The friendship of the Archduke Rudolph relieved Beethoven of the
immediate pressure of poverty; for in 1809 he settled a small
life-pension upon him. The next ten years were passed by him in
comparative ease and comfort, and in this time he gave to the world
five of his immortal symphonies, and a large number of his finest
sonatas and masses. His general health improved very much; and in his
love for his nephew Karl, whom Beethoven had adopted, the lonely man
found an outlet for his strong affections, which was medicine for his
soul, though the object was worthless and ungrateful.
We get curious and amusing insights into the daily tenor of
Beethoven's life during this period--things sometimes almost
grotesque, were they not so sad. The composer lived a solitary life,
and was very much at the mercy of his servants on account of his
self-absorption and deafness. He was much worried by these prosaic
cares. One story of a slatternly servant is as follows:--The master
was working at the mass in D, the great work which he commenced in
1819 for the celebration of the appointment of the Archduke Rudolph as
Archbishop of Olmütz, and which should have been completed by the
following year. Beethoven, however, became so engrossed with his work,
and increased its proportions so much, that it was not finished until
some two years after the event which it was intended to celebrate.
While Beethoven was engaged upon this score, he one day woke up to the
fact that some of his pages were missing. "Where on earth could they
be?" he asked himself, and the servant too; but the problem remained
unsolved. Beethoven, beside himself, spent hours and hours in
searching, and so did the servant, but it was all in vain. At last
they gave up the task as a useless one, and Beethoven, mad with
despair, and pouring the very opposite to blessings upon the head of
her who, he believed, was the author of the mischief, sat down with
the conclusion that he must rewrite the missing part. He had no sooner
commenced a new Kyrie--for this was the movement which was not to be
found--than some loose sheets of score paper were discovered in the
kitchen! Upon examination they proved to be the identical pages that
Beethoven so much desired, and which the woman, in her anxiety to be
"tidy" and to "keep things straight," had appropriated at some time or
other for wrapping up, not only old boots and clothes, but also some
superannuated pots and pans that were greasy and black!
Thus he was continually fretted by the carelessness or the rascality
of the servants in whom he was obliged to trust. He writes in his
diary--"Nancy is too uneducated for a housekeeper--indeed, quite a
beast." "My precious servants were occupied from seven o'clock till
ten trying to kindle a fire." "The cook's off again." "I shied
half-a-dozen books at her head." They made his dinner so nasty he
couldn't eat it. "No soup to-day, no beef, no eggs. Got something from
the inn at last."
His temper and peculiarities, too, made it difficult for him to live
in peace with landlords and fellow-lodgers. As his deafness increased,
he struck and thumped harder at the keys of his piano, the sound of
which he could scarcely hear. Nor was this all. The music that filled
his brain gave him no rest. He became an inspired madman. For hours he
would pace the room "howling and roaring" (as his pupil Ries puts it);
or he would stand beating time with hand and foot to the music which
was so vividly present to his mind. This soon put him into a feverish
excitement, when, to cool himself, he would take his water-jug, and,
thoughtless of everything, pour its contents over his hands, after
which he could sit down to his piano. With all this it can easily be
imagined that Beethoven was frequently remonstrated with. The landlord
complained of a damaged ceiling, and the fellow-lodgers declared that
either they or the madman must leave the house, for they could get no
rest where he was. So Beethoven never for long had a resting-place.
Impatient at being interfered with, he immediately packed up and went
off to some other vacant lodging. From this cause he was at one time
paying the rent of four lodgings at once. At times he would get tired
of this changing from one place to another--from the suburbs to the
town--and then he would fall back upon the hospitable home of a
patron, once again taking possession of an apartment which he had
vacated, probably without the least explanation or cause. One admirer
of his genius, who always reserved him a chamber in his establishment,
used to say to his servants--"Leave it empty; Beethoven is sure to
come back again."
The instant that Beethoven entered the house he began to write and
cipher on the walls, the blinds, the table, everything, in the most
abstracted manner. He frequently composed on slips of paper, which he
afterwards misplaced, so that he had great difficulty in finding them.
At one time, indeed, he forgot his own name and the date of his birth.
It is said that he once went into a Viennese restaurant, and, instead
of giving an order, began to write a score on the back of the
bill-of-fare, absorbed and unconscious of time and place. At last he
asked how much he owed. "You owe nothing, sir," said the waiter.
"What! do you think I have not dined?" "Most assuredly." "Very well,
then, give me something." "What do you wish?" "Anything."
These infirmities do not belittle the man of genius, but set off his
greatness as with a foil. They illustrate the thought of Goethe: "It
is all the same whether one is great or small, he has to pay the
reckoning of humanity."