The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume I Part 4

Even to Bologna, whither Polzelli went with her two sons, says Pohl, "followed Haydn's love--and his gold." He intended after his first London 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 sad that I cannot do more for you. Yet have patience. Surely the day will come when I can show thee how much I love thee."

Loisa's choice of a spouse had been unhappy, as so many marriages have been where the wife is a singer on the stage, and the husband a fiddler in the band. Haydn seems to have sympathised with Loisa in her unhappy domestic affairs, as cordially as she had sympathised with him in his.

He had sympathy, too, for her similarly ill-matched sister, Christine Negri, for he writes of her as--

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

Also in March, 1791, he wrote Loisa about her husband in a manner implying that he was a brute or a maniac: "Thou hast done well to have him taken to the hospital to save thy life." Haydn and Loisa, being Catholics, never thought of seeking divorce: their only hope of celebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutish husband and his shrewish wife--"when four eyes shall close." Loisa's husband was the first to oblige, for in August, 1791, his death wrings a charitable word from even Haydn:

"Thy poor husband! I tell thee that Providence has managed well in freeing thee from thy heavy burden, for it is better to be in the other world, 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 often longed for. Already two eyes are closed. But the other two--ah, well, as G.o.d wills!" Eight years more, and the reluctant and wide-eyed Anna Haydn was foiled of her desire to be a widow in the snug cottage of her choice. The lovers at last were both single. But now, freed of their shackles, why do they not rush to each other's arms? The only answer we receive is this chill and shocking doc.u.ment found long after Haydn's death; it is written in Italian and dated shortly after Frau Haydn's death:

"I, the undersigned, promise Signora Loisa Polzelli (in case I shall be disposed to marry again) to take no other for wife than the said Loisa Polzelli; and if I remain a widower, I promise the said Loisa Polzelli after my death to leave her a life pension of 300 gulden, that is 300 florins 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, Schmidt comments: "The form of this writing leaves the conclusion plain, that Haydn was forced to this act by the Polzelli. This throws a poor light on her character, and we dare not evade the conclusion that, for twenty years in this love affair for life, she had in mind a business arrangement with the master."

Thus cynically writes Schmidt of the woman who for a score of years occupied Haydn's affections. And all of the biographers are inclined to heap upon her more or less contempt; but as you shall see a little later, the genial master himself was not above reproach, and Loisa's anxiety was not unfounded, for her Joseph was casting amorous glances elsewhere. Thus after the long ardour, the love letters have frozen into a hard and fast negative betrothal in which Haydn promises to marry no one else. This, Schmidt says, was dragged out of Haydn. But, if such a bond were necessary, it speaks surely as ill for Haydn as for the woman who 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 a rather close-reckoning honour. Three months later he answered with money her request for house-rent, and in a will dated May 5, 1801, occurs this clause, cancelling his former agreement, and making new provisions:

"To the widow Aloysia Polzelli, formerly singer at Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy's, payable in ready money six months after my death, 100 florins, and each year from the date of my death, for her life ... 150 florins. After her death her son, Anton Polzelli, to receive 150 florins for one year, having always been a good son to his mother and a grateful pupil to me. N.B.--I hereby revoke the obligation in Italian, signed by me, which may be produced by Mme. Polzelli; otherwise so many of my poor relations with greater claims would receive too little. Finally Mme.

Polzelli must be satisfied with the annuity of 150 florins." Two years later we find him writing to her (and, rumour said, his) son: "I hope thy mamma finds herself well." In a new will, dated 1809, the year of his death, Haydn withdraws the cash gift to Loisa, and leaves her only 150 florins annuity. She still remains, however, his chief heir.

Meanwhile, without waiting for his death, she had married again to Luigi Franci, like herself a singer and an Italian. She outlived him and Haydn also, 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 wife was dead and she was possessed of his agreement, signed, sealed, and delivered, to marry no one but her? Awhile ago I stooped to repeating the scandal that during Signora Polzelli's life, Haydn had been casting sheep's eyes elsewhere. But it is such a pretty scandal! Besides, these old contrapuntists were trained from youth to keep two or more tunes going at once.

I am not referring to Haydn's friends.h.i.+p with Frau von Genzinger. It was Karajan who discovered and published this pleasant correspondence with her. She was the wife of a very successful physician, a "ladies' doctor"

(_Damen Doktor_). She was the daughter of the Hofrath von Kayser; her name was Maria Anna Sabina; she was born Nov. 6th, 1750, and had been married some seventeen years, and was the mother of five children when Haydn began taking his every Sunday dinner with the family. Karajan says that she was an _ausgezeichnete_ singer and pianist.

A deep friends.h.i.+p sprang up at once between them and they corresponded freely. Haydn's letters to her were published by Nohl, and you may read them in Lady Wallace's translation. They are full of the most interesting lights upon Haydn's life and experiences, and are brimful of affection for Frau von Genzinger. But the husband and the children are almost always referred to in the letters, and the friends.h.i.+p seems to have been entirely and only a friends.h.i.+p,--as Schmidt calls it, "_eine tiefe und zugleich respectvolle Neigung_."

Mr. Upton, who accepts the friends.h.i.+p as "honourable," finds in Frau von Genzinger the only true feminine inspiration Haydn ever had for composition. "We owe much of his music to his wife; but the savage and truculent manner in which she inspired him was not conducive to the best work of his genius. There is no record that the Polzelli was of any benefit to him musically; certainly she was not morally."

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

It was not, then, Frau von Genzinger that threatened Polzelli's supremacy. Nor was it Madame Bartolozzi, for whom Haydn wrote a sonata and three trios; nor Mrs. John Hunter, who wrote words for many of his canzonets. 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 he went to London, called on Sir Joshua Reynolds at his studio, found him painting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil a good and famous story.

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

"Mrs. Schroeter presents her complements to Mr. Haydn, and informs him that she is just returned to town, and will be very happy to see him whenever 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 letters preserved for many years by Haydn. His answers to them seem to have been lost, though the whimsical spade of time that has recently brought to light the works of Bacchylides, after two thousand years and more of oblivion, may with equal speed unsod Haydn's letters to this interesting personage. May we be there to see!

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

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

Dies quoted Haydn's own words as saying, "In London, I fell in love with a widow, though she was sixty years old at the time." But Mr. Krehbiel shows good reason for believing that Dies must have misunderstood Haydn.

To me it occurs as a possibility that Haydn said to Dies, not "though she was sixty years old," but "though I was sixty years old." I think we are safe in a.s.suming with Mr. Krehbiel that she was not more than thirty-five or forty, an age not yet so great, according to statistics, as that of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Marian Delorme, at the times of their most potent beauty.

Let us also dismiss as unauthorised and gratuitous the words of Pauline D. Townsend, in her biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeter that she was "an attractive, although, according to modern taste, a somewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is no disguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn. Her letters to Haydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her have not been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmer in tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between him and Frau Haydn in Vienna." We know how little Frau Haydn had had to do with Haydn's life in his own town. You may judge for yourself as to the charge of "vulgarity."

The existence of Mrs. Schroeter's veritable Love Letters of an Englishwoman was known for many years, and Pohl in his book on "Mozart und Haydn in London" quoted from them. But for their complete publication in the original English, we are indebted to Mr. Krehbiel's "Music and Manners in the Cla.s.sical Period." This captivating work contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of Pepys.

I cannot do better than let these letters speak for themselves through such quotations as I have room to make. There are twenty-two of them in all, in Mr. Krehbiel's book. The abbreviations are curious and explain themselves. 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 to the fact that the letters exist only in Haydn's own handwriting, copied into his note-book without attention to their proper order. Or they may have 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 nor her maiden name. In the first letter Mrs. Schroeter says that she encloses him "the words of the song you desire." This letter is dated February 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 pleased to see what was possibly this very song, its first lines being suggestively 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 indicate that Haydn was suffering from insomnia, unless you are inclined to give them a more subtle significance. But to the quotations, with regrets that they must be incomplete.

"Wednesday, Febr. 8th, 1792.

"M.D. Inclos'd I have sent you the words of the song you desire. I wish much to know _how you do_ to day. I am very sorry to lose the pleasure of seeing you this morning, but I hope you will have time to come tomorrow. I beg my D you will take great care of your health and do not fatigue yourself with too much application to business. My thoughts and best wishes are always with you, and I ever am with the utmost sincerity M.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 thousand affectionate 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 my life. I am very Sorry I was so dull and Stupid yesterday, indeed my _Dearest_ it was nothing but my being indisposed with a cold occasioned my Stupidity. I thank you a thousand times for your Concern for me. I am truly Sensible of your goodness and I a.s.sure you my D. if anything had happened to trouble me, I wou'd have open'd my heart and told you with the greatest confidence, oh, how earnestly I wish to See you. I hope you will come to me tomorrow. I shall be happy to See you both in the Morning and the Evening. G.o.d Bless you my love. my thoughts and best wishes ever accompany you and I always am with the most Sincere and invariable Regard my D,

"Your truly affectionate--

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

"April 4th 92.

"My D: With this you will receive the Soap. I beg you a thousand pardons for not sending it sooner. I know you will have the goodness to excuse me. I hope to hear you are quite well and have Slept well. I shall be happy to See you my D: as soon as possible. I shall be much obliged to you if you will do me the favor to send me Twelve Tikets for your Concert. may all _success_ attend you my ever D H that Night and always is the sincere and hearty wish of your "Invariable and Truly affectionate--"

"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 you this Evening, my thoughts have been _constantly_ with you and my D.L. no words can express half the tenderness and _affection I feel for you_. I thought you seemed out of Spirits this morning. I wish I could always remove every trouble from your mind, be a.s.sured my D: I partake with the most perfect sympathy in _all your sensations_ and my regard is _Stronger every day_. my best wishes always attend you and I am ever my D.H. most sincerely your Faithful etc."

"M.D. I was extremely Sorry to hear this morning that you were indisposed. 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 have already produced So many _wonderful_ and _Charming_ compositions Still fatigue yourself with Such close application. I almost tremble for your health let me prevail on you my _much-loved_ H. not to keep to your Studys so long at _one time_, my D. love if you could know how very precious your welfare is to me I flatter myself you wou'd endeaver to preserve it for my sake as well as _your own_. pray inform me how you do and how you have Slept. I hope to see you to Morrow at the concert and on Sat.u.r.day I shall be happy to See you here to dinner, in the mean time my D: my Sincerest good wishes constantly attend you and I ever am with the _tenderest_ regard your most &c.

"J.S. April the 19th 92"