child, who would ask a dozen times a day whether his friends loved him,
and, if answered in the negative, would burst into tears. At three, he
began to show his passion for music. He would listen intensely as his
father taught his little sister, Nannerl, seven years old; would move
his playthings from one room to another, to the sound of the violin; and
at four, composed pieces which astonished his sire.
[Illustration: W. A. MOZART.]
Two years later, the proud father took Wolfgang and his sister on a
concert tour to Vienna. So well did the boy play, that the Empress Maria
Theresa held him in her arms, and kissed him heartily. One day as he
was walking between two of her daughters, he slipped on the polished
floor and fell. Marie Antoinette, afterward Empress of France, raised
him up, whereupon he said, "You are very kind; I will marry you." The
father was alarmed at this seeming audacity; but the lovely Princess
playfully kissed him.
The next year he was taken to Paris, and here two sets of sonatas, the
works of a boy of seven, were brought out, dedicated to Marie
Antoinette. The children sat at the royal table, poems were written
about them, and everywhere they excited wonder and admiration; yet so
excessively modest was young Mozart, that he cried when praised too
much. In London, Bach took the boy between his knees, and alternately
they played his own great works and those of Handel at sight. Royalty
gave them "gold snuffboxes enough to set up a shop," wrote home the
father; "but in money I am poor." Wolfgang was now taken ill of
inflammatory fever; but he could not give up his music. A board was laid
across the bed, and on this he wrote out his thoughts in the notes.
Finally, with ardor dampened at their lack of pecuniary success, Leopold
Mozart took his dear ones back to quiet Salzburg.
Here the cold archbishop, discrediting the reports of the boy's genius,
shut him up alone for a week to compose an oratorio, the text furnished
by himself. Mozart, only ten years old, stood the test brilliantly. The
next year a second tour was taken to Vienna, to be present at the
marriage of the Archduchess Maria Josepha. The bride died from smallpox
shortly after their arrival: and poor Wolfgang took the disease, and was
blind for nine days. When he recovered, the musicians, moved by envy and
jealousy, would not be outdone by a boy of twelve, who was equally at
home in German or Italian opera, and determined to hiss off the stage
whatever he might compose. Sad at heart, and disappointed, again the
Mozarts went back to the old home.
Two years later, after much self-sacrifice, the father took his boy to
Italy for study. The first day in Passion Week they went to the Sistine
Chapel to hear the famous "Miserere" of Allegri, which was considered so
sacred, that the musicians were forbidden to take home any part of it,
or copy it out of the chapel, on pain of excommunication. Wolfgang, as
soon as he reached his lodgings, wrote it out from memory; which
remarkable feat for a boy of fourteen astonished all Rome. So
wonderfully did he play, that the audience at Naples declared there was
witchcraft in the ring which he wore on his left hand, and he was
obliged to remove it. At Milan, when he was nearly fifteen, he composed
the opera "Mithridate," conducting it himself, which was given twenty
nights in succession to enthusiastic audiences. After this came requests
for operas from Maria Theresa, Munich, and elsewhere. He was busy every
moment. Overworked, he was often ill; but the need for money to meet
heavy expenses made constant work a necessity. All this time he wrote
beautiful letters to his mother and sister. "Kiss mamma's hand for me a
thousand billion times," is the language of his loving heart. He could
scarcely be said to have had any childhood; but he kept his tenderness
and affection to the last of his life.
After their return to Salzburg, finding the new archbishop even less
cordial than the old--the former had allowed Wolfgang the munificent
salary of five dollars and a fourth yearly!--it was deemed wise to try
to find a new field for employment. The father, now sixty years of age,
must earn a pittance for the family by giving music-lessons, while the
mother accompanied the son to Paris. The separation was a hard one for
the devoted father, who could not say good-by to his idolized son, and
poor Nannerl wept the whole day long. Mozart, now twenty-one, and
famous, well repaid this affection by his pure character. He wrote: "I
have God always before me. Whatever is according to his will is also
according to mine; therefore I cannot fail to be happy and contented."
Stopping for a time at Mannheim, he attempted to gain the position of
tutor to the elector's children, but was disappointed. Here he fell in
love with Aloysia Weber, a pretty girl of fifteen, whose father, a
prompter at the National Theatre, earned only two hundred dollars yearly
for the support of his wife and six children. The girl had a fine
voice; and Mozart, blinded by love, asked no higher joy than to write
operas in which she might be the star. The good old father, who had
spent all his life in helping his son to win fame, was nearly
heart-broken when he learned of this foolish affection, and wrote him
tenderly but firmly: "Off with you to Paris; get the great folks on your
side; _aut Caesar, aut nihil_. From Paris, the name and fame of a man of
great talent goes through the whole world."
The young man, carrying out his childish motto, "God first, and then
papa," reluctantly started for Paris. Here he did not meet with great
success, for scores of applicants waited for every position. His loving
mother soon died, perhaps from over economy in her cold, dark lodgings;
and the young musician took his lonely way back to Salzburg, begging his
father's consent to his stopping at Mannheim to see the Webers. Finding
that Aloysia had gone upon the stage at Munich, he hastened to see her.
She had been offered a good salary. Meantime Mozart had won no new
laurels at Paris. He was small in stature, and poor; and the girl who
wept at his departure a few months previously professed now scarcely to
have seen his face before. The young lover, cut to the heart, yet proud,
seated himself at the piano, and played,
"I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me,"
and then hastened away to Salzburg. Aloysia married a comedian, and
lived a most unhappy life, gaining some fame from singing the music
which Mozart wrote for her.
He remained at home for a year and a half, till called to Munich to
write the opera "Idomeneo," and later to Vienna. Here, unfortunately, he
met the Webers again, and, their father having died, he boarded in their
house, and gave lessons to Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia. She
was a plain, good-hearted girl, without much energy, but with a great
appreciation of her gifted teacher. The result came naturally; he fell
in love with the penniless girl, and, despite the distress of his aged
father at his choice, married her when he was twenty-six and she
eighteen.
Henceforward there was no hope of any thing save the direst poverty. To
marry without love is a grave mistake; to marry simply for love is
sometimes a mistake equally grave. He could of course do nothing now for
his aged father or sister. Unsteady employment, a rapidly-increasing
family, and a wife ill most of the time, made the struggle for existence
ten times harder than before his marriage. Once when he had prepared to
visit his father for the first time after the wedding, and had waited
months for the necessary funds, he was arrested for a debt of fifteen
dollars, just as he was stepping into the carriage.
The Emperor Joseph said to him one day, "Why did you not marry a rich
wife?" With dignity Mozart at once replied, "Sire, I trust that my
genius will always enable me to support the woman I love"; but
unfortunately it did not. He wrote after his marriage: "The moment we
were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep, which touched
every one, even the priest, and they all cried when they witnessed how
our hearts were moved." How little they dreamed that they should weep
more seriously when hunger stared their six children in the face!
From the time of his marriage till his death, nine years, says Rev. Mr.
Haweis, "his life can be compared to nothing but a torch burning out
rapidly in the wind." It was a period of incessant, astonishing labor.
He dedicated six quartets to his dear friend Joseph Haydn, who said,
"Mozart is the greatest composer who has ever lived"; wrote "Figaro"
when he was twenty-nine, which had the greatest popularity, "Don
Giovanni" at thirty-one, and the "Flauto Magico" gratis, for the benefit
of the theatre director, who was in want. The two latter creations were
hailed with delight. Goethe wrote to Schiller later of "Don Giovanni,"
"That piece stands entirely alone; and Mozart's death has rendered all
hope of any thing like it idle."
Whenever he appeared at the theatre, he was called upon the stage from
all parts of the house; yet all this time he could not earn enough to
live. He received only a hundred dollars from his "Don Giovanni," and
less for the others. He gave lessons every hour he could spare, concerts
in the open air, borrowed from his friends, scrimped himself, to send
money to his sick wife at Baden, pawned his silver plate to make one
more unsuccessful journey to win the aid of indifferent princes, and
fainted often at his tasks after midnight. Still he wrote to "the best
and dearest wife of my heart," "If I only had a letter from you, all
would be right," and promised her to work harder than ever to earn
money.
When Constance was at home with him, if he left her in the morning
before she awakened, he would leave a note for her with the words,
"Good-morning, my darling wife. I shall be at home at -- o'clock
precisely." Once when she had been ill for eight months, and Mozart was
composing beside her as she slept, suddenly a noisy messenger entered.
Alarmed lest his wife should be disturbed, he rose hastily, when the
penknife in his hand fell, and buried itself in his foot. Without a word
escaping his lips, he left the room, a surgeon was called, and, though
lame for some time, the wife was not told of the accident.
His compositions found few purchasers, for the people generally could
not comprehend them. Publishers' shops were closed to him, unless he
would write in the popular style. "Then I can make no more by my pen,"
he said bitterly, "and I had better starve and go to destruction at
once." So poor had his family become, that, with no fuel in the house,
he and his wife were found by a friend, waltzing to keep warm.
About this time a sepulchral-looking man called to ask that a "Requiem"
be written on the death of the wife of an Austrian nobleman, who was to
be considered the author, and thus his intense grief be shown, though
manifested through a lie. Mozart consulted with his wife, as was his
custom, and, as she indorsed it, he accepted the commission for fifty
dollars. Overworked, harassed by debts which he could not pay, hurt at
the jealousies and intrigues of several musicians, disappointed at the
reception of his new opera at Prague, his hopeful nature forsook him,
and he told Constance that the "Requiem" would be written for himself.
In the midst of this wretchedness their sixth child was born. The poor
wife forgot her own sorrows, and prevailed upon him to give up work for
a time; but the active brain could not rest, and he wrote as he lay on
his sick-bed. On the day before he died, Dec. 4, 1791, at two o'clock,
he persisted in having a portion of the "Requiem" sung by the friends
who stood about his bed, and, joining with them in the alto, burst into
tears, saying, "Did I not say that I was writing the 'Requiem' for
myself?" Soon after he said, "Constance, oh that I could only hear my
'Flauto Magico!'" and a friend playing it, he was cheered.
A messenger now arrived to tell him that he was appointed organist at
St. Stephen's Cathedral, a position for which he had longed for years;
but it came too late. Death was unwelcome to him. "Now must I go," he
said, "just as I should be able to live in peace; I must leave my
family, my poor children, at the very instant in which I should have
been able to provide for their welfare." Cold applications were ordered
by the physicians for his burning head; he became delirious for two
hours, and died at midnight, only thirty-five years old. Constance was
utterly prostrated, and threw herself upon his bed, hoping to die also.
Mozart's body was laid beside his piano, and then, in a pouring rain,
buried in a "common grave," in the plainest manner possible, with nobody
present except the keepers of the cemetery. Weeks after, when the wife
visited the spot, she found a new grave-digger, who could not tell where
her beloved husband was buried, and to this day the author of fourteen
Italian operas, seventeen symphonies, and dozens of cantatas and
serenades, about eight hundred compositions in all, sleeps in an unknown
grave. The Emperor Leopold aided her in a concert to raise fifteen
hundred dollars to pay her husband's debts, and provide a little for
herself. Eighteen years afterward she married the Danish councillor,
Baron von Missen, who educated her two sons, four other children having
died. Salzburg waited a half-century before she erected a bronze statue
to her world-renowned genius, in the Square of St. Michael; and, seventy
years after his death, Vienna built him a monument in the Cemetery of
St. Mark. History scarcely furnishes a more pathetic life. He filled the
world with music, yet died in want and sorrow.
[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON.]
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
In a quaint old house in Lichfield, England, now used as a draper's
shop, Samuel Johnson, son of a poor bookseller and bookbinder, was born.
Here, as in Westminster Abbey, a statue is erected to his memory. Near
by is the schoolhouse where Addison and Garrick studied.
When Samuel was two and a half years old, diseased with scrofula, his
good mother, with ten dollars sewed in her skirt so that nobody could
steal it, took him to London that, with two hundred others, he might be
touched by Queen Anne, and thus, as superstitious people believed, be
healed. On this journey she bought him a silver cup and spoon. The
latter he kept till his dying-day, and parted with the cup only in the
dire poverty of later years.
The touch of the Queen did no good, for he became blind in one eye; with
the other he could not see a friend half a yard off, and his face was
sadly disfigured. Being prevented thus from sharing the sports of other
boys, much time was spent in reading. He was first taught at a little
school kept by Widow Oliver, who years after, when he was starting for
Oxford, brought him a present of gingerbread, telling him he was the
best scholar she ever had. After a time he studied Latin under a master
who "whipped it into him." The foolish teacher would ask the boy the
Latin word for candlestick, or some unexpected thing, and then whip him,
saying, "This I do to save you from the gallows!"
Naturally indolent, Samuel had to struggle against this tendency. He
had, however, the greatest ambition to excel, and to this he attributed
his later success. He was also inquisitive, and had a wonderful memory.
When he wore short dresses, his mother gave him the Prayer-Book one day,
and, pointing to the Collect, said, "You must get this by heart." She
went up stairs, but no sooner had she reached the second floor than she
heard him following. He could repeat it perfectly, having looked it over
but twice. He left school at sixteen, spending two years at home in
helping his parents, and studying earnestly. One day, his father, being
ill, asked him to go to a neighboring town and take his place in selling
books at a stall on market-day. He was proud, and did not go. Fifty
years afterward, in his greatness, then an old man, he went to this
stall, and, with uncovered head, remained for an hour in the rain where
his father had formerly stood, exposed to the sneers of the bystanders
and the inclemency of the weather. It showed the repentance of a noble
soul for disobedience to a parent.
At nineteen, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he acted as
servant. He used to go daily to his friend Taylor, and get lectures
second-hand, till his feet, showing through his worn-out shoes, were
perceived by the students, and he ceased going. A rich young man
secretly put a pair of new shoes at his door, which he indignantly threw
out of the window. He was willing to work and earn, but would not
receive charity. At the end of three years he became so poor that he was
obliged to leave college, his father dying soon after.
After various experiences, he sought the position of usher at a school,
but was refused because it was thought that the boys would make fun of
his ugliness. He finally obtained such a place, was treated with great
harshness, and left in a few months. Strange to say, the poor, lonely
scholar, only twenty-six, now fell in love with a widow forty-eight
years old. After obtaining his mother's consent, he married her, and the
union proved a most happy one. With the little money his wife possessed,
he started a school, and advertised for pupils; but only three came, and
the school soon closed. In despair he determined to try London, and see
if an author could there earn his bread. In that great city he lived for
some time on nine cents a day. One publisher to whom he applied
suggested to him that the wisest course would be to become a porter and
carry trunks.
A poem written at this time, entitled "London," for which he received
fifty dollars, one line of which was in capital letters,
"SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"
attracted attention; and Pope, who was then at the height of his fame,
asked Dublin University to give to the able scholar the degree of M.A.,
that he might thus be able to take the principalship of a school, and
earn three hundred dollars a year; but this was refused. Out of such
struggles come heroic souls.
When he was forty, he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," receiving
seventy-five dollars, asserted by many to be the most impressive thing
of its kind in the language. The lines,
"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"
show his struggles. A drama soon after, played by the great actor, David
Garrick, brought him nearly a thousand dollars; but the play itself was
a failure. When asked by his friends how he felt about his ill success,
he replied, "Like the monument," meaning that he continued firm and
unmoved, like a column of granite. Fame was coming at last, after he had
struggled in London for thirteen years--and what bitterness they had
brought!
For two years he worked almost constantly on a paper called the
"Rambler." When his wife said that, well as she had thought of him
before, she had never considered him equal to this, he was more pleased
than with any praise he ever received. She died three days after the
last copy was published, and Johnson was utterly prostrated. He buried
himself in hard work in his garret, a most inconvenient room; but he
said, "In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson." Her wedding-ring was
placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.
Three years afterward, his great work, his Dictionary, appeared, for
which he received eight thousand dollars; but, as he had been obliged to
employ six assistants for seven years, he was still poor, but now
famous. The Universities of Oxford and Dublin, when he no longer needed
their assistance, hastened to bestow their degrees upon him. Even George
III. invited him to the royal palace,--a strange contrast to a few years
before, when Samuel Johnson was under arrest for a debt of thirty
dollars! When asked by Reynolds how he had obtained his accuracy and
flow of language in conversation, he replied, "By trying to do my best
on every occasion and in every company." About this time his aged mother
died, and in the evenings of one week, to defray her funeral expenses,
he wrote "Rasselas," and received five hundred dollars for it. He wrote
in his last letter to her, "You have been the best mother, and I believe
the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and
beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have
omitted to do well." His last great work was "The Lives of the Poets."
He received now a pension of fifteen hundred dollars a year, for his
valuable services to literature, but never used more than four hundred
dollars for himself. He took care of a blind woman of whom he said, "She
was a friend to my poor wife, and was in the house when she died, she
has remained in it ever since," of a mother and daughter dependent upon
an old family physician, and of two men whom nobody else would care for.
Once when he found a poor woman on the street late at night, he took her
home, and kept her till she was restored to health. His pockets were
always filled with pennies for street Arabs; and, if he found poor
children asleep on a threshold, he would slip money into their hands
that, when they awakened, they might buy a breakfast. When a servant was
dying who had been in the family for forty-three years, he prayed with
her and kissed her, the tears falling down his cheeks. He wrote in his
diary, "We kissed and parted--I humbly hope to meet again, and part no
more." He held, rightly, that Christianity levels all distinctions of
rank.
He was very tender to animals. Once, when in Wales, a gardener brought
into the house a hare which had been caught in the potatoes, and was
told to give it to the cook. Dr. Johnson asked to have it placed in his
arms; then, taking it to the window, he let it go, shouting to it to
run as fast as possible. He would buy oysters for his cat, Hodge, that
the servants, from seeing his fondness for it, might be led to treat it
kindly.
He died at the age of seventy-five, such men as Burke and Reynolds
standing by his bedside. Of the latter, he begged that he would "read
his Bible, and never paint on Sundays." His last words were to a young
lady who had asked his blessing: "God bless you, my dear!" He was buried
with appropriate honors in Westminster Abbey, and monuments are erected
to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, and at Lichfield. The poor boy, nearly
blind, became "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century."
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
On a low slab in a quiet spot, just north of the Church of Knight
Templars, in London, are the simple words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith."
The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" needs no grander monument; for he
lives in the hearts of the people.
Oliver Goldsmith was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor
minister, who, by means of tilling some fields and assisting in a parish
outside his own, earned two hundred dollars a year for his wife and
seven children! When about six years old, Oliver nearly died of
smallpox, and his pitted face made him an object of jest among the boys.
At eight he showed great fondness for books, and began to write verses.
His mother pleaded for a college education for him, but there seemed
little prospect of it. One day, when a few were dancing at his uncle's
house, the little boy sprang upon the floor and began to dance. The
fiddler, to make fun of his short figure and homely face, exclaimed,
"AEsop!" The boy, stung to the quick, replied:--
"Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying,
'See AEsop dancing and his monkey playing;'"
when, of course, the fiddler became much chagrined.
[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH.]
All his school life Oliver was painfully diffident, but a good scholar.
His father finally earned a better salary, and the way seemed open for
college, when, lo! his sister, who had the opportunity of marrying a
rich man, was obliged--so thought the public opinion of the day--to have
a marriage portion of $2,000, and poor Oliver's educational hopes were
blasted. He must now enter Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar
(servant), wear a coarse black gown without sleeves, a red cap,--the
badge of servitude,--sweep the courts, carry dishes, and be treated with
contempt, which nearly crushed his sensitive nature.