The Love Affairs of Great Musicians Volume I Part 5

"April 24th 1792.

"My D. I cannot leave London without Sending you a line to a.s.sure you my thoughts, my best wishes and tenderest affections will inseparably attend you till we meet again. the Bearer will also deliver you the March. I am very Sorry I could not write it Sooner, nor better, but I hope my D. you will excuse it, and if it is not pa.s.sable I will send you the _Dear_ original directly. If my H. would employ me oftener to write Music I hope I should improve and I know I should delight in the occupation, now my D.L. let me intreat you to take the greatest care of your _health_. I hope to see you Friday at the concert and on Sat.u.r.day to dinner, till when and ever I most sincerely am and Shall be yours etc."

"M.D. If you will do me the favor to take your dinner with me tomorrow I shall be very happy to see you and _particularly_ wish for the pleasure of _your_ company _my Dst Love_ before our other friends come. I hope to hear you are in _good Health_. My best wishes and tenderest Regards are your constant attendants and I _ever_ am with the _firmest_ Attachment my 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 ten thousand thanks for the inexpressible delight I have received from _your ever Enchanting_ compositions and your _incomparably Charming_ performance of them, be a.s.sured my D.H. that among _all_ your numerous admirers no one has listened with more profound attention and no one can have Such high veneration for your most _brilliant Talents_ as I _have_, indeed my D.L. no tongue _can express_ the grat.i.tude I _feel_ for the infinite pleasure your Musick has given me. accept then my repeeted thanks for it and let me also a.s.sure you with heart felt affection that I 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 to preserve to cultivate and to merit it more and more. I hope to hear you are 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 be particularly glad to see you my D. befor the rest of our friends come.

G.o.d Bless you my h: I ever am with the firmest and most perfect attachment your &c.

"Wednesday night, June the 6th 1792."

"My Dst, Inclosed I send you the verses you was so Kind as to lend me and am very much obliged to you for permitting me to take a copy of them, pray inform me _how you do_, and let me know my _Dst L_ when you will dine with me; I shall be _happy_ to _See_ you to dinner either tomorrow or tuesday whichever is most Convenient to you. I am _truly anxious_ 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 I ever 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 every moment 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 shall be very happy to see you my Dst Hn. any time to-morrow after one o'clock, if you can come; but if not I shall hope for the pleasure of Seeing _you_ on _Monday_. You will receive this letter to-morrow morning. I would not send it to-day for fear you should not be at home and I _wish_ to have your answer. G.o.d bless you my Dst. Love, once more I 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 with your _delightful_ and enchanting _Compositions_ and your Spirited and interesting performance of them, accept ten thousand thanks for the great 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_ to Night. I am _extremely anxious_ about your health. I hope to hear a good account of it. G.o.d Bless you my H: come to me to-morrow. I shall be happy to See you both morning and Evening. I always am with the tenderest 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 the barbarous word "yearnful," once coined by Keats. After Haydn's return to London, in 1794, there are no letters to indicate a continuance of the acquaintance, but it doubtless was renewed, judging from the sagacious guess based upon the fact that Haydn did not come back to his old lodgings but took new ones at No. 1 Bury Street, St. James's.

This much more pleasantly situated dwelling, he probably owed to the considerate care of Mrs. Schroeter, who, by the same token, thus brought him nearer to herself. A short and pleasant walk of scarcely ten minutes through 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 the house of Mrs. Schroeter. Perhaps he preferred the walk to letter-writing. When he went away from London for ever, he left behind him the scores of his six last symphonies "in the hands of a lady,"

probably Mrs. Schroeter. It was this same woman to whom Haydn dedicated three trios, his first, second, and sixth. It was undoubtedly she to whom he referred when he made that little speech which Dies probably misquoted, in telling the answer Haydn gave him when he was asked what the letters were. "They are letters from an English widow in London who loved me; she was, though she already counted her sixty years, still a pretty and lovely woman, whom I would very probably have married had I then been single."

Let us remember that these old love letters, so fragrant with faded affections, were being received by Papa Haydn even while he was writing to Polzelli, rejoicing in the closing of two of those four baleful eyes that forbade their union. And let us not judge too harshly the Italian woman who had given this unbeautiful Austrian of such beautiful genius so much of her suns.h.i.+ne and tenderness. Nor let us judge too harshly the enamoured English widow. Why indeed need we judge harshly at all?

When Haydn died he had no child to leave his wealth to--even the fable that 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 in Haydn's will.

Among the heirlooms left by Haydn was a watch given to him by that Admiral of Admirals, Lord Nelson--and that points to us as a by-path, which it were pleasant, though forbidden now, to wander, the story of Nelson'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 statement in his note-book, of the domestic affairs of one whom we do not think of now as a musician.

"On June 15th, I went from Windsor to Slough to Doctor Herschel, where I saw the great telescope. It is forty feet long and five feet in diameter. The machinery is vast, but so ingenious that a single man can put it in motion with ease. There are also two smaller telescopes, of which one is twenty-two feet long and magnifies six thousand times. The king had two made for himself, of which each measures twelve Schuh. He gave him one thousand guineas for them. In his younger days Doctor Herschel was in the Prussian service as an oboe player. In the seven years' war he deserted with his brother and came to England. For many years he supported himself with music, became organist at Bath, turned, however, to astronomy. After providing himself with the necessary instruments he left Bath, rented a room not far from Windsor, and studied day and night. His landlady was a widow. She fell in love with him, 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 him with a son this year, 1792. Ten years ago he had his sister come; she is of the greatest service to him in his observations. Frequently he sits from 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 and the other eighteen, strike the town of Lubeck in 1703. They are drawn thither by a vacancy in the post of town-organist. And their compet.i.tion is to be friendly.

Two flamboyant young musickers leave the town of Lubeck as soon as can be. For they have learned that the successful candidate must marry the daughter of the man in whose shoes they would fain have trodden the pedals. 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 years of the two young candidates.

Back to Hamburg the two friends go, and the next year their friends.h.i.+p suffers a serious strain. The elder, now aged twenty-three, is producing "Cleopatra," an opera of his own composition, and incidentally playing the role of Antony. The younger of the friends is the conductor, and presides, as is the custom of the time, at the clavecin. There is another custom in the performance of that opera, a curious one, too. For it is the wont of the composer-singer, when he has died as Antony, to come 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 to yield the clavecin, even to his versatile friend. A quarrel that narrowly escapes ruining the melodious swan-song of Cleopatra, is postponed till after the final curtain. Then it takes the form of a duel. The composer manages at last to elude the parry of the conductor; he throws all his weight and venom into a lunge that must prove fatal,--but a large bra.s.s b.u.t.ton sheds the point of the sword and saves its wearer for a better fate.

By the strange medicinal virtue of duels, the wound in the friends.h.i.+p is healed, honour is poulticed, and the friends.h.i.+p begins again, lasting with healthful interruptions until the younger musician goes his way toward the fulness of his glory; the elder his way along the lines of versatility--which leave him in the eyes of posterity rather valued as a writer than aught else.

The old organist whose death had brought these two younkers on their wild-goose chase was Dietrich Buxtehude, the famous man whom Johann Sebastian Bach walked fifty miles on foot to hear, and whose compositions he studied and profited from. Old Buxtehude, himself the son of an organist, had himself married the daughter of the organist who had preceded him. The daughter he left behind to frighten away aspiring candidates did not languish long. According to Chrysander, a certain J.C. Schieferdecker, who is famous for nothing else, wed the daughter, and "got the pretty job" ("_erhielt den schonen Dienst_").

The elder of the two young men was Johann Mattheson (1681--1764), a sort of "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 b.u.t.ton, was that great personage whose name has been spelled almost every way imaginable between Hendtler and Handel--the later form being preferred by the English, who, as somebody said, love to speak learnedly of "Handel and Gluck." It is not needful here to tell the story of his brilliant life and the big events it crowded into the four and seventy years between 1685 and 1759. His friend Mattheson, like Beethoven, spent his later years in the dungeon of deafness. Handel, like his great rival Bach (who was born the same year), spent seven years in almost total blindness, three operations having failed. In almost every other respect the careers of these two men were unlike, particularly in the obscure and prolific married life of the one and in the almost royal prominence of the other's bachelorhood.

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

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

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

"He certainly paid more attention to it than is becoming in any man; but it is some excuse that Nature had given him so vigorous a const.i.tution, so exquisite a palate, so craving an appet.i.te, that fortune enabled him to obey these calls, and to satisfy these demands of nature.... Had he hurt his health or fortune by indulgences of this kind, they would have been 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, Handel demanded why; the servant answered that he was waiting for the company to come, whereupon Handel stormed, in his famous broken English, "Den pring up der tinner prestissimo. I am de gombany."

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

Handel resembles Lully somewhat in his reputation for being a lover of the table and a neglecter of womankind. Schoelcher in his biography states "that not one woman occupies the smallest place in the long career of his life." And yet contradicts himself in his very next sentence, for he adds:

"When he was in Italy a certain lady named Vittoria fell in love with him and even followed him from Florence to Venice. Burney describes Vittoria as 'a songstress of talent.' Fetis calls her the Archd.u.c.h.ess Vittoria, but both agree that she was beautiful and that she filled the part of the prima donna in 'Roderigo,' his first Italian score. At that period, and even later, it was not uncommon to find princes and princesses singing in the pieces which were produced at their courts.

Artist or archd.u.c.h.ess, either t.i.tle was enough to turn the head of a young man twenty-four years old; but Handel disdained her love. All the English biographers say that he was too prudent to accept an attachment which would have been ruin to both. This is calumny, for he was never prudent."

This Vittoria is an interesting problem in romance. Doctor Mainwaring says that Handel was Apollo and she Daphne. Chrysander in his great biography properly notes that the legend has been twisted, and represents here the G.o.d as fleeing from the nymph. c.o.xe says that Vittoria was "an excellent singer, the favourite mistress of the Grand Duke of Tuscany"--which gives a decidedly different look to Handel's "prudence."