Part 4 (2/2)

But even the pleasantest things must come to an end, and the expedition to Mergentheim was no exception to the rule. In a few weeks, Archbishop, musicians, and actors were once more at Bonn, busily engaged in preparing for Christmas.

About this time Beethoven was nominated Court pianist, an appointment due partly to his friend, Count Waldstein, partly also to the following circ.u.mstance, which gave the Elector a striking proof of his young _protege's_ abilities. A new Trio by Pleyel had been sent to Max Franz, and so great was his impatience to hear it that nothing would content him but its immediate performance, without previous rehearsal, by Beethoven, Ries, and Romberg.

To hear was to obey, and the Trio was played at sight very fairly, the performers keeping well together. It was then discovered that two bars in the pianoforte part had been omitted, and supplied by Beethoven so ingeniously that not the slightest break was perceptible!

In the same year, 1791, Beethoven wrote the music for a splendid _bal masque_, organized by his friend Waldstein, and attended by all the n.o.bility for miles around. It was believed for long that Waldstein was the author of the music.

Beethoven, meanwhile, continued his intimacy with the Breuning family, where from time to time another attraction offered itself in the person of Fraulein Jeannette d'Honrath, a young lady of Cologne, who occasionally paid a visit of a few weeks to her friend Eleanore.

It has been a.s.serted by some writers that Beethoven was insensible to the charms of woman, and that love was to him a sealed book! For the refutation of this statement it is only necessary to turn to his works, which breathe a very different story to such as have ears to hear. For those who have not, let the testimony of his friend Wegeler suffice: ”Beethoven was _never_ without a love, and generally in the highest degree enamoured.” The reason why his love was fated never to expand and ripen will be explained in its own place. Here it is sufficient to say that Beethoven, while glowing with fire and tenderness, eminently calculated to love and be loved, was throughout his whole life, and in every relation, delicacy itself; his nature shrunk instinctively from anything like impurity.

To return: Mademoiselle Jeannette, a fascinating little blonde, divided her attentions so equally between Beethoven and his friend Stephan, and sang so charmingly about her heart being _desole_ when the time for parting came, that each believed himself the favoured one, until it transpired that the ”Herzchen had long since been bestowed” in its entirety on a gallant Austrian officer, whom the young lady subsequently married, and who afterwards rose to the rank of general.

There does not seem to have been any attachment between Beethoven and Leonore; she was his pupil, his sister,[5] but nothing more; her affections were already given to young Wegeler, whose wife she afterwards became.

So our Beethoven was left to gnaw his fingers for the loss of his pretty Jeannette, and to flutter on the outside of the crowd which hovered round fair Barbara Koch, the beauty of Bonn, daughter of a widow, proprietress of a coffee-house or tavern.

What! exclaims the reader, is this an instance of the so-called ”aristocratic leanings” of Beethoven?

We must beg him in reply not to look at things through exclusively British and nineteenth century spectacles. The position of worthy Frau Koch was, if not distinguished, certainly respectable.

Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, was obliged to combat with the same prejudice in his account of the poet's student days at Leipzig, and we cannot do better than quote his words with regard to the society to be found in a German Wirthshaus of the period:--

”The _table d'hote_ is composed of a circle of habitues, varied by occasional visitors, who in time become, perhaps, members of the circle.

Even with strangers conversation is freely interchanged, and in a little while friends.h.i.+ps are formed, as natural tastes and likings a.s.similate, which are carried out into the current of life.”

The habitues of Frau Koch's house were the professors and students at the university, and such members of the Electoral household as were engaged in artistic pursuits. It was a rendezvous for them all, where science, literature, art, and politics were discussed by able men; and here, doubtless, Beethoven, with his friends Stephan Breuning and young Reicha (nephew of the director), spent many a pleasant evening. The fair Babette was, as we have hinted, no small attraction. She was a cultivated woman, and the great friend of Eleanore v. Breuning. She afterwards became governess to the children of Count Anton von Belderbusch, whom she finally married.

We now come to an event which completely changed the current of Beethoven's life--the return of Joseph Haydn from his second visit to London. As he pa.s.sed through Bonn the musicians gave him a public breakfast at G.o.desberg, on which occasion Beethoven laid before him a cantata of his composition--probably that on the death of Leopold II. It met with the warmest praise from Haydn, but the author apparently did not think highly of it himself, as it was never printed.

Whether the arrangements were made at this time for Haydn's reception of Beethoven as his pupil, or negotiated afterwards through Waldstein, is not known. Certain it is that in the October of 1792 we find his long-delayed hopes on the point of realization, a pension from the Elector having removed all difficulties.

Beethoven had often bemoaned in secret, and specially to his friend Waldstein, the irregular, broken instruction he had received, attributing Mozart's early success to the systematic course of study he had pursued under the guidance of his father. It is a question, however, whether Beethoven--even had he enjoyed the advantages of Mozart--would ever have composed with the facility of the latter. Thayer thinks not; there is evidence enough in the symphonies, &c., of our great master to prove that he ”earned his bread by the sweat of his brow.”

The following note from Waldstein evinces the deep interest he took in Beethoven, and his faith in the young composer's genius:--

”DEAR BEETHOVEN,--”You are now going to Vienna for the realization of your wishes, so long frustrated. The Genius of Mozart still mourns and laments the death of his disciple. He found refuge with the inexhaustible Haydn, but no scope for action, and through him he now wishes once more to be united to some one. Receive, through unbroken industry, the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn.

”Your true friend, ”WALDSTEIN.

”Bonn, _29th October, 1792_.”

In the beginning of November, then, 1792, Beethoven finally took leave of his boyhood's friends--father and brothers, Wegeler, Franz Ries, Neefe, Reicha, Waldstein, pretty Barbara Koch, and, hardest of all, the Breunings.

Some of these he saw for the last time.

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