The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume I Part 13

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

Therese von Brunswick was Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved," and the picture found with the letter was her portrait. It was painted by Lampi, when Therese was about twenty-eight; and on the frame can be seen still the 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 National Museum at Pesth is a bust of Therese in her later years, erected in her honour because she organised out of her charity the first infants'

school in the Austrian empire, and did many other good works. It is both pity and solace that the n.o.ble woman did not wed Beethoven. She was his muse for years. That was, as she said, something to thank G.o.d for. She was also a beautiful spiritual influence on him.

Once the Baron Spaun found Beethoven kissing Therese's portrait and muttering: "Thou wast too n.o.ble--too like an angel." The baron withdrew silently, and returning later found Beethoven extemporising in heavenly mood. 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 my longings for the joys of a home, to be always revelling in these longings. O G.o.d! O G.o.d! 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, whom he proposed to, always awoke with a shock to the risk of joining for life a man of such explosive whims, of such absorption in his own self and art, of such utter deafness, untidiness, and morose habit of mind.

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

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

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

"Love, and love alone, can give me a happy life. O G.o.d! let me find her who will keep me in the path of virtue, the one I may rightly call my own."

Again, he could coldly rejoice that he had not sacrificed any of his individuality, or any of his devotion to music, to Giulietta Guicciardi.

And the diary of f.a.n.n.y Giannatasio, whose father took care of Beethoven's nephew, quotes a conversation Beethoven held on the subject of wedlock. According to this, he said that marriage should not be so indissoluble, liberty-crus.h.i.+ng a bond; that a marriage without love was best, but that no marriages were happy. He added:

"For himself he was excessively glad that not one of the girls had become his wife, whom he had pa.s.sionately loved in former days, and thought at the time it would be the highest joy on earth to possess."

To this cynic wisdom, the poor f.a.n.n.y Giannatasio del Rio, whose love for Beethoven would never have been known had not her diary enambered it for publication after her death, adds the words: "I will not repeat my answer, but I think I know a girl who, beloved by him, would not have made his life unhappy."

Ay, there's the rub! Could any one have woven a happiness about the life of that ferocious master of art, that pinioned, but struggling, victim of 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 the life 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 undertake the work, fearing that partiality would warp, and indelicacy stain, any such memorial of a father who had lived so lively a life. When at last the work was begun and done, it was a miracle of impartiality, of frankness which seems complete, of sins confessed and expiated in their confession, and of trenchant characterisation, which one will hardly find surpa.s.sed outside of d.i.c.kens.

The Von Webers are the most numerous musical dynasty after the Bachs. We have already seen something of the fortunes of the family into which Mozart married. The father of Mozart's wife was the older brother of Franz Anton von Weber, father of Carl Maria. This Franz Anton was a strange mixture of stalwart and s.h.i.+ftless qualities. He gave up his orchestral position to fight against Frederick the Great, and brought home a red badge of courage. It is wonderful, by the way, how many musicians have earned distinction as soldiers--what, indeed, would the soldiers do without music?

Later Franz Anton entered civil service, and succeeded to the position of Court Financial-Councillor Fumetti, and married his beautiful daughter, Maria Anna. But Franz Anton was so rabid a fiddler that he used to be seen playing his violin in public places, followed by his large family of children, or even sawing away in the open fields, to the neglect of his work and finally the loss of his position. Thereupon he decided that his large family should help in its own support, and dragged them one and all upon the stage. The proud mother saw her fortune squandered, and her pride ma.s.sacred. She died some years later.

Franz Anton's heart was too industrious to remain idle long, and, though he was now fifty years of age, he somehow won the hand of Genofeva von Brenner, who was only sixteen years old. It is gratuitous to say that the young girl was not happy. In 1786 she bore him the child who was to realise the father's one great and vicarious ambition: to bring a musical genius into the world.

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

Again Franz Anton, the Bedouin that he was, dragged his son back into the nomad life. The boy seemed astonis.h.i.+ngly stupid in learning music, though the father encouraged him with intemperate zeal. Meanwhile Carl's character was forming, and he was becoming as brilliant as the mercurial life he was leading, and at the same time as irresponsible. Like his relative, Mozart, he was precocious at falling in love. Perhaps his first flame was Elise Vigitill, in whose autograph alb.u.m he wrote:

"Dearest Elise, always love your sincere friend, Carl von Weber; in the sixth year of his age; Nuremberg, the 10th of September, 1792." We hear of no more sweethearts for eleven long years. When Carl Maria was seventeen, Franz Anton left him in Vienna, where he plunged into dissipation at a tempo presto appa.s.sionato. As his son writes, "through carolling, kissing, drinking Vienna, he wandered with a troop of choice spirits, drinking, kissing, carolling." The intoxicating draught of pleasure quaffed in the lively capital fevered the lad's blood, and the ardent imaginative temperament burst forth in that adoration of female beauty which strewed his life's path with roses, not without thorns. His teacher, Abbe Vogler, however, secured him a position as conductor at the Breslau opera, and he was compelled to tear himself away from a sweetheart of rank, who was somewhat older than he. His father went with him, and by his b.u.mptiousness brought the boy many enemies, and, through his speculations, many debts in addition to those he acquired for himself. Here another entanglement awaited him. His son tells it thus:

"Many a female heart, no doubt, both within the theatre and without its walls, was allured by the sweet smile and seductive manners of the pale, slender, languis.h.i.+ng, but pa.s.sionately ardent young conductor; whilst his own heart seems to have been more seriously involved in an unfortunate and misplaced attachment for a singer in the theatre. This woman was married to a rough drunkard who mishandled her. The couple were daily falling more and more into an abject state of poverty. Young Carl Maria pitied the woman; and pity was soon transformed in the feeling next akin."

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

Various misfortunes and indiscretions brought Von Weber to the loss of his post. But a woman intervened to save him from disaster. This was a Fraulein von Belonda, maid of honour to the d.u.c.h.ess of Wurtemberg, who took a deep interest in Carl, and persuaded the duke to make him musical director. The continual successes of the French armies overrunning Europe forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But he secured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother, Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Wurtemberg, a monster of corpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that he might get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovable figures 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 was known; where virtue and morality were laughed to scorn; where, in the chaotic whirlpool of a reckless court, money and influence at any price were the sole ends and aims of life; where, in the confusion of the times, the insecurity of conditions, and the ruthless despotism of the government, the sole watchword of existence, from high to low, was 'Apres moi, le deluge!'" The Prince Ludwig was a great spendthrift, and was continually appealing to his brother for funds. It was poor Weber's pleasant task to be the go-between, and to receive on his head the rage of Behemoth. Again to quote the vivid language of the Baron Max:

"The stammering, stuttering, shrieking rage of the hideously corpulent king, who, on account of his unwieldy obesity, was unable to let his arms hang by his side, and who thus gesticulated wildly, and perspired incessantly, and had the habit, moreover, of continually addressing his favourite, generally present on these occasions, with the appeal, 'Pas vrai, Dillen?' after each broken sentence,--would have been inexpressibly droll, had not the low-comedy actor of the scene been an autocrat who might, at a wink, have transformed laughter into tears. But there was a demoniacal comicality about the performance, which, if it did not convulse the spectator, made him shudder to his heart's core.

"Weber hated the king, of whose wild caprice and vices he witnessed daily scenes, before whose palace-gates he was obliged to slink bareheaded, and who treated him with unmerited ignominy. He was wont, in thoughtless levity of youth, to forget the dangers he ran, and to answer the king with a freedom of tone which the autocrat was all unused to hear. In turn he was detested by the monarch.

"The royal treatment roused young Carl Maria's indignation to the utmost; and his irritation led him one day to a mad prank, which was nigh resulting in some years' imprisonment in the fortress of Hohenasberg, or of Hohenhaufen. Smarting under some foul indignity, he had just left the private apartment of the king, when an old woman met him in the pa.s.sage, and asked him where she could find the room of the court washerwoman. 'There!' said the reckless youth, pointing to the door of the royal cabinet. The old woman entered, and was violently a.s.sailed by the king, who had a horror of old women; in her terror, she stammered out that a young gentleman who had just come out had informed her that there she would find the 'royal washerwoman,' The infuriated monarch guessed who was the culprit, and despatched an officer on the spot 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, it must appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessed sufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved art during his arrest. But so it was. He managed to procure a dilapidated old piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a common door-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808, composed his well-known beautiful song, 'Ein steter Kampf ist unser Leben.'

"The storm pa.s.sed over. Prince Ludwig's influence obtained the young man's pardon and release. But the insult was never forgotten by the king: he took care to remember it at his own right time. Nor had prison cured Carl Maria of his boyish desire to play tricks upon the hated monarch, when he conceived that he could do so without danger to himself."

Carl proceeded to make himself an appropriate graduate of such a university 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 h.e.l.l." He now began also the composition of an opera, "Sylvana." This brought him into acquaintance with operatic people, and he fell under the charm of that "coquettish little serpent Margarethe Lang."

"To stem such a pa.s.sion, or even to have given it a legal form, would have been merely ridiculous and absurd in the eyes of the demoralised circle by which he was surrounded. Gretchen possessed a little plump seductive form, was about twenty years of age, and, in addition to her undoubted musical talent, was endowed with a fund of gay, sprightly humour, wholly in sympathy with the youth's own joyous nature. She became the central point of all his life and aspirations."

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

The last straw upon Carl's breaking back was the arrival of his father, who descended upon him with a ba.s.s viol, an enormous basket-bed for his beloved poodles, and a large bundle of debts, as well as an increased luggage of eccentricities. While Weber was trying to secure loans to pay off one of his father's debts, he was innocently implicated in a scandal of bribery, by which it was made to seem that he had offered a post in the prince's household, in return for an advance of money. The king had been driven to despair by the disasters of the German army, and the increase of discontent of the German people, and desired to gain a reputation for virtue by the comfortable step of reforming his brother's household. Learning of the proffered bribe, in which Weber seemed to be concerned, but of which he was perfectly innocent, the king had him arrested during a rehearsal of his opera "Sylvana," and had him thrown into prison for sixteen days. When at last he was examined, there was nothing found to justify the accusation of dishonesty, he was released from the prison for criminals, and transferred to the prison for debt, and then a little later he and his father were placed into a carriage and driven across the border to exile.

This sudden plunge from the froth of dissipation to the dregs of disgrace 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 an occasional relapse into some of his old qualities, but never a complete laying aside of earnestness. He gained friends elsewhere, and finally settled in Darmstadt, where he still found women's hearts susceptible, in spite of his small, weak frame, his great long neck, and his calfless legs, of which he writes: "And, oh, my calves, they might have done honour to a poodle!"

Eight months after his banishment, his opera "Sylvana" was produced at Frankfort, the first soprano being Gretchen Lang, and the part of Sylvana being taken by Caroline Brandt, of whom much more later. At Munich the next year, he found himself in high favour with two singers.

They were vying with each other for him, while two society beauties exerted their rival charms. Weber was kept busy with his quadruple flirtation. He was driven into cynicism, and his motto became "All women are good for nothing" ("_Alle Weiber taugen nichts_"), which he used so often that he abbreviated it to "A.W.T.N." In the columns of his account-book he was provoked to write: "A. coquettes with me, though she knows I am making love to her friend. B. abuses N., tells me horrid stories of her, and says I must not go home with her." He took a journey to Switzerland, where the beautiful Frau Peyermann occupied his heart long enough to inspire him to the scene in "Athalie," and to his song, "The Artist's Declaration of Love." He wandered here and there, for about 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 imposing figure to the young of both s.e.xes, and an annoyance to the old, exciting the attention of everybody, and then suddenly disappearing, his person uniting in the most seductive manner aristocratic bearing and tone with indolent dissipation, his moods alternating between uproarious spirits and deep depression,--in all ways he resembled a figure from some romantic poem, wholly unlike anything seen before in the history of German art."

In 1813 he found himself at Prague, with the post of musical director to the 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 was Theresa Brunetti, wife of a ballet-dancer, and mother of several children, the acquisition of which had robbed her of neither her fine, plump figure, nor her devotion to the arts of coquetry. There is no improving upon the description of Max von Weber as given of this entanglement, so here it is at length, with all its frankness of exposure and its writhing humiliation: