither her fine, plump figure, nor her devotion to the arts of coquetry. There is noimproving upon the description of Max von Weber as given of thisentanglement, so here it is at length, with all its frankness ofexposure and its writhing humiliation:

"He soon conceived for the handsome seductive woman a passion, whichseemed to have deprived his otherwise clear mind of all common sense andreason, and which neither the flood of administrative affairs nor thecold breath of duty could extinguish. Vain were all his efforts toconceal it. In a very short time it became the topic of general remark;excited the ridicule or grave anxieties of his friends; involved him ina thousand disagreeable positions; lowered his character, without theslightest compensating advantage to his artistic career; and nighdragged him down into an abyss beyond hope of rescue. 

"The new opera-director was soon lodged in the house of the carelesshusband of the light woman. She herself may have had some inclinationfor the man. But as soon as she felt her true power over him, she heldout her fair hand only to lead him into a life of torment. 

"The woman's power over her poor victim was immense. He was dragged inher train, against his better reason, to country excursions, suppers, balls, at which, whilst he watched her every look, her every breath, todiscover her slightest wish, although nigh dead with fatigue, she wouldbe bestowing her attention on other men, wholly regardless of her slave. Now again he would scour the town, in scorching heat or drenching rain, frequently sacrificing the only moments he could snatch from businessfor his dinner, to procure a ribbon, a ring, or some dainty, which shedesired, and which was difficult to obtain; and on his return she wouldreceive him perhaps with coldness and toss the prize aside. Sometimes, when the proof became too evident that she had duped, deceived, betrayedhim, the scenes between the two were fearful; and then she wouldcleverly find means of asserting that it was she who had the best rightto be jealous, and thus turn the tables on him. By every thought, inevery action, in every moment of his life, there was but one feelingever present--'How will she receive me?'

"Even in his account-book, now so often neglected, are to be found thelamentations of his despairing heart over her unworthiness; and again, but a few hours later, expressions of delight that she had smiled onhim. There is something terrible in the bitter slavery to which hisbetter nature was condemned by this wild passion. One day he writes: 'Afearful scene. .. . The sweetest dream of my life is over. Confidence islost for ever. The chain is broken, ' On the next: 'A painfulexplanation. I shed the first tears my grief has wrung from me. .. . Thisreconciliation has cleared the thunder from the air. Both of us feltbetter, ' And then again: 'My dream is over! I shall never know thehappiness of being loved. I must for ever be alone! . .. She can sit nearme, hours long, and never say one word; and when some other man ismentioned, burst out in ecstasy. I will do all I can to please her; butI must withdraw within myself, bury all my bitter feelings in my ownheart, and work--work--work!'" It was in the fall of 1813--_prositomen!_--that Von Weber met the Brunetti. In the next year he was stillclinging to her whom the biographer calls "the rotten plant, " and wrotein a note-book: "I found Calina with Thérèse, and I could scarcelyconceal the fearful rage that burned in me. " Or an elegy like this: "Nojoy without her, and yet with her only sorrow. "

Cupid has always been jealous of the cook. On Thérèse's birthday, Carlpresented her with a double gift, first a gold watch with a cluster oftrinkets, each of them a symbol of love; with this cluster of trinkets, something very rare and costly in Prague--oysters. Thérèseglanced--merely glanced--at the jewelry; she fairly gobbled the oysters. Carl's love had survived his jealousy of Calina, but he could not endurea rivalry with mollusks. As his son explains: "On a sudden the scalesfell from his eyes. " Ought he not rather have said, the shells?

Lacking even this ogress for an idol, poor Carl was lonely indeed. Evenmusic turned unresponsive, and success was only ashes on his tongue. Then faith gave him, unsought, ability to revenge himself on theBrunetti. She had despised him as a mere genius toddling after thefrou-frou of her skirts, but she began to prize him when she saw himcasting interested looks in another direction. Now it was her turn towrithe with jealousy, and to writhe in vain. Her storms and tirades hadmore effect upon him than his pleas had had upon her. But whereas shehad formerly been _insouciante_ and amused at his pain, her pain hurthim to distraction, broke down his health, and drove him to ask for aleave of absence, that he might recover his strength. When he went away, he carried with him in his heart a new regret, sweetened, or perhapsembittered, by a tinge of new hope. But he could not know that he hadreached the end of the worthless pages of his life, and that the newleaf was to be inscribed with a story of happiness, which was by nomeans untroubled, but yet was constructive happiness, worth-whilehappiness. 

In the year 1810 his opera "Sylvana" had been sung, as I have said, withCaroline Brandt in the title rôle. When, in 1813, he was given thedirection of the opera at Prague, though he fell into the clutches ofthe Brunetti, he had unconsciously prepared himself a better, cleanerexperience by engaging for the very first member of his new company thissame Caroline Brandt, who happened to write him that she happened to be"at liberty, " as they say. 

Like Carl himself, she had known stage-life from childhood, being thedaughter of a tenor, and appearing on the stage at the age of eight. She is described as "small and plump in figure, with beautiful, expressive gray eyes and fair wavy hair, and a peculiar liveliness inher movements. " She was a woman of large and tender heart, electrifiedwith a temper incisive and immediate. She was an actress of genuineskill, "her sense of grace and beauty in all things infallible. " She didnot appear at the theatre in Prague until the first day of January, 1814. She bore a curious resemblance to Thérèse Brunetti in a fresheredition, and was not long in giving that lady a sense of uneasiness. Theoysters, as we have seen, had given the Brunetti the _coup de disgrâce_. 

Caroline won the poor director's gratitude first by being quick to adoptsuggestions, and to rescue him from the embarrassments buzzing about thehead of an operatic manager. She was glad to undertake tasks, and slowto show professional jealousy. She lived in seclusion with her mother, and received no visits. Even the young noblemen could not woo her at thestage door, though the Brunetti advised her to accept the advances of acertain banker, saying: "He is worth the trouble, for he is rich. "

Having failed to drag Caroline into her own game, the Brunetti tried tokeep Von Weber from breathing the better air of her presence. As wehave seen, she drove him almost to distraction, and sent him a wreck tothe baths in Friedland. 

Caroline's mother had permitted Von Weber to pay his court to her, andher father and brother had found his intentions worthy. Caroline had nothesitated to confess that her affection was growing with Carl's. Butwhat she had seen of his life with the Brunetti, and what she must haveheard of his magnificent dissipations, gave her pause. Therefore, whenCarl went away for his health, he took with him a riddle, and leftbehind "a sweet, beloved being who might--who may--make me happy. " "Theabsence of three months shall test our love. " They wrote each other longand daily letters; his were all of yearning, while hers were mingledwith fear, lest he be, as she wrote him, "a sweet poison harmful to thesoul. "

After taking the baths, he went on to Berlin, arriving there August 3din the very ferment of rapture over the downfall of Napoleon at Prague. He was moved to write a number of patriotic songs from Koerner's "Leierund Schwert. " These choruses for men were sung throughout theFatherland, as they still are sung. 

But from the height of glory to which he was now borne, as the livingvoice of the nation, he was dragged back to the depths by the littlehand and the little finger-nails of Caroline, who could be jealousenough to suspect that not all the adoration Von Weber was receivingfrom the women of Berlin was pure and impersonal patriotism. 

Von Weber had from the first insisted that no marriage of theirs couldhave hope of success, unless she left the stage. This sacrifice ofherself and her career and her large following among the public was adeal to ask, and a deal to grant. Her combined reluctance to sacrificeher all, and her jealous fears that he would not find her all in all, atlast led her to write him that they would better give up their dream, and break their troth. 

In his first bitterness at this inopportune humiliation, coming like adrop of vinegar in the honey of royal favour, he wrote furiously toGansbacher, "I see now that her views of high art are not above theusual pitiful standard--namely, that art is but a means of procuringsoup, meat, and shirts. " To another friend, Lichtenstein, he wrote moresolemnly:

"All my fondest hopes are vanishing day by day. I live like a drunkenman who dances on a thin coating of ice, and spite of his better reasonwould persuade himself that he is on solid ground. I love with all myheart and soul; and if there be no truth in her affection, the lastchord of my whole life has been struck. I shall still live on, --marryperhaps some day, --who knows? But love and trust again, never more. "

In September he returned to Prague with an anxious heart, and took up inperson a new battle for Caroline's hand. They were agreed upon thesubject of affection, but wrangled upon the clauses in the treaty ofmarriage. While this debate was waging, Weber took care of her money andher mother's. A benefit being given her, he announced that he himselfwould sell the tickets at the box-office, and he spent a whole daybartering his quick wit and his social influence, for increased prices. Such public devotion brought scandal buzzing about the ears of the two. But still Caroline would not give up her career, nor Weber his opinionof stage marriages. 

Even his patriotic songs, "The Lyre and the Sword, " were a cause ofdisagreement, for Caroline, like so many women, deified Napoleon, andher lover's lyric assaults upon him were so much sacrilege; while to himher adoration of that personified prairie-fire, who had devastated theFatherland, was treason. The Brunetti, being well out of the running, Caroline found new cause of jealousy in the newly engaged actress, Christine Bohler. Indeed, Carl and Caroline did little but fight andmake up for months, until even Caroline was convinced that one of thetwo must leave Prague, at least for a period of probation. It was Carlwho left, and in a condition of almost complete spiritual collapse. 

How little music has to do with one's state of mind, may be seen fromthe fact that in his weak and complaining despair, he composed one ofhis sturdiest works, "Kampf und Sieg. " He settled in Munich, andcontinued to correspond with Caroline, writing her the most minutedescriptions of his life and his lodgings, and begging her to write himwith equal fulness. His loneliness, however, at length told upon hisspirits, and gradually stifled his creativeness. 

At length it became time for him to return to Prague again, and on theeve of his home-going he received a letter from Caroline, which she saidshe had been for weeks trying in vain to write. She was now convincedthat they must absolutely give up all thought of love and marriage. Thisblow smote him to the ground. He had no strength even for wrath; hecould only write in abject meekness, as if thanking her for delaying theblow so long:

"Be not angry, my beloved one, that I repeat my words of love and sorrowagain and again. They flow from a pure heart, that knows no other wishthan your happiness. When time shall have gone by, and you can look backin peace and quiet on the broken tie between us, you will thenacknowledge that never was a truer heart than mine. Thanks, my dearestlife, my never-to-be-forgotten love, for the many sweet flowers you havewoven into the garland of my life, for all your love, for all your care. Forgive me for my excess of love--forgive the passion that may have tornmany a wound, when it should have soothed and healed--forgive me allthe sorrow I have caused you, though Heaven knows it was through no willof mine--forgive me for having stolen one whole sweet year of yourprecious life, for which I would willingly give ten of my own, could Ibut buy it back for you. .. . Farewell--farewell. "

On the 7th of September he arrived in Prague. His first view of Carolinewas as she sang the Cinderella on the stage. The sight of her was toomuch; he broke down and ran home. But still, as director, he mustfrequently meet her in more or less familiar situations. And as for her, she later confessed that she was suffering even more than Carl. 

Her every strength and resolution melted away one afternoon in theautumn, at a reception, where the lovers met face to face. Their gazeblended; their hands blended; the war was over. 

Instantly, with the resumption of his love-life, his interest in musicbegan again. Caroline, apparently alarmed at the condition of hishealth, never robust, persuaded her mother to let him board at herhouse. New health and old-time gaiety began again. But he was tired ofPrague, and determined to find a larger field elsewhere. While he washunting for a place for himself, he secured a starring engagement forCaroline at the then high salary of ten gold louis, per performance. Before he left Prague, he announced his engagement publicly. By acurious coincidence, the engagement was announced at a reception, justafter a total eclipse of the sun. When the daylight came out of thedarkness, Carl rose and proclaimed his conquest. 

On Christmas morning he received a costly ring from the King of Hanover, a splendid snuff-box from the King of Bavaria, and an appointment asKapellmeister to the King of Saxony. 

At Dresden there were honours enough and jealousies more. But Carlassailed them with new strength. And now, he took up an opera on asubject he had thought of but discarded, fortunately for himself and theworld. He wrote Caroline that a friend of his was writing a librettobased on the old national legend, "Der Freischütz. " Kind, thelibrettist, wrote night and day for ten days, and Carl, in greatenthusiasm, forwarded the libretto for Caroline's opinion. She sent itback with violent criticisms, based upon her long stage experience andher intuition of stage effects. We can never thank her sufficiently forcutting out endless pages of songs and recitative by the melancholiousold Hermit who, in the original version, was to commence the opera, andwander in and out of it incessantly. Caroline wrote, like Horace:

"Away, with all these scenes. .. . Plunge at once into the popularelement. Begin with the scene before the tavern. " This seemedoutrageous mutilation at first to the composer, and the librettist tookit with still more violence; threatening for a time to withdraw his bookcompletely. But often, thereafter, did Carl express his gratitude toher, whom he called his "Public with two eyes. " Would to heaven, thatthere had been some Caroline Brandt to give similar advice to Wagnerconcerning his Wotan and his King Mark!

Meanwhile, during the composition of "Der Freischütz, " which was to meanso much for the happiness of Germany and the betterment of operagenerally, Carl, the genius who struck out the magnificent work, wasspending almost less time upon the details of composition and scoringthan upon the purchase of articles for the home he was making for hisbride-to-be. He wrote her long letters, describing his purchases of"chairs, crockery, curtains, knives, forks, spoons, pails, brooms, andmustard-pot. "

She had ceased to be in his mind the brilliant and fascinatingsoubrette, and had become in the silly lover's-Latin, his "pug, hisduck, his bird. " He answered a letter she wrote him describing hersuccess in the "Magic Flute:"

"I was amused with your account of the 'Zauberflöte, ' but you know Ihope soon to see you lay by all your pretty Papagena feathers. All yoursatins and ermines must give place to a coarse apron then. You will beonly applauded by my hungry stomach, called out before the cook-wench, and saluted with 'da capo' when you kiss your Carl. It is very shocking, I know. What will my own pearl say to be dissolved in the sour vinegarof domestic life, and swallowed by a bear of a husband?"

In March, 1817, Weber was called to Prague, on business connected withhis opera company; he was overjoyed at the thought of seeing Caroline, who was still singing there. Just as he was stepping into thetravelling-carriage, a letter was handed him, saying that the firm inPrague, with which he had deposited all his savings and those ofCaroline, was about to go into bankruptcy. There was indeed, of his longand careful hoardings only as much left as Caroline had deposited on hisadvice. Her savings were quite swept away. 

But, without saying a word to her, he transferred the last penny he hadin the world to her name, and left himself, except for his strength andfame, a pauper. It was many years after, and then only by chance, thatCaroline learned the beautiful sacrifice he had made from his great lovefor her. When he reached Prague, he concealed from her all the distresshe had suffered, and there was nothing but happiness in their reunion. 

Returning to Dresden, he took up more seriously the composition of "DerFreischütz. " The first note of it that he wrote was the second act duetbetween Agathe and Aennchen; he took Caroline as his ideal. Indeed, through the whole composition of the work, he declared that he sawCaroline always presiding. He seemed to hear her voice singing everynote, and saw her fingers playing it on the piano; now smiling, overwhat she liked; now shaking her head over what displeased her. Thisspirit he took as the critic and judge of the whole work. There haverarely been such instances of actual personal inspiration in any work ofart, and certainly none which do more credit to the absorption of theartist-mind in the worship of its idol. Furthermore, much of thecomposition was done at the home preparing for Caroline's actualpresence, and he wrote those suave and optimistic pages of music to anaccompaniment of hammers and saws, the wrangling of carpenters, painters, upholsterers, and scrub-women; sleeping at nights in thekitchen, and glad to find a kitchen-table to compose upon. Thelonged-for marriage could not take place until a court wedding for whichhe was writing music. This was postponed and postponed, until he wasdriven to distraction. But at last, when the royal bridegroom was senton his way the composer fled toward Prague. Caroline surprised him bycoming part way to meet him. On November 4, 1817, they were married. Carl gave Caroline's mother a pension of nine hundred thalers, thoughher husband and son were living. The honeymoon was paid for by concertshere and there, in which both took part, and by a benevolent royalcommission to hunt for artists. Caroline, though her matrimonial treatyforbade her singing on the stage, was allowed to sing at concerts, andat some of them she sang duets, with Carl at the piano, while she playedthe guitar. 

Carl had often told Caroline that she must expect a chaos in her newhome in Dresden. When she arrived, and found everything beautiful and inperfect order, she wept with rapture. Late on the last night of the year1817, Carl wrote in a diary these words; they show what depths therewere in the soul and what heights in the ambition of one whose youth andtraining and early recklessness had promised so little of solidity andsolemnity. 

"The great important year has closed. May God still grant me theblessing He has hitherto so graciously accorded me; that I may have thepower to make the dear one happy; and, as a brave artist, bring honourand advantage to my Fatherland! Amen!"

As for Caroline, who had been so volatile a soubrette and so happy inthe footlight glitter, she turned out to be even a greater success as a_Haus-frau. _ She began to win a more limited, but an equally profound, reputation for her perfect dinners and receptions, and for the minutecare with which she kept all her "account-books, housekeeping-books, cellar-books. " Finally, she even learned to cook, and the householdbecame a dove-cote!

The instinct of jealousy is one that is not easily uprooted, andCaroline did not permit Carl's life to grow too monotonous. His highfavour at court kept her in subjects for uneasiness. He finallyattempted a violent cure. He began to absent himself from the house withunusual frequence, but would not explain where he had been, even thoughCaroline wept and wailed. At length he wrought her to the pitch ofdesperation by his heartless indifference; then, one day, he broughthome a portrait bust which a sculptor friend had made and with it asigned record of every hour and minute of his absence. This, if not apermanent cure, was at least a partial remedy. 

Weber's home became a proverb of hospitality and good cheer. The twosang duets, or Caroline recited poems, while Carl improvisedaccompaniments; excursions to the fields, and water parties, andhilarious reunions of the opera-troupe kept life busy. Later, he took acountry home, where he surrounded himself with the dumb animals whosesociety he so enjoyed; these included a large hound, a raven, astarling, an Angora cat, and an ape. 

On December 22, 1818, the first child, a girl, was born. Caroline wasdangerously ill; the child was not strong, and Carl's own health, always at the brink of wreckage, broke down. Caroline, hardly able to beabout, nursed her husband and concealed from him the serious conditionof the child. Just as he was beginning to recover, in April, hisfirstborn died. The news could not be kept from him, and he was sentinto delirium. Caroline's health gave way completely, and "the unhappycouple lay in neighbouring rooms, where they could only cry 'Comfort!'to each other through the wall; and where, in the still hours of night, each smothered the sobs of grief in the pillows, that the other mightnot hear. "

Caroline was the first to recover. Carl's health and strength were onthe final ebb--the long, slow ebb that made of his last years one dismaltragedy, which only his superb devotion to his wife and his immitigableoptimism could brighten. In July, 1820, they decided to take a tour. They met with great success, but he found his weakness almostunbearable. At Hanover, he and Caroline were both prostrated, and couldnot join in the concert planned. On the road to Bremen, the postilionfell asleep and the coach was overturned into the ditch. The driver wasstunned and the sick Carl had himself to revive the man, untie thebaggage from the roof, unharness the horses, put everything in placeagain, and drive the postilion to the next station. At Hamburg, Caroline was too ill to continue the tour; she was about to become amother, and Carl was compelled to go on without her, but he wrote herdaily letters full of devotion. It was the first separation of theirmarried life. 

Later she rejoined him, and at Hamburg, the oyster entered once moreinto Weber's domestic career. The Brunetti had cured him of his love forher by her inordinate fondness for bivalves. Caroline, on the otherhand, hated them. But Weber said:

"There can be no true sympathy between us while you detest a food Irelish. For the love of me, swallow this oyster. "

The first three were a severe trial, but, as the French might say, "Cen'est pas que la première huitre qui coute. " Afterward Weber wouldgroan, "Alas, why did I ever teach you the trick?"

In 1821, there rose a famous operatic war between Spontini and Weber atBerlin. Caroline was prostrated with terror. Spontini's "Olympic" wasgiven first with enormous success, and "Der Freischütz, " in whichCaroline had had so large a share, and which meant so much to the two, was forced into a dramatic comparison. In spite of a somewhat dubiousbeginning, the first night was one of the greatest ovations a musicianhas ever lived to see. In the midst of the tempestuous applause, everyone looked for the composer, who was "sitting in a dark corner of hiswife's box and kissing away her tears of joy. "

When they returned to Dresden in July, Caroline's health was underminedby the emotions of the Berlin triumph, and it was necessary for her tobe taken to Switzerland, where Carl was compelled to leave her. Anaccident in crossing the Elbe led him to write his will, leavingCaroline everything without reserve, and his dying curse upon any onewho should disturb his wishes. 

Now consumption began to fasten its claws more deeply on him, and whenhis wife returned she found him constantly racked with cough and fever. One day he saw the first fatal spot of blood upon his handkerchief; heturned pale and sighed: "God's will be done. "

From that moment neither his conviction that he was doomed to an earlydeath, nor his courage to die pluckily, ever left him. When "DerFreischütz" was given in Dresden, Caroline was ill at home. Carlarranged a courier service by which he received, after every scene, newsof his wife. In February of the next year, he was compelled to leaveDresden; he placed in his wife's hands a sealed letter only to be openedin case of his death. This letter gave a complete account of all hisaffairs, and a last expression of his immense love for her. On his manytours, he met almost uninterrupted triumph, but as he wrote to Caroline:

"I would rather be in my still chamber with you, my beloved life. Without you all pride is shorn of its splendour; my only real joy can bein that which gives you joy too. "

From now on he spent a large part of his time away from her, alwaystormented to the last degree by homesickness, always harrowed by thefear that he might die out of the reach of his adored wife and twochildren, and never feeling that he had laid by money enough to leavethem free of the danger of want, after he should have drifted into thegrave that yawned just before his weary feet. 

It is hard to find in story or history a more pitiful struggle againstfate and the frustration of every deep desire than the last days of CarlMaria von Weber, hurrying from triumph to triumph, and dying as hejolted along his way, or stood bowing with hollow heart beforeuproarious multitudes. Homesickness grew to be a positive frenzy withhim. 

"They carry me in triumph, " he wrote to Caroline: "they watch for everywink to do me kindnesses. But I feel I can only be happy there, where Ican hear my lambs bleat, and their mother low, and can beat my dog, orturn away my maids, if they are at all too troublesome. "

In 1825, Christmas found him at a distance, and he could not reach home. "I shall think of you all on Christmas-eve, " he wrote, "But that Inever cease to do. All my labours are for you--all my joy is with you. ""Can I but be with you on New Year's eve, " he wrote again, with thattinge of superstition which always more or less pervaded his character, "I shall be with you all the year. "

Now London beckoned to him, as she had to so many German musicians, towhom she always has stood for the city of gold and of rescue frompauperdom. Ghastly as Von Weber looked in the clutches of his disease;hungry as his heart and body were for a long, an eternal rest, he feltthat he must not shrink from this final goal. As his son writes withaching heart in the biography:

"To Gublitz, who doubted of his ability to undertake the journey toLondon, he replied, in a tone of melancholy irony: 'Whether I can or no, I must. Money must be made for my family--money, man. I am going toLondon to die there. Not a word! I know it as well as you. ' The bright, cheery, lively Weber, who revelled in the triumph of his 'Freischütz, 'was already dead and gone. 

"Before his departure, Weber regulated all his affairs in the mostpunctilious manner. The presentiment of the fast-approaching endrendered him doubly careful that all should be in order; and, in hislast conferences with his legal friends, he was always anxious to insurethe presence of his wife, whose strong practical good sense he knew. During these painful duties his personal appearance became so fearfullychanged, that most of his friends began to fear he would no longer findstrength sufficient for his journey. His form sank together: his voicewas almost totally gone: his cough was incessant. 

"In the circle of intimates who still visited him at that tea-table, ofwhich his wit, and pleasantry, and genial humour had so long made thecharm, he would often murmur, with a faint smile, 'Don't take it ill, good people, if I drop asleep: indeed I cannot help it. '

"And his head would fall upon his breast. His poor wife suffered cruelagonies: she could not but feel that he was really spending the smallremaining breath of life for the sake of her and the children. Shemanoeuvred in secret to induce friends to persuade him that he ought torenounce his fearful journey, when all her own affectionate efforts tothis intent had failed. But the response was ever the same sad one. 

"'Whether I undertake this journey, or no, it is all one! Within a yearI am a dead man. But if I go, my children will have bread, when theirfather is gone: if I do not, want may stare them in the face. What is tobe done?' On one occasion he added, 'I should like to come back oncemore and see my dear ones' faces again: and then, in God's name, letGod's will be done! But to die there, it would be hard, very hard!'

"The morning of the 7th of February had not yet dawned, after a night ofbitter tears, when Weber's travelling-carriage drove up to his door. Thetime was come for the separation of the husband, who scarcely hoped tosee his home again, from the loving wife, who felt that he was a dyingman. Another tear upon the forehead of his sleeping children--anotherlong lingering kiss--the suffering man dragged his swollen feet into thecarriage, huddled feverishly in his furs--the door was closed--and herolled away from home, on that cold winter's morning, sobbing till theshattered chest might almost burst at once. 

"Caroline rushed back to her room, and sank on her knees, with the cry:'It is his coffin I have closed upon him!'

"At the first post, Weber parted with his own coachman and his ownhorses. It was the last wrench from home and its remembrances. Hisvoluminous correspondence with his wife was the only tie left to Weber;and nothing can be more touching than these letters, amounting in all tofifty-three, in which the sufferer was always trying to conceal, as faras he could, his sufferings; the anxious woman left behind, alwaysrepressing her own bitter anguish lest it should increase the other'ssorrow. "

Carl had been lured to London by reports of the enormous craze of thewhole people over his work. It was his fate to reach there just afterthe tide of enthusiasm had turned, and was lapsing into the ebb ofweariness and impatience. After the first rapturous curiosity ofpersonal greeting, he found that the public would take little of him but"Der Freischütz, " and of this opera he had grown weary, as composersalways grow of their spoiled children of fortune. 

His health, too, was in tragic state. Frightful spasms and hemorrhagesseemed to tear him asunder. At a dinner given him, two of the guests hadto carry him up the stairs. He was hardly strong enough to stand duringthe cheers that greeted him when he came before his audience. But theworst disease of all, the one that would not cease gnawing at his heart, was his homesickness. To a doctor who offered him a new remedy, hecried:

"Go! go! no doctor's tinkering can help me now. The machine isshattered. But, ah, would but God in His mercy grant that it might holdtogether till I could embrace my Lina and my boys once more!" Hiseffort to keep Caroline from knowing his illness was kept up. When shewrote him that the children were begging to know why he remained so longaway, he answered:

"Yes, the father is long, long away; ah, and how long is the time tohim! how every day is counted! Patience! patience! Day crawls afterday. "

"God bless you, my deeply beloved ones!" he wrote once more. "I countdays, hours, minutes, until we meet again. We have often been partedbefore, and loved each other dearly, God knows. But this terribleyearning I have never known before. "

At last he grew so desperately sad that he broke his rule and wrote hiswife full details of his suffering; he had given up hope of ever seeinghis home again. 

At this time, a singer wished to bring out a new song of his, andfurnished him with words. His once alert fancy groped long for a melody, but, as his son writes:

"At last on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist's flittinggenius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kissupon that noble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death--forthe last time! But the trembling hands were unable to write down morethan the notes for the voice. "

Fate had still reserved a bitter blow for him. He had fastened his hopesupon a farewell concert, and grew morbid upon the importance of it tohis future. 

"This day week is my concert, " he wrote on the 19th of May. "How my poorheart beats when I think of it! What will be the result? The lastchances left me are this concert and my benefit. When I think on allthey cost me, should they not turn out so as to meet my modestexpectations, it were hard indeed. But I must not let my courage failme. I will rely on Him, who has already been so infinitely merciful tous. You will think, my beloved life, that I lay far too much stress onthis. But remember that my hope of fortune for us was the only purposeof this weary journey. Can you not comprehend, then, why I now hold forso important that which has always played but a subordinate part in mylife? Pray, dearest heart, pray that poor old papa's wishes, which areall for your dear sakes, may yet be fulfilled. "

To complete the mockery of his last days, fashion declined to interestitself in his concert, and, to keep even the common public away, theskies poured down floods of rain. The house was almost empty. Theenthusiasm of the few good hearts there were Job's consolation. At theend of the concert he was led to his room, where he sank down, acomplete wreck in mind and hope, muttering:

"What do you say to that? That, that is 'Weber in London'!"

His hand trembled so that he could hardly write any more to his wife;still, in a quivering scrawl, he bade her address her answer not toLondon, but to a city on the way home, for he is startinghomeward--homeward at last! But he is not coming home through Paris, ashe had planned. He writes:

"What should I do there? I cannot walk--I cannot speak. I will havenothing more to do with business for years to come. So it is far betterI should take the straight way home by Calais, through Brussels, Cologne, Coblenz, and thus by the Rhine to Frankfort. What a charmingjourney! I must travel very slowly, however, and probably rest for halfa day now and then. I shall gain a good fortnight thus; and by the endof June I hope to be in your arms. 

"How will you receive me? In Heaven's name, alone. Let no one disturb myjoy of looking again upon my wife and my children, my dearest and mybest. .. Thank God! the end of all is fast approaching. "

The end of all was fast approaching. He sent his friends out to purchasesouvenirs of unhappy London, as gifts for his family. He was soimpatient to be off that he would listen to no advice to postpone hisstarting. 

"I must go back to my own, I must!" he sobbed incessantly. "Let me seethem once more--and then God's will be done. " The attempt appearedimpossible to all. With great unwillingness he yielded to his friend'srequest to have a consultation of physicians. "Be it so, " he answered. "But come of it what may, I go!"

His only thought, his only word, was "Home!" On the 2d of June he wrotehis last letter to his beloved, --the last lines his hand ever traced. "What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me! What a happinessto me to know that you are well! . .. As this letter requires no answer, it will be but a short one. What a comfort it is not to have toanswer. .. God bless you all and keep you well! Oh, were I but amongstyou all again! I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my dearest one!Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure on him who lovesyou above all, your Carl. "

He was to leave London on the 6th of June; on the night of the 4th hecould talk to his friends only of their kindness and of his eagerness tobe home. To a friend, who stayed to help him through the painful ordealof undressing, he murmured his thanks and said, "Now let me sleep. "

The next morning, when they came to his room, he had been dead forhours. London was full of words of regret for the man whose music hadadded so much to the beauty and cheerfulness of the world. A greatbenefit for his family was arranged, but fate would not cease mockinghim in his grave, --the receipts hardly equalled the expenses!

A committee petitioned the Dean of Westminster to allow the funeral tobe held in the Abbey. The courteous answer of regret reminded thecommittee that Von Weber was a Roman Catholic! The musiciansvolunteered, however, to give him a splendid funeral, and at least musicwas not wanting when his body was lowered into the grave in an alienland. Von Weber's son, Max, describes how the news was sent toCaroline by Von Weber's devoted friend, Fürstenau:

"It was the death-warrant of the purest wedded bliss that had ever madetwo mortals happy; it was nigh a fatal cup of poison to one of thenoblest hearts of womankind: it told two little blooming boys that theywere orphaned. No wonder that Fürstenau had not the courage to addressCaroline von Weber herself: his letter had been sent to her dearestfriend, Fräulein von Hanmann. The sad messenger of death went down toKosterwitz, the letter in hand. 

"But she, too, had not the courage to break the fearful news to theimpulsive little woman, unaided and alone. She stopped her carriage at alittle distance from the house, to beg the support of Roth, who livedclose by. But Caroline had heard the carriage-wheels--had lookedout--had seen her friend descend on that unaccustomed spot, anddisappear into Roth's house. A fearful presentiment seized her--sherushed toward the spot--she saw the two standing in the little garden, wringing their hands and weeping--she knew all--and she lay senseless attheir feet. Her little boy Max had followed her in childish alarm. Nighforty years have gone by since then; but he has never forgotten thesound of that terrible cry, when his mother, slowly recovering from herswoon, clasped him convulsively in her arms, and wetted his face with aflood of tears. "

Nearly twenty years later it was before Von Weber's body at last reachedthe Fatherland. The agonies of homesickness he had endured seemed tohaunt even the cold clay. In 1841, a writer made an ardent appeal forthe restoration of this glory of German song, to the German soil. Theidea became a crusade. But it was not until 1844, and then chiefly bythe aid of Wagner, then conductor in Dresden, and a close friend ofCaroline and her children, that success was attained. The younger son, Alexander, had already been buried; on December 14, 1844, the father'sbody was placed by his side. It had been carried through the streets ofDresden behind a black banner, on which were inscribed words which oncewould have meant so much: "Weber in Dresden. "

"In the richly decorated chapel of the cemetery, all the ladies of thetheatre, with Schröder-Devrient at their head, awaited the body, andcovered the coffin with their laurels. The ceremony was at an end. Thetorches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But, by the light of twocandles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small, now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a paleyoung man knelt praying by her side. "

This pale young man was the Baron Max Maria von Weber, to whose pen weowe a wonderful portrait of a wonderful man. It was the son's love, strangely tempered with wisdom, that showed us all the phases of thischaracter, which, by revealing its worser side, made the better sideconvincing, complete, alive. 

Weber had lived hardly more than half of the allotted three score andten, but he had lived life in all its phases, from riotous dissipationamid royal splendour and insolence to a brave and whole-souled battlefor the welfare of his home. It is futile to attempt judging the effectof music upon life, and of life upon music. Too many sorts of man havewritten too many sorts of music and lived too many sorts of life. But, if you wish to use Von Weber's life as an example of the influence ofmusic, surely, you would write Von Weber's name on the credit side ofthe ledger, for he reached his best music when his life was bestmanaged. He took a musician for his wife, and her high ideals of art andlife made him a man and a soldier against Fate. 

Home they brought his body, a pride to his Fatherland, and the greaterWagner who owed the great Weber so much, spoke over his grave thesewords:

"Here rest thee, then! . .. Wherever thy genius bore thee, to whatsoeverdistant lands, it stayed for ever linked by a thousand tendrils to theGerman people's heart; that heart with which it wept and laughed, achild believing in the tales and legends of his country. And though theBriton may yield thee justice; the Frenchman, admiration; yet, theGerman alone can love thee. His thou art; a beautiful day in his life, awarm drop of his own blood, a morsel of his heart--and who shall blameus that we wished thy ashes, too, to mingle with this earth, to form apart of our dear German soil. "

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE FELICITIES OF MENDELSSOHN

Happy, they say, is the country that hath no history. Happy, too, theman whose love affairs make tame reading. 

It is not often that people live up to their names so thoroughly asMendelssohn lived up to his. His parents were prophets when they calledhim Felix, for his life was happy, though he enjoyed it onlythirty-eight years, and though it was not without its disappointmentsand rebuffs, --being a Christianised Jew, he was acceptable to neitherthe Jews nor the Gentiles. None the less, Mendelssohn's life was, ashuman lives go, one of complete felicity. 

Well begun is half done, and half the struggle for happiness is achievedif one's childhood years are made pleasant. Mendelssohn's home life wasso brilliantly joyous, and so busy with artistic and domestic comforts, that it has almost passed into proverb as ideal. Mendelssohn isdescribed as having been "enthusiastically, almost fanatically, fond ofhis father, " who, without possessing musical technic, possessed aremarkable spiritual grasp of it. His mother was something of a pianist, and a woman of great sweetness and firmness of character, to whom thechildren were devoted and with whom they were confidential to the utmostdegree. In this atmosphere the flower of Mendelssohn's genius bore earlyfruit, and we find him in 1826, at the age of seventeen, writing hisOverture to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream, " a wonderful fabric of harmonyand instrumentation, which sounds like Wagner at his best, though it waswritten when Wagner was only thirteen years old, and had never dreamedof writing music, nor had even turned out that old-fangled and emptysonata which is beautiful only because it was his first and last offenceof the sort. 

Mendelssohn, like Mozart, gave his heart first to his sister; who waslike him a prodigy at the piano, and so thoroughly congenial, that whenshe died suddenly the shock shortened his own life. Some of hercompositions were published with his, and he took her advice in manythings. At the age of twenty-four she married the painter Hensel, and atthe age of forty-two she died. 

Mendelssohn was a man of many friends among men; he was small andexcitable, but was counted handsome. He was versatile to an unusualdegree, being an adept at painting, as well as billiards, chess, riding, swimming, and general athletics. He was also something of ascholar in Greek and Latin, and his correspondence was soenthusiastically kept up that his published letters take a high place insuch literature, overflowing as they are with comment of all kinds onthe people and things he saw in his wide travels. As an aunt of his oncewrote his mother: "If God spare him, his letters will in long, longyears to come create the deepest interest. Take care of them as of aholy relic; indeed, they are sacred already as the effusion of so pureand childlike a mind. "

His heart was indeed remarkably clean. Stratton says of him: "He wasalways falling in love, as his letters show, but no breath of scandalbedimmed the shining brightness of his character. " "He wore his heartupon his sleeve, " says Stratton. He also wore it on the tip of his pen, and one who wishes to know how possible it is to be both a good andjoyous man and a great, busy musician can find such an one inMendelssohn's published letters, though the most personal family mattershave been omitted from them as printed, and his wife before her deathburned all the letters he had written her. 

We, however, are concerned only in his amours. When he was twenty yearsold, he went to England and thence to Scotland and Wales, where hespent a time composing, sketching, and exercising his fascinations; hewrote home: "Yes, children, I do nothing but flirt, and that inEnglish. " Wherever he went, he saw something beautiful in nature or inwomankind, and at Munich, in 1830, he was, as his sister wrote, "thedarling in every house, the centre of every circle. " Thefifteen-year-old Josephine or "Peppi" Lang and Delphine von Schaurothseem to have touched his heart most deeply; to the latter he dedicated apiano composition; to the former he taught double counterpoint, aforbidding subject which the two doubtlessly found gay enough. In Italy, in 1831, he found his heart captured easily, and, as once in Schumann'scase, it was an English girl who entangled him. She was a beauty whom hefirst met at a ball at Torlonia's; he danced with her again at thePalazzo Albani. But music held him fast through all, though he could onoccasion impatiently vow that he would be more serious and no longeralter his compositions to suit the whims of pretty girls. 

Mendelssohn's life flowed on in smoothness, in thorough contrast withthe violent ups and downs of Beethoven's mind and music, for he was, asStratton says, "on the most excellent terms with himself, " as with theworld in general. He was extremely sensitive to criticism and to falsefriendship, but he was never stung into those virulent humours whichpoisoned Beethoven's career. So placid a life his was, indeed, that someof his admirers have wished that he had met with more tragedy, in orderthat he might have written more poignant music. Against this view, Grovewisely protested, comparing Schubert's words: "My music is the productof my genius and my misery; and that which I have written in my greatestdistress is that which the world seems to like best. " Grove moralisesthus on Mendelssohn with sane philosophy:

"He was never tried by poverty, or disappointment, or ill-health, or amorbid temper, or neglect, or the perfidy of friends, or any of theother great ills which crowded so thickly around Beethoven, Schubert, orSchumann. Who can wish that he had been? that that bright, pure, aspiring spirit should have been dulled by distress or torn with agony?It might have lent a deeper undertone to his songs or have enabled hisAdagios to draw tears where now they only give a saddened pleasure. Butlet us take the man as we have him. Surely there is enough of conflictand violence in life and in art. When we want to be made unhappy we canturn to others. It is well in these agitated modern days to be able topoint to one perfectly balanced nature, in whose life, whose letters, and whose music alike, all is at once manly and refined, clever andpure, brilliant and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights ofgoodness we may well forego for once the depths of misery and sorrow. "

In November, 1835, Mendelssohn's father died, among his last wishesbeing the wish that his son should marry, as the two sisters alreadyhad. The blow to Mendelssohn was exceedingly severe, and his conditionalarmed his sister, who urged upon him his father's advice. Mendelssohntold her that he would look about him on the Rhine next summer. 

In 1836 he visited Frankfort, and made the acquaintance of the widow ofa French clergyman who had preached at the French Reformed Church. Thewidow was Madame Jeanrenaud (_née_ Souchay); she was so well preservedand handsome that she was credited with having won Mendelssohn's love. But it was her second daughter, Cécile Charlotte Sophie, who had stuckthe first pin of permanence through his butterfly heart. She wasseventeen and he twenty-seven; he loved beauty, and she was beautiful. 

The hyper-romantic Elise Polko often saw Cécile, and described her:

"To the present hour she has always remained my beau ideal of womanlyfascination and loveliness. Her figure was slight, of middle height, andrather drooping, like a flower heavy with dew; her luxuriant gold-brownhair fell in rich curls on her shoulders, her complexion was oftransparent delicacy, her smile charming, and she had the mostbewitching deep blue eyes I ever beheld, with dark eyelashes andeyebrows. .. . Her whole aspect had a Madonna air, what Berthold Auerbachso beautifully calls _Marienhaft_. Her manner was generally thought tooreserved; indeed she was considered cold, and called 'the fair Mimosa, 'In music we have an expressive term, 'calm but impassioned, ' and this Ideem an appropriate conception for the portrait of Cécile. "

Mendelssohn was so surprised at the depth of the impression the younggirl had made upon him that he was worried. To make sure that he wasreally at last in love, he went away for a month to take sea-baths atScheveningen, near The Hague. But salt water would not wash away hisemotion, and after a month's absence he returned, proposed, and on the9th of September, 1836, was betrothed. He wrote his mother at once:

"My head is quite giddy from the events of the day; it is already lateat night and I have nothing else to say; but I must write to you, I feelso rich and happy. "

It is a proof of the fondness the people cherished for Mendelssohn that, when the engagement became noised abroad, the directors of theGewandhaus in Leipzig put on the programme the second finale in"Fidelio, " "He who has gained a charming wife" ("_Wer ein holdes Weiberrungen_"). The audience saw the meaning at once and shouted in itsenthusiasm, until Mendelssohn was forced to seat himself at the pianoand extemporise upon the theme. 

Felix and Cecile were married March 28, 1837, at the Walloon FrenchReformed Church in Frankfort, and his friend Hiller surprised them witha new bridal chorus. The wedding tour lasted nearly a month, and thehoneymooners kept a journal, in which they both sketched and wrotehumourous nothings. The home they chose was in Leipzig, where FannyHensel visited them, and found Cécile possessed not only of "thebeautiful eyes" Felix had raved over so much, "but possessed also of awonderfully soothing temperament, that calmed her husband's whims andpromised to cure him of his irritability. "

The married life of the two was interrupted by the journeys the husbandhad to make for his important engagements, till he growled vigorously, and regretted being a conductor at all. 

In February, 1838, the first child was born, and Cécile was dangerouslyill. On other tours of his, even to England, she accompanied him. Shebore him five children, three boys and two girls. Their life togetherwas almost perfect. He writes, in 1841, to a friend who is to bemarried:

"If I have still a wish to form it is that your blissful betrothal-moodmay be continued in marriage, that is, may you be like me, who feelevery day of my life that I cannot be sufficiently thankful to God formy happiness. "

In another letter he thus pictures his private paradise: "Eating andsleeping, without dress coat, without piano, without visiting-cards, without carriage and horses, but with donkeys, with wild flowers, withmusic-paper and sketch-book, with Cécile and the children. " Again, in1844, he writes of a return home:

"I found all my family well, and we had a joyful meeting. Cécile looksso well again, --tanned by the sun, but without the least trace of herformer indisposition; my first glance told this when I came into theroom, but to this day I cannot cease rejoicing afresh every time I lookat her. The children are as brown as Moors, and play all day long in thegarden. And so I am myself again now, and I take one of the sheets ofpaper that Cécile painted for me, to write to you. 

"I am sitting here at the open window, looking into the garden at thechildren, who are playing with their 'dear Johann. ' The omnibus toKoenigstein passes here twice every day. We have early strawberries forbreakfast, at two we dine, have supper at half-past eight in theevening, and by ten we are all asleep. The country is covered withpear-trees and apple-trees, so heavy with fruit that they are allpropped up; then the blue hills, and the windings of the Main and theRhine; the confectioner, from whom you can buy thread and shirt-buttons;the list of visitors, which comes out every Saturday, as _Punch_ doeswith you; the walking-post, who, before going to Frankfort, calls as hepasses to ask what we want, and next day brings me my linen back; thewomen who sell cherries, with whom my little four-year-old Paul makes abargain, or sends them away, just as he pleases; above all, the pureRhenish air, --this is familiar to all, and I call it Germany!"

Grove makes this sketch of the blissful circle:

"The pleasure in his simple home life, which crops out now and then inthese Frankfort letters, is very genuine and delightful. Now, Marie islearning the scale of C; he has actually forgotten how to play it, andhas taught her to pass her thumb under the wrong finger! Now, Paultumbles the others about so as to crack their skulls as well as hisown. Another time he is dragged off from his letter to see a great towerwhich the children have built, and on which they have ranged all theirslices of bread and jam--'A good idea for an architect, ' At ten Carlcomes to him for reading and sums, and at five for spelling andgeography--and so on. 'And, ' to sum up, 'the best part of every pleasureis gone if Cécile is not there, ' His wife is always somewhere in thepicture. "

Even when Mendelssohn went to England and was cordially received by theyoung Queen Victoria, and when she asked him what she could grant himfor his pleasure, he asked to see the royal nursery. Stratton describesthe strange reward of his art as follows:

"Delighted beyond everything, the Queen led the way, and the two weresoon deep in the mysteries of children's clothing, dietary, ailments, and all that appertains to the duties of the heads of a family. Perchance he inspected the juvenile wardrobe of the future Empress ofhis own Germany. "

On one of the home festivals, Cécile and her sister gave and acted acomic dialogue between two ladies' maids, in Frankfort dialect. Gradually, however, Mendelssohn's overbusy musical enthusiasm wore downhis health, and at thirty-seven he was nearing the end of his marvellousvitality and vivacity. In May, 1847, his sister Fanny was conducting arehearsal of her choir; she sat at the piano till suddenly her handsdropped from the keys, and she was dead. The news was told toMendelssohn without any preparation; with a scream he dropped senseless;it was said that a blood-vessel had broken in his brain. From this timeon he was a changed man, weary of everything. He sank gradually until, the evening of November 4, 1847, he died, painlessly, in the presence ofhis wife, his brother, and three friends. 

His funeral was a fitting close to his splendid life; six years laterCécile died at Frankfort of consumption. 

Of Mendelssohn's character there is no need to speak further here; itwas strangely summed up in his own words, in a letter he wrote to a manwho had told him that he was spoken of as a veritable saint. How fewsaints are canonised in their own time, and how few deserve it ever! Butlet us take Mendelssohn's own words for his own epitaph:

"So I am said to be a saint! If this is intended to convey what Iconceive to be the meaning of the word, and what your expressions leadme to think you also understand by it, then I can only say that, alas! Iam not so, though every day of my life I strive with greaterearnestness, according to my ability, more and more to resemble thischaracter. I know indeed that I can never hope to be altogether a saint, but if I ever approach to one, it will be well. If people, however, understand by the word 'saint' a Pietist, one of those who lay theirhands on their laps and expect that Providence will do their work forthem, and who, instead of striving in their vocation to press ontowards perfection, talk of a heavenly calling being incompatible withan earthly one, and are incapable of loving with their whole hearts anyhuman being, or anything on earth, --then God be praised! such a one I amnot, and hope never to become, so long as I live; and though I amsincerely desirous to live piously, and really to be so, I hope thisdoes not necessarily entail the other character. It is singular thatpeople should select precisely _this_ time to say such a thing, when Iam in the enjoyment of so much happiness, both through my inner andouter life, and my new domestic ties, as well as my busy work, that Ireally know not how sufficiently to show my thankfulness. And, as youwish me to follow the path which leads to rest and peace, believe me, Inever expected to live in the rest and peace which have now fallen to mylot. "

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE NOCTURNES OF CHOPIN

He wrote to his parents:

"I have made the acquaintance of an important celebrity, Mme. Dudevant, well known as George Sand; but I do not like her face; there issomething in it that repels me. "

And then, of course, he fell in love with her, for she leaned on hispiano and improvised flatteries across the strings to him and turnedfull on him the luminous midnight of her ox-eyed beauty. A punster wouldsay that he was oxidised, at once. The two lovers were strangelyunlike--of course. She was masculine, self-poised, and self-satisfied;she had taken excellent care of herself at a time when the independentwoman had less encouragement than now. So more than masculinely coarseshe was in some ways, indeed, that Henry James once insinuated that, while she may have been to all intents and purposes a man, she wascertainly no gentleman. Heine raved over her beauty, but, judging fromher portrait, she later had a face as homely as that of George Eliot, who, as Carlyle said, looked like a horse. The poet De Musset, one ofSand's later lovers, said her dark complexion gave reflections likebronze; therefore De Musset found her very beautiful. Chopin was--well, some say he was not effeminate; and he could break chairs when he wasangry at a pupil. But they also speak of his frail, fairylike, etherealmanner, and those qualities I, for one, have never known in anynon-effeminate man--outside of books. 

The first meeting of Chopin and Sand was a curious proof of the value ofpresentiments, and should interest those who have such things andbelieve them. Chopin, according to Karasovski, went to the salon of theCountess de Custine. As he climbed the stairs he fancied that he wasfollowed by a shadow odorous of violets; he wanted to turn back, butresisted the superstitious thrill. Those violets were the perfumery ofGeorge Sand. She snared him first with violet-water, and thereaftersurrounded him with her multitudinous wreaths of tobacco--though heneither made nor liked smoke. She, however, puffed voluminously atcigarettes, and even, according to Von Lenz, at long black cigars--asdid Liszt's princess. 

Other accounts are given of the first meeting, and Liszt claims thecredit for arranging it all at her request, in spite of Chopin's desirenot to meet her. But, be that as it may, he came, he saw, and sheconquered. The two were alike chiefly in their versatility as lovers. 

Chopin's first loves were his family, on whom he doted with Polishfervour. George Sand once exclaimed that his mother was his only love. She was a Polish woman whose name was Krzyzanovska--a good name tochange for the shorter tinkle of "Chopin. " It was from her that Chopintook that deep-burning patriotism which characterised him and gave hismusic a national tinge. And at that time Polish patriotism was bound tobe all one elegy. But Chopin's father was a Frenchman, and when finallythe composer reached Paris, he found himself instantly at home, and thedarling of the salons. How different this feeling was from theloneliness and disgust that Paris filled Mozart's soul withal!

As we found Mozart's first serious wound in the heart coming from apublic singer, so Chopin (unless we except his pupil, the Princess ElisaRadziwill) seems to have been caught very young by ConstantiaGladkovska. She made a great success at Warsaw in the year which wasChopin's twentieth. He had previously indulged in a mild flirtation witha pretty little pianist and composer, Leopoldine Blahetka, but in hercase he seems less to have loved than to have graciously permittedhimself to be loved. When he fell under the witchery of Gladkovska, however, he was genuinely pierced to the heart, and his letters are asfull of vague morose yearning as his Préludes. He left Warsaw forVienna, but the memory of her pursued him. She had sung at his farewellconcert in Warsaw, and made a ravishing success as a picture and as asinger. In Vienna he longed for her so deeply that he went about wearingthe black velvet mantle of gloom which was so effective on the musiciansand poets of that day. 

To-day we will hardly permit an artist an extra half-inch of hair, andhe must be very well groomed, very prosperous, businesslike, and, inappearance at least, athletic--even if he must ask his tailor to furnishthe look of brawn. Personally, I prefer the mode of to-day, but withto-day's fashion we should not have had Chopin, such music as he drewfrom his familiar and dæmon, the piano, and such letters as he wroteabout the Gladkovska to his friend Matuszynski:

"God forbid that she should suffer in any way on my account. Set hermind at rest, and tell her that as long as my heart beats I shall notcease to adore her. Tell her that even after my death my ashes shall bestrewn under her feet. "

While Chopin was thus mooning over her memory, she seems to have beenfinding consolation elsewhere than in her music, even as Mozart'sAloysia had done. This letter was sent on New Year's Day, 1831. After afew more references to her, her name vanishes from his letters, and theincident is closed. It may best be summed up in the words of JamesHuneker, who is one of the few writers who has kept his sanity on thesubject of Chopin:

"He never saw his Gladkovska again, for he did not return to Warsaw. Thelady was married in 1832--preferring a solid merchant to nebulousgenius--to Joseph Grabovski, a merchant at Warsaw. Her husband, so saitha romantic biographer, Count Wodzinski, became blind; perhaps even ablind country gentleman was preferable to a lachrymose pianist. Chopinmust have heard of the attachment in 1831. Her name almost disappearsfrom his correspondence. Time as well as other nails drove from hismemory her image. If she was fickle, he was inconstant, and so let uswaste no pity on this episode, over which lakes of tears have been shedand rivers of ink have been spilt. "

This same year, 1831, brought Chopin to Paris, thenceforward hisresidence and home. His great elegance of manner, as well as of music, brought him into the most aristocratic dove-cotes, or salons, as theycalled them, and it is small wonder that he found himself unable toavoid accepting and buttonholing for a while some of the countlesshearts that were flung like roses at his feet. Even George Sand wasamazed at his dexterity in juggling with hearts, and, in this matter, praise or blame from George Sand was praise from Lady Hubert. It seemsthat he could modulate from one love affair to another as fleetly and asgracefully as from one key to its remotest neighbour. She says he couldmanage three flirtations of an evening, and begin a new series the verynext day. Apparently even distance was no barrier, for George Sanddeclares that he was at the same moment trying to marry a girl in Polandand another in Paris. The Parisienne he cancelled from his list because, says Sand, when he called on her with another man, she offered the otherman a chair before she asked Chopin to be seated. Chopin conductedhimself in Paris very much _en prince_, according to Von Lenz, and sucha sacrilege to the laws of precedence naturally was unpardonable. 

The Polish woman whom Sand refers to may have been the one woman withwhom Chopin is definitely known to have planned marriage. This was MariaWodzinska. Her two brothers had boarded years before at the pensionwhich Chopin's father kept at Warsaw. The acquaintance with the brotherswas renewed in Paris, and when, in 1835, Chopin visited Dresden after along journey to see his parents, he met the sister, Maria, then nineteenyears old, and fell deeply and seriously in love with her. According toher brother, who wrote a biographical romance on "Chopin's Three LoveAffairs, " Maria, while not classically a beauty, had an indefinablecharm. 

"Her black eyes were full of sweetness, reverie, and restrained fire; asmile of ineffable voluptuousness played around her lips, and hermagnificent hair was as dark as ebony and long enough to serve her as amantle. "

They flirted at the piano and behind a fan, and he dedicated her alittle waltz, and she drew his portrait. As usual, the differentbiographers tell different stories, but from them the chief biographerof all, Frederick Neicks, decides that Chopin proposed and Mariadeposed. And here endeth the second of Chopin's three romances. So thisbrings us back to Paris and George Sand, and the year 1837, when Chopinwas twenty-eight and George Sand thirty-three. 

Thus far we have followed the standard authorities, but the year 1903has done much in the way of unveiling Chopin's life. His letters to hisfamily, and their letters to him, were believed to have perished. Theywere in the possession of his sister Isabella Barcinska, and she wasliving in the palace of Count Zamoyski at Warsaw, in 1863, when a bombwas thrown from a window as the Russian lieutenant-general was passing. In revenge the soldiers sacked the palace, and burned what they did notcarry off. Chopin's portrait by Ary Scheffer, his piano, and his Parisfurniture perished, and his papers were believed to be among the lost. 

But all the while the family was keeping their very existence secretuntil, after forty years, it was thought proper to give them to thepublic. 

M. Karlovicz was entrusted with this honour, and _La Revue Musicale_ ofParis chosen as the medium. The letters are said to make a large bulk, but I have been able to see only the first three instalments, of whichtwo are family letters to him. They are exuberant with tenderness, admiration, and of hope for his great fame; the father constantlypleading with the son to lay up his sous against a rainy day, --advicewhich met the usual fate of good advice. 

Karlovicz says, with some exaggeration: "In his letters to his family, Chopin, as if he wished to avoid pronouncing the name of George Sand, always calls her 'My hostess, ' sometimes even employing, strange to say, the plural, for instance, 'Elles si chères, elles rirent pour tous, ' or, 'Here the vigil is sad, because _les malades_ do not wish a doctor. '"

The first letter, signed "Fritz, " is a most cordial welcome to a manabout to marry his sister. The third is a double letter from George Sandand Chopin to Louise, who had just visited the two lovers at Nohant in1844. Sand tells her that her visit has been the best tonic he has everhad, and writes to the whole family: "Tell them all that I love them, too, and would give my life to unite them with him one day under myroof. " Chopin refers to Sand as "My hostess, " and signs himself "Tonvieux. " In his next he details with much amusement a scandalous escapadeof Victor Hugo's, a husband's discovery, and Madame Hugo's forgivingmanner. He announces (July 20, 1845) that "le télégrapheélectro-magnétique entre Baltimore et Washington, donne des resultatsextraordinaires. " He revels in puns and gossip. 

Karlovicz mentions the existence of a despairing letter in which Chopincalled his sister Louise to Paris where he was dying; she came in 1849, with her husband and daughter, and remained till the end, giving him thelast tendernesses in her power. 

This is all I have gleaned from Karlovicz. More immediate help has comefrom a new biography published in Warsaw in 1903 by Ferdinand Hoesick, and, according to Alfred Nossig, destined to upset the supremacy ofNieck's biography. This latest work is really the carrying out of theplans of Chopin's friend and fellow student, Julian Fontana, who sharedjoy and sorrow with him in Paris, and collected letters and data for abiography. On Chopin's death Liszt sprang into print with a rhapsodywhich led Fontana to defer his work. At his death in 1869 he left itunfinished, bequeathing his documents to his son, who permitted Hoesickthe use of them. 

Hoesick blames Chopin's notable melancholy to early experiences of loverequited, indeed, but not united in marriage. His love was as rathe ashis music. 

Alfred Nossig, reviewing the biography, says of Chopin: "As his talent, so did his heart mature early. " It was at Warsaw, in his early youth, that he found his first ideal. Although his father, a Frenchman who hadmarried a Polish woman, did not occupy a foremost position in society, Frédéric moved in the highest circles. In addition to his genius he hadalways the princely way with him. 

One of his admirers was the Duchess Ludvika Czetvertynska, whosemajestic figure and aureole of hair reminded one of the pictures ofGiorgione. Her friend, the Governor of Poland, the Grand DukeKonstantin, through her introduction accepted Chopin as one of his mostwelcome guests; he was musical, and greatly admired Chopin's music. Whenever his violent temper carried him away, the grand duchess wouldsend secretly for Chopin, who would seat himself at the piano, and atthe first notes the grand duke would appear in the drawing-room with histemper cured. Thus was Chopin another David to a latter-day Saul. Chopinwas an intimate friend of the grand duke's son, Paul, whose instructorwas a Count Moriolles. It was his daughter, the Comtesse Alexandra, inwhose eyes Chopin found inspiration; he improvised never so beautifullyas when she sat next to him at the piano. His adoration was no secret. He was often teased on account of the beautiful "Mariolka, " as he calledher. In his letters to his friends, we find many allusions that provethat the young comtesse loved him in turn. But both knew that this lovewas hopeless, and therefore Chopin's musical expressions of his dreamsfor her are melancholy. One remembrance of this attachment is the Rondo_à la Mazur_, Op. 5, which he dedicated to the Comtesse de Moriolles. 

In 1830 Chopin toured the continent. As in his later relation to GeorgeSand, the passion of a poet, Alfred Musset, rivalled his, so at thistime he found a rival in the Polish poet, Julius Slovaki. The pretty, vivacious, and perhaps somewhat flirtatious girl, Comtesse MariaWodzinska, was the bone of contention, or, rather, the "rag and the boneand the hank of hair" of contention. 

It chanced that Chopin and Slovaki, whose works showed most startlingsimilarity, were also much alike in looks, in slenderness, dreaminess offeature, and even in expression of countenance. Their very fates werelike: both left their country never to return. In their wanderingthrough Europe, they stopped in the same capitals; both at last took uptheir residence in Paris, where both died of consumption. It was thesetwins of fate whom fate put in love with the same teasing girl. 

The "black-eyed demoiselle, " as she was called by the poet and themusician, managed so well, that her two admirers never met at the sametime. She travelled through Europe with her mother and brothers, andfound an opportunity to meet Chopin in one, and Slovaki in another town, and to pass several weeks with each. 

It was Slovaki's turn to meet her in Geneva. Here she inspired him tomuch verse, especially his "In der Schweiz. " But all this while thelittle vixen corresponded with Chopin. He improvised in Paris on themesshe composed, and then she repeated his inspirations to keep Slovakihovering at her piano. 

When Chopin met the Wodzinskis in Dresden, he composed for Maria hisF-minor Étude which he called "the soul-portrait" of the comtesse. Ayear later he passed a month with the family at Marienbad, where heproposed for her hand and was accepted. In his bridegroom mood hecomposed the graceful F-minor Waltz, and later the C-sharp minorNocturne. 

In the meantime, Slovaki travelled on in blissful ignorance, glorifyingChopin's fiancée in poetic songs full of passionate admiration. Thedistant Slovaki finally learned that Chopin had won his muse, and hewrote to his mother:

"They say that Chopin and 'my Maria' are to be a pair. How sentimentalto marry a person who is the image of one's first love. Swedenborg saysthat in a case of this kind, after death, not out of two of the soulsbut out of all three only one angel can be created. "

But this tripartite angel died unborn, for in 1837 Chopin found himselfdeserted by her. So much we learn from Hoesick. And now we may return toChopin's immortal, if immoral, affair with George Sand. 

George Sand will be remembered for the famous love affairs she hascontributed to history long after her books have lost their last reader. It has been my habit in these papers to take the woman's side, and evenfor George Sand there is much to be said in praise and in palliation. For her peculiar views of life her peculiar husband may be largelyblamed, along with the peculiar ideals of the literary circle into whichher unhappy married life drove her. That she showed good taste in eitherthe management or the publication of her amorous entanglements one couldhardly maintain, and yet the men in the case seem to have been at leastas caddish as she was unwomanly. But it would take volumes to recountwhat volumes have already recounted, and bewilderment and contradictionwould still be the chief result. Since so much of the story is familiar, I can be brief with it here. 

George Sand's relations with Chopin have been accepted in almost everyconceivable manner. There have even been writers of such intelligence asHadow who have maintained that she was entirely and solely a mother tohim. Before a trust in humanity as bland as this, before a credulitythat can deny itself to certain records and stretch itself to certainothers, there is nothing to say except to express gratitude that in somehearts, at least, the belief in fairy stories is not left behind in thenursery. 

On the other hand, it is not necessary to fly to the opposite extreme, and condemn the years that Chopin and Sand spent together as yearsdevoid of very earnest sympathy, intellectual and artistic communion, and of mutual advantage. The relations were irregular, and were harrowedby the temperaments of each. Sand was masculine, energetic, restless, and by nature--for which she was surely not thoroughly to blame--avoluptuary. Chopin, while not the whining mooncalf some have paintedhim, was never of truly virile character. He was a man whose genius wasas limited in scope as a diamond's lustre, even while it had thebrilliance, the firmness, and the solitariness of that jewel. And, mostof all, he was that most pathetic of wretches, a sick man. He wasdrifting down the current of that stream which had carried off hisgifted and adored sister when she was half his present age. 

Sand was the former of the two to fall in love, and the earlier to fallout. After the first meeting, there was little delay in beginning thatform of unchurched marriage so fashionable in the art world of that day. In 1838 they went to Majorca with Sand's two children, a son anddaughter, who had been born to her husband. The weather was atrocious, the accommodations primitive, and Chopin's health wretched. He was besetby presentiments and fierce anxieties, and tormented by a hatred of theplace and the clime. In June of the next year they went back to Nohant, her château. We owe to Sand herself the account of Chopin's manner oflife, his petulance, his self-inflicted torments, and the agonies of hisart and his disease. We owe to her, also, the picture of her devotionboth to his health and to his music. 

The tendency, of course, is to take her praises of herself with aliberal sprinkling of salt, and to feel that Chopin was not the"detestable invalid" she painted him. But need we withdraw charity fromone, to give to the other? Need we rob Pauline to pay Peter? Thereshould be easily a plenty of sympathy for both, for the womaninfatuated with a strange, exotic genius, gathering him into her heartand home, only to find that she had taken upon herself the rôle of nurseas well as mistress; and to find her time and her vitality devoted to aninvalid, while her own life-work as a famous writer was making demandson her as wild as those of a sick musician her junior in years as infame. 

After granting her this justice, there should still be no stint ofsympathy for the poor Chopin, wrought to a frenzy with the revolutionshe was so gorgeously effecting, not only in the music of the piano, butin all harmony; racked with pain and unmanned with the weakening effectsof his disease; struggling vainly against the chill and clammy Wrestlerwho was to drag him to his grave before his life was half complete. 

Our feeling, again, should not be wrath at George Sand because she didnot eternally resist the centrifugal forces of such a life, but rather adeep sense of gratitude that she gave Chopin some sort of home andmental support for ten long years. 

George Sand's books are full of allusions to Chopin, and from the manythat are quoteworthy, the following may be cited from her "Histoire dema Vie, " as throwing a few flecks of light on the woman's attitude inthe affair:

"He was the same in friendship (as in love), becoming enthusiastic atfirst sight, getting disgusted and correcting himself (_se reprenant_)incessantly, living on infatuations full of charm for those who were theobject of them and on secret discontents which poisoned his dearestaffections. "

"Chopin accorded to me, I may say, honoured me with, a kind offriendship which was an exception in his life. He was always the same tome. "

"The friendship of Chopin was never a refuge for me in sadness. He hadenough of his own ills to bear. "

"We never addressed a reproach to each other, except once, which, alas, was the first and the final time. "

"But if Chopin was with me devotion, kind attention, grace, obligingness, and deference in person, he had not for all that abjuredthe asperities of character towards those who were about me. With themthe inequality of his soul, in turn generous and fantastic, gave itselffull course, passing always from infatuation to aversion, and viceversa. "

"Chopin when angry was alarming, and, as, with me, he always restrainedhimself, he seemed almost to choke and die. "

It is generally believed that in the character of _Prince Karol_ in hernovel, "Lucrezia Floriani, " published in 1847, Sand used that lethalweapon of revenge novelists possess, and portrayed or caricaturedChopin. It is only fair to give her disclaimer, though Liszt repeatedthe charge in his "Life of Chopin, " and though Karasovski says thatSand's own children told Chopin that he was pictured as Prince Karol. None the less, hearken to the novelist's own defence:

"It has been pretended that in one of my romances I have painted his(Chopin's) character with a great exactness of analysis. People weremistaken, because they thought they recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system, too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, ina life of Chopin, a little exuberant as regards style, but neverthelessfull of very good things and very beautiful pages, has gone astray ingood faith. I have traced in _Prince Karol_ the character of a mandetermined in his nature, exclusive in his sentiments, exclusive in hisexigencies. Chopin was not such. Nature does not design like art, however realistic it may be. She has caprices, inconsequences, probablynot real, but very mysterious. Art only rectifies these inconsequences, because it is too limited to reproduce them. 

"Chopin was a résumé of these magnificent inconsequences which God alonecan allow himself to create, and which have their particular logic. Hewas modest on principle, gentle by habit, but he was imperious byinstinct and full of unlegitimate pride, which was unconscious ofitself. Hence sufferings which he did not reason out and which did notfix themselves on a determined object. 

"However, _Prince Karol_ is not an artist. He is a dreamer and nothingmore; having no genius, he has not the right of genius. He is thereforea personage more true than amiable, and the portrait is so little thatof a great artist that Chopin, in reading the manuscript every day on mydesk, had not the slightest inclination to deceive himself, --he who, nevertheless, was so suspicious. 

"And yet, afterwards, by reaction, he imagined, I am told, than this wasthe case. Enemies (he had such about him who call themselves hisfriends; as if embittering a suffering heart was not murder), enemiesmade him believe that this romance was a revelation of his character. Atthat time his memory was no doubt enfeebled; he had forgotten the book, why did he not re-read it?

"This history is so little ours--It was the very reverse of it. Therewere between us neither the same raptures _(envirements)_, nor the samesufferings. Our history had nothing of a romance; its foundation was toosimple and too serious for us ever to have had occasion for a quarrelwith each other _à propos_ of each other. "

As to the final separation, following my principle of letting the peopletell their own stories so far as possible, I may turn again to GeorgeSand's own version:

"After the last relapse of the invalid, his mind had become extremelygloomy, and Maurice [her son], who had hitherto tenderly loved him, wassuddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about a triflingsubject. They embraced each other the next moment, but the grain of sandhad fallen into the tranquil lake, and little by little the pebbles fellthere, one after another--all this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice, tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. Thatcould not be, and should not be. Chopin would not stand my legitimateand necessary intervention. He bowed his head and said that I no longerloved him. 

"What blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion! But thepoor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium. I thought thatsome months passed at a distance and in silence would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and his memory equitable. But therevolution of February came, and Paris became momentarily hateful tothis mind incapable of yielding to any commotion in the social form. Free to return to Poland, or certain to be tolerated there, he hadpreferred languishing ten (and some more) years far from his family, whom he adored, to the pain of seeing his country transformed anddeformed (_dénaturé_). He had fled from tyranny, as now he fled fromliberty. 

"I saw him again for an instant in March, 1848. I pressed his tremblingand icy hand. I wished to speak to him, he slipped away. Now it was myturn to say that he no longer loved me. I spared him this infliction, and entrusted all to the hands of Providence and the future. 

"I was not to see him again. There were bad hearts between us. Therewere good ones, too, who were at a loss what to do. There were frivolousones who preferred not to meddle with such delicate matters. 

"I have been told that he had asked for me, regretted me, and loved mefilially up to the very end. It was thought fit to conceal from him thatI was ready to hasten to him. It was thought fit to conceal this from metill then. "

This, then, is George Sand's story, which has not been granted very muchcredence. 

The cause of their--"divorce, " one might call it--is blurred by theusual discrepancies of gossip. The most probable account seems to bethat according to which Chopin mortally wounded Sand by receiving herdaughter and her son-in-law when they were out of Sand's favour. Allaccounts agree that this was to her only a pretext for breaking shacklesthat had begun to be irksome. All are agreed that it was Sand and notChopin who ended the relationship, and that she, as Niecks bluntly putsit, "had recourse to the heroic means of kicking him, metaphoricallyspeaking, out-of-doors. "

The woman seems easily to have forgotten the man who had proved, atbest, of little joy to her, for, as she says, she could never go to himwith her troubles, since he had always a plenty of his own. It was arelief, then, to her, being a far busier woman than he a man, to findherself free. 

But Chopin was robbed of his last support. The strong woman he hadleaned upon was gone, and he was alone with the consumption that waseating his life away. He started forth upon a concert tour, but thechill climates of England and Scotland were not refuges from hishaunting disease. He died slowly and in poverty, though he wasunconscious of want, thanks to the generosity of a Russian countess anda Scotch woman. Dependent upon women to the last! In his dying hours itis said that George Sand called at his house, but was not admitted tosee him, though, as he wailed two days before his death, "She said Ishould die in no other arms than hers" (_Que je ne mourrais que dans sesbras_). 

But even the story of her visit is denied. Turgeniev said that fiftycountesses had claimed that he died in their arms. Among the number wasthe Countess Potocka, who is cherished traditionally as one of Chopin'sloves, and who was much with him during his last days, and sang for him, at his request, as he lay dying. Poor genius! he must even have a womansing his swan-song for him! Potocka is best known by a familiar portraitthat you will find in a thousand homes. But how the higher criticismundermines the gospel of tradition! The truth is that Chopin denied everhaving been in love with her or she with him, and Huneker even claimsthat the famous portrait of her is not of her at all. 

But however attended, visited, caressed, Chopin died at the threshold ofhis prime, his life, lighted at most with a little feverish twinkling ofstars, one nocturne. 

END OF VOLUME I.