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THE LOVES OF GREAT COMPOSERS
by
GUSTAV KOBBÉ
[Frontispiece: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (photogravure)]
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
New York
Copyright, 1904 and 1905
By The Butterick Publishing Co. (Limited)
Copyright, 1905, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
Published September, 1905
Composition and electrotype plates by
D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston
To Charles Dwyer
Table of Contents
Mozart and his Constance
Beethoven and his "Immortal Beloved"
Mendelssohn and his Cécile
Chopin and the Countess Delphine Potocka
The Schumanns: Robert and Clara
Franz Liszt and his Carolyne
Wagner and Cosima
List of Illustrations
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (photogravure) . . . . Frontispiece
Mozart at the Age of Eleven
Constance, Wife of Mozart
Ludwig van Beethoven
Countess Therese von Brunswick
"Beethoven at Heiligenstadt"
Félix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Fanny Hensel, Sister of Mendelssohn
Cécile, Wife of Mendelssohn
The Mendelssohn Monument in Leipsic
Frédéric Chopin [missing from book]
Countess Potocka
The Death of Chopin
Robert Schumann
Robert and Clara Schumann, in 1847
Clara Schumann at the Piano
The Schumann Monument in the Bonn Cemetery
Franz Liszt
Liszt at the Piano
The Princess Carolyne, in her Latter Years at Rome
The Altenburg, Weimar, where Liszt and Carolyne lived
Richard Wagner
Cosima, Wife of Wagner
Richard and Cosima Wagner
Richard and Cosima Wagner entertaining in their Home
Wahnfried, Liszt and Hans von Wolzogen
Mozart and His Constance
Nearly eight years after Mozart's death his widow, in response to a
request from a famous publishing house for relics of the composer,
sent, among other Mozartiana, a packet of letters written to her by her
husband. In transmitting these she wrote:
"Especially characteristic is his great love for me, which breathes
through all the letters. Is it not true--those from the last year of
his life are just as tender as those written during the first year of
our marriage?" She added that she would like to have this fact
especially mentioned "to his honor" in any biography in which the data
she sent were to be used. This request was not prompted by vanity, but
by a just pride in the love her husband had borne her and which she
still cherished. The love of his Constance was the solace of Mozart's
life.
The wonder-child, born in Salzburg in 1756, and taken by his father
from court to court, where he and his sister played to admiring
audiences, did not, like so many wonder-children, fade from public
view, but with manhood fulfilled the promise of his early years and
became one of the world's great masters of music. But his genius was
not appreciated until too late. The world of to-day sees in Mozart the
type of the brilliant, careless Bohemian, whom it loves to associate
with art, and long since has taken him to its heart. But the world of
his own day, when he asked for bread, offered him a stone.
Mozart died young; he was only thirty-five. His sufferings were
crowded into a few years, but throughout these years there stood by his
side one whose love soothed his trials and brightened his life,--the
Constance whom he adored. What she wrote to the publishers was
strictly true. His last letters to her breathed a love as fervent as
the first.
Some six months before he died, she was obliged to go to Baden for her
health. "You hardly will believe," he writes to her, "how heavily time
hangs on my hands without you. I cannot exactly explain my feelings.
There is a void that pains me; a certain longing that cannot be
satisfied, hence never ceases, continues ever, aye, grows from day to
day. When I think how happy and childlike we would be together in
Baden and what sad, tedious hours I pass here! I take no pleasure in
my work, because I cannot break it off now and then for a few words
with you, as I am accustomed to. When I go to the piano and sing
something from the opera ["The Magic Flute"], I have to stop right
away, it affects me so. _Basta_!--if this very hour I could see my way
clear to you, the next hour wouldn't find me here." In another letter
written at this time he kisses her "in thought two thousand times."
When Mozart first met Constance, she was too young to attract his
notice. He had stopped at Mannheim on his way to Paris, whither he was
going with his mother on a concert tour. Requiring the services of a
music copyist, he was recommended to Fridolin Weber, who eked out a
livelihood by copying music and by acting as prompter at the theatre.
His brother was the father of Weber, the famous composer, and his own
family, which consisted of four daughters, was musical. Mozart's visit
to Mannheim occurred in 1777, when Constance Weber was only fourteen.
[Illustration: Mozart at the age of eleven. From a painting by Van der
Smissen in the Mozarteum, Salzburg.]
Of her two older sisters the second, Aloysia, had a beautiful voice and
no mean looks, and the young genius was greatly taken with her from the
first. He induced his mother to linger in Mannheim much longer than
was necessary. Aloysia became his pupil; and under his tuition her
voice improved wonderfully. She achieved brilliant success in public,
and her father, delighted, watched with pleasure the sentimental
attachment that was springing up between her and Mozart. Meanwhile
Leopold Mozart was in Salzburg wondering why his wife and son were so
long delaying their further journey to Paris.
When he received from Wolfgang letters full of enthusiasm over his
pupil, coupled with a proposal that instead of going to Paris, he and
his mother should change their destination to Italy and take the Weber
family along, in order that Aloysia might further develop her talents
there, he got an inkling of the true state of affairs and was furious.
He had large plans for his son, knew Weber to be shiftless and the
family poor, and concluded that, for their own advantage, they were
endeavoring to trap Wolfgang into a matrimonial alliance. Peremptory
letters sent wife and son on their way to Paris, and the elder Mozart
was greatly relieved when he knew them safely beyond the confines of
Mannheim.
Mozart's stay in Paris was tragically brought to an end by his mother's
death. He set out for his return to Salzburg, intending, however, to
stop at Mannheim, for he still remembered Aloysia affectionately.
Finding that the Weber family had moved to Munich, he went there. But
as soon as he came into the presence of the beautiful young singer her
manner showed that her feelings toward him had cooled. Thereupon, his
ardor was likewise chilled, and he continued on his way to Salzburg,
where he arrived, much to his father's relief, still "unattached."
When Mozart departed from Munich, he probably thought that he was
leaving behind him forever, not only the fickle Aloysia, but the rest
of the Weber family as well. How slight our premonition of fate! For,
if ever the inscrutable ways of Providence brought two people together,
those two were Mozart and Constance Weber. Nor was Aloysia without
further influence on his career. She married an actor named Lange,
with whom she went to Vienna, where she became a singer at the opera.
There Mozart composed for her the rôle of Constance in his opera, "The
Elopement from the Seraglio." For the eldest Weber girl, Josepha, who
had a high, flexible soprano, he wrote one of his most brilliant rôles,
that of the Queen of the Night in "The Magic Flute." I am anticipating
somewhat in the order of events that I may correct an erroneous
impression regarding Mozart's marriage, which I find frequently
obtains. He composed the rôle of Constance for Aloysia shortly before
he married the real Constance; and this has led many people to believe
that he took the younger sister out of pique, because he had been
rejected by Aloysia. Whoever believes this has a very superficial
acquaintance with Mozart's biography. Five years had passed since he
had parted from Aloysia at Munich. The youthful affair had blown over;
and when they met again in Vienna she was Frau Lange. Mozart's
marriage with Constance was a genuine love-match. It was bitterly
opposed by his father, who never became wholly reconciled to the woman
of his son's choice, and met with no favor from her mother. Fridolin
Weber had died. Altogether the omens were unfavorable, and there were
obstacles enough to have discouraged any but the most ardent couple.
So much for the pique story.
Mozart went to Vienna in 1781 with the Archbishop of Salzburg, by whom,
however, he was treated with such indignity that he left his service.
Whom should he find in Vienna but his old friends the Webers! Frau
Weber was glad enough of the opportunity to let lodgings to Mozart,
for, as in Mannheim and Munich, the family was in straitened
circumstances. As soon as the composer's father heard of this
arrangement, he began to expostulate. Finally Mozart changed his
lodgings; but this step had the very opposite effect hoped for by
Leopold Mozart, for separation only increased the love that had sprung
up between the young people since they had met again in Vienna, and
Mozart had found the little fourteen-year-old girl of his Mannheim
visit grown to young womanhood.
There seems little doubt that the Webers, with the exception of
Constance, were a shiftless lot. They had drifted from place to place
and had finally come to Vienna, because Aloysia had moved there with
her husband. When Mozart finally decided to marry Constance, come what
might, he wrote his father a letter which shows that his eyes were wide
open to the faults of the family, and by the calm, almost judicial,
manner in which he refers to the virtues of his future wife, that his
was no hastily formed attachment, based merely on superficial
attractions.
He does not spare the family in his analysis of their traits. If he
seems ungallant in his references to his future Queen of the Night and
to the prima donna of his "Elopement from the Seraglio," to say nothing
of his former attachment for her, one must remember that this is a
letter from a son to a father, in which frankness is permissible. He
admits the intemperance and shrewishness of the mother; characterizes
Josepha as lazy and vulgar; calls Aloysia a malicious person and
coquette; dismisses the youngest, Sophie, as too young to be anything
but simply a good though thoughtless creature. Surely not an
attractive picture and not a family one would enter lightly.
What drew him to Constance? Let him answer that question himself.
"But the middle one, my good, dear Constance," he writes to his father,
"is a martyr among them, and for that reason, perhaps, the best
hearted, cleverest, and, in a word, the best among them. . . . She is
neither homely nor beautiful. Her whole beauty lies in two small, dark
eyes and in a fine figure. She is not brilliant, but has common sense
enough to perform her duties as wife and mother. She is not
extravagant; on the contrary, she is accustomed to go poorly dressed,
because what little her mother can do for her children she does for the
others, but never for her. It is true that she would like to be
tastefully and becomingly dressed, but never expensively; and most of
the things a woman needs she can make for herself. She does her own
coiffure every day [head-dress must have been something appalling in
those days]; understands housekeeping; has the best disposition in the
world. We love each other with all our hearts. Tell me if I could ask
a better wife for myself?"
The letter is so touchingly frank and simple that whoever reads it must
feel that the portrait Mozart draws of his Constance is absolutely true
to life. He makes no attempt to paint her as a paragon of beauty and
intellect. It is a picture of the neglected member of a
household--neglected because of her homely virtues, the one fair flower
blooming in the dark crevice of this shiftless menage. And at the end
of the letter is the one cry which, since the world was young, has
defied and brought to naught the doubting counsels of wiser heads: "We
love each other with all our hearts."
The elder Mozart, fearful for his son's future, had kept himself
informed of what was going on in Vienna. He knew that when his son's
attentions to Constance became marked, her guardian had compelled him
to sign a promise of marriage. In this the father again saw a trap
laid for his son, who in worldly matters was as unversed as a child.
But Leopold Mozart did not know how the episode ended, and little
suspected that future generations would see in it one of the most
charming incidents in the love affairs of great men. For, when her
guardian had left the house, Constance asked her mother for the paper,
and as soon as she had it in her hands, tore it up, exclaiming: "Dear
Mozart, I do not need a written promise from you. I trust your words."
Frau Weber saw in Mozart, the suitor, a possible contributor to the
household expenses, and as soon as she learned that he and Constance
intended to set up for themselves, she became bitterly opposed to the
match. Finally a titled lady, Baroness von Waldstadter, took the young
people under her protection, and Constance went to live with her to
escape her mother's nagging. Frau Weber then planned to force her
daughter to return to her by legal process. Immediate marriage was the
only method of escape from the scandal this would entail; and so,
August 4, 1782, Mozart and his Constance were married in the Church of
St. Stephen, Vienna. When at last they had all obstacles behind them
and stood at the altar as one, they were so overcome by their feelings
that they began to cry; and the few bystanders, including the priest,
were so deeply affected by their happiness that they too were moved to
tears.
[Illustration: Constance, wife of Mozart. From an engraving by Nissen.]
Although poor, Mozart, through his music, had become acquainted with
titled personages and was known at court. He and Constance, shortly
after their wedding, were walking in the Prater with their pet dog. To
make the dog bark, Mozart playfully pretended to strike Constance with
his cane. At that moment the Emperor, chancing to come out of a summer
house and seeing Mozart's action, which he misinterpreted, began
chiding him for abusing his wife so shortly after they had been
married. When his mistake was explained to him, he was highly amused.
Later he could not fail to hear of the couple's devotion. "Vienna was
witness to these relations," wrote a contemporary of Mozart's and
Constance's love for each other; and when Aloysia and her husband
quarrelled and separated, the Emperor, meeting Constance and referring
to her sister's troubles, said, "What a difference it makes to have a
good husband."
In spite of poverty and its attendant struggles, Mozart's marriage was
a happy one, because it was a marriage of love. Like every child of
genius, he had his moods, but Constance adapted herself to them and
thereby won his confidence and gained an influence over him which,
however, she brought into play only when the occasion demanded. When
he was thinking out a work, he was absent-minded, and at such times she
always was ready to humor him, and even cut his meat for him at table,
as he was apt during such periods of abstraction to injure himself.
But when he had a composition well in mind, to put it on paper seemed
little more to him than copying; and then he loved to have her sit by
him and tell him stories--yes, regular fairy tales and children's
stories, as if he himself still were a child. He would write and
listen, drop his pen and laugh, and then go on with work again. The
day before the first performance of "Don Giovanni," when the final
rehearsal already had been held, the overture still remained unwritten.
It had to be written overnight, and it was she who sat by him and
relieved the rush and strain of work with her cheerful prattle. It is
said that, among other things, she read to him the story of "Aladdin
and the Wonderful Lamp." Be that as it may;--she rubbed the lamp, and
the overture to "Don Giovanni" appeared.
Would that their life could be portrayed in a series of such charming
pictures! but grinding poverty was there also, and the bitterness of
disappointed hopes. His sensitive nature could not withstand the
repeated material shocks to which it was subjected. And the pity is,
that it gave way just when there seemed a prospect of a change. "The
Magic Flute" had been produced with great success, and that in the face
of relentless opposition from envious rivals; and orders from new
sources and on better terms were coming to him. But the turn of the
tide was too late. When he received an order for a Requiem from a
person who wished his identity to remain unknown--he was subsequently
discovered to be a nobleman, who wanted to produce the work as his
own--Mozart already felt the hand of death upon him and declared that
he was composing the Requiem for his own obsequies. Even after he was
obliged to take to his bed, he worked at it, saying it was to be _his_
Requiem and must be ready in time. The afternoon before he died, he
went over the completed portions with three friends, and at the
Lachrymosa burst into tears. In the evening he lost consciousness, and
early the following morning, December 5, 1791, he passed away. The
immediate cause of death was rheumatic fever with typhoid
complications, and his distracted widow, hoping to catch the same
disease and be carried away by it, threw herself upon his bed. She was
too prostrated to attend his funeral, which, be it said to the shame of
his friends, was a shabby affair. The day was stormy, and after the
service indoors they left before the actual burial, which was in one of
the "common graves," holding ten or twelve bodies and intended to be
worked over every few years for new interments. When, as soon as
Constance was strong enough, she visited the cemetery there was a new
grave-digger, who upon being questioned could not locate her husband's
grave, and to this day Mozart's last resting-place is unknown.
It must not be reckoned against Constance that, eighteen years after
Mozart's death, she married again. For she did not forget the man on
whom her heart first was set. Her second husband, Nissen, formerly
Danish chargé d'affaires in Vienna, is best known by the biography of
Mozart which he wrote under her guidance. They removed to Mozart's
birthplace, Salzburg, where Nissen died in 1826. Constance's death was
strangely associated with Mozart's memory. It was as if in her last
moments she must go back to him who was her first love. For she died
in Salzburg, on March 6, 1842, a few hours after the model for the
Mozart monument, which adorns one of the spacious squares of the city
where the composer was born, was received there. She had been the
life-love of a child of genius and, without being singularly gifted
herself, had understood how to humor his whims and adapt herself to his
moods in which sunshine often was succeeded by shadow. It was
singularly appropriate that, surviving him many years, she yet died
under circumstances which formed a new link between her and his memory.
Beethoven and his "Immortal Beloved"
One day when Baron Spaun, an old Viennese character and a friend of
Beethoven's, entered the composer's lodgings, he found the man, every
line of whose face denoted, above all else, strength of character,
bending over a portrait of a woman and weeping, as he muttered, "You
were too good, too angelic!" A moment later, he had thrust the
portrait into an old chest and, with a toss of his well-set head, was
his usual self again.
As Spaun was leaving, he said to the composer, "There is nothing evil
in your face to-day, old fellow."
"My good angel appeared to me this morning," was Beethoven's reply.
[Illustration: Ludwig van Beethoven]
After the composer's death, in 1827, the portrait was found in the old
chest, and also a letter, in his handwriting and evidently written to a
woman, whose name, however, was not given, but who was addressed by
Beethoven as his "Immortal Beloved." The letter was regarded as a
great find, and biographer after biographer has stated that it must
have been written to the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom he
dedicated the famous "Moonlight Sonata." There was, however, one
woman, who survived Beethoven more than thirty years, and who, during
that weary stretch of time, knew whose was the portrait that had been
found in the old chest and the identity of the woman who had returned
to him the letter addressed to his "Immortal Beloved," after the
strange severance of relations which both had continued to hold sacred.
But she suffered in silence, and never even knew what had become of the
picture.
This precious picture, which Beethoven had held in his hands and wetted
with his tears, passed, with his death, into the possession of his
brother Carl's widow. No one knew who it was, or took any interest in
it. In 1863 a Viennese musician, Joseph Hellmesberger, succeeded in
having Beethoven's remains transferred to a metallic casket, and the
Beethoven family, in recognition of his efforts, made him a present of
the portrait. Later it was acquired by the Beethoven Museum, in Bonn,
where the master was born in 1772. There it hangs beside his own
portrait, and on the back still can be read the inscription, in a
feminine hand:
"_To the rare genius, the great artist, and the good man, from T. B._"
Who was "T. B."? If some one who had recently seen the Bonn portrait
should chance to visit the National Museum in Budapest, he would come
upon the bust of a woman whose features seemed familiar to him. They
would grow upon him as those of the woman with the yellow shawl over
her light-brown hair, a drapery of red on her shoulders and fastened at
her throat, who had looked out at him from the Bonn portrait. The
bust, made at a more advanced age, he would find had been placed in the
museum in honor of the woman who founded the first home for friendless
children in the Austrian Empire; and her name? Countess Therese
Brunswick. She was Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved." "T. B."--Therese
Brunswick. She was the woman who knew that the portrait found in the
old chest was hers; and that the letter had been received by her
shortly after her secret betrothal to Beethoven, and returned by her to
him when he broke the engagement because he loved her too deeply to
link her life to his.
[Illustration: Countess Therese von Brunswick. From the portrait by
Ritter von Lampir in the Beethoven-Haus at Bonn. Redrawn by Reich.]
The tragedy of their romance lay in its non-fulfilment. Beethoven was
a man of noble nature, yet what had he to offer her in return for her
love? His own love, it is true. But he was uncouth, stricken with
deafness, and had many of the "bad moments" of genius. He foresaw
unhappiness for both, and, to spare her, took upon himself the great
act of renunciation. We need only recall him weeping over the picture
of his Therese. And Therese? To her dying day she treasured his
memory. Very few shared her secret. Her brother Franz, Beethoven's
intimate friend, knew it. Baron Spaun also divined the cause of his
melancholy. Some years after the composer's death, Countess Therese
Brunswick conceived a great liking for a young girl, Miriam Tenger,
whom she had taken under her care for a short period, until a suitable
school was selected for her in Vienna. When the time for parting came,
Miriam burst into tears and clung to the Countess's hand.
"Child! Child!" exclaimed the lady, "do you really love me so deeply?"
"I love you, I love you so," sobbed the child, "that I could die for
you."
The Countess placed her hand on the girl's head. "My child," she said,
"when you have grown older and wiser, you will understand what I mean
when I say that to _live_ for those we love shows a far greater love,
because it requires so much more courage. But while you are in Vienna,
there is one favor you can do me, which my heart will consider a great
one. On the twenty-seventh of every March go to the Wahringer Cemetery
and lay a wreath of immortelles on Beethoven's grave."
When, true to her promise, the girl went with her school principal to
the cemetery, they found a man bending over the grave and placing
flowers upon it. He looked up as they approached.
"The child comes at the request of the Countess Therese Brunswick,"
explained the principal.
"The Countess Therese Brunswick! Immortelles upon this grave are fit
from her alone." The speaker was Beethoven's faithful friend, Baron
Spaun.
In 1860, when the leaves of thirty-three autumns had fallen upon the
composer's grave and the Countess had gone to her last resting-place, a
voice, like an echo from a dead past, linked the names of Beethoven and
the woman he had loved. There was at that time in Germany a virtuosa,
Frau Hebenstreit, who when a young girl had been a pupil of Beethoven's
friend, the violinist Schuppanzigh. At a musical, in the year
mentioned, she had just taken part in a performance of the third
"Leonore" overture, when, as if moved to speak by the beauty of the
music, she suddenly said: "Only think of it! Just as a person sits to
a painter for a portrait, Countess Therese Brunswick was the model for
Beethoven's Leonore. What a debt the world owes her for it!" After a
pause she went on:
"Beethoven never would have dared marry without money, and a countess,
too--and so refined, and delicate enough to blow away. And he--an
angel and a demon in one! What would have become of them both, and of
his genius with him?" So far as I have been able to discover, this was
the first even semi-public linking of the two names.
Yet all these years there was one person who knew the secret--the woman
who as a school-girl had placed the wreath of immortelles on
Beethoven's grave for her much-loved Countess Therese Brunswick.
Through this act of devotion Miriam Tenger seemed to become to the
Countess a tie that stretched back to her past, and though they saw
each other only at long intervals, Miriam's presence awakened anew the
old memories in the Countess's heart, and from her she heard piecemeal,
and with pauses of years between, the story of hers and Beethoven's
romance.
Therese was the daughter of a noble house. Beethoven was welcome both
as teacher and guest in the most aristocratic circles of Vienna. The
noble men and women who figure in the dedications of his works were
friends, not merely patrons. Despite his uncouth manners and
appearance, his genius, up to the point at least when it took its
highest flights in the "Ninth Symphony" and the last quartets, was
appreciated; and he was a figure in Viennese society. The Brunswick
house was one of many that were open to him. The Brunswicks were art
lovers. Franz, the son of the house, was the composer's intimate
friend. The mother had all possible graciousness and charm, but with
it also a passionate pride in her family and her rank, a hauteur that
would have caused her to regard an alliance between Therese and
Beethoven as monstrous. Therese was an exceptional woman. She had an
oval, classic face, a lovely disposition, a pure heart and a finely
cultivated mind. The German painter, Peter Cornelius, said of her that
any one who spoke with her felt elevated and ennobled. The family was
of the right mettle. The Countess Blanka Teleki, who was condemned to
death for complicity in the Hungarian uprising of 1848, but whose
sentence was commuted to life imprisonment--she finally was released in
1858,--was Therese's niece, and is said to have borne a striking
likeness to her. It may be mentioned that Giulietta Guicciardi, of the
"Moonlight Sonata," was Therese's cousin. There seems no doubt that
the composer was attracted to Giulietta before he fell in love with his
"Immortal Beloved." That is why his biographers were so ready to
believe that the letter was addressed to the lady with the romantic
name and identified with one of his most romantic works.
Therese herself told Miriam that one day Giulietta, who had become the
affianced of Count Gallenberg, rushed into her room, threw herself at
her feet like a "stage princess," and cried out: "Counsel me, cold,
wise one! I long to give Gallenberg his congé and marry the
wonderfully ugly, beautiful Beethoven, if--if only it did not involve
lowering myself socially." Therese, who worshipped the composer's
genius and already loved him secretly, turned the subject off, fearful
lest she should say, in her indignation at the young woman who thought
she would be lowering herself by marrying Beethoven, something that
might lead to an irreparable breach. "Moonlight Sonata," or no
"Moonlight Sonata," there are two greater works by the same genius that
bear the Brunswick name,--the "Appassionata," dedicated to Count Franz
Brunswick, and the sonata in F-sharp major, Opus 78, dedicated to
Therese, and far worthier of her chaste beauty and intellect than the
"Moonlight."
It will be noticed that Giulietta called Therese the "cold, wise one."
Her purity led her own mother to speak other as an "anchoress." Yet it
was she who from the time she was fifteen years old to the day of her
death cherished the great composer in her heart; and of her love for
him were the mementos that he sacredly guarded. When Therese was
fifteen years old she became Beethoven's pupil. The lessons were
severe. Yet beneath the rough exterior she recognized the heart of a
nobleman. The "cold, wise one," the "anchoress," fell in love with him
soon after the lessons began, but carefully hid her feelings from every
one. There is a charming anecdote of the early acquaintance of the
composer and Therese.
The children of the house of Brunswick were carefully brought up.
During the music lessons the mother was accustomed to sit in an
adjoining room with the door between open. One bitterly cold winter
day Beethoven arrived at the appointed hour. Therese had practised
diligently, but the work was difficult and, in addition, she was
nervous. As a result she began too fast, became disconcerted when
Beethoven gruffly called out "_Tempo!_" and made mistake after mistake,
until the master, irritated beyond endurance, rushed from the room and
the house in such a hurry that he forgot his overcoat and muffler. In
a moment Therese had picked up these, reached the door and was out in
the street with them, when the butler overtook her, relieved her of
them and hurried after the composer's retreating figure.
When the girl entered the doorway again, she came face to face with her
mother, who, fortunately, had not seen her in the street, but who was
scandalized that a daughter of the house of Brunswick should so far
have forgotten herself and her dignity as to have run after a man even
if only to the front door, and with his overcoat and muffler. "He
might have caught cold and died," gasped Therese, in answer to her
mother's remonstrance. What would the mother have said had she known
that her daughter actually had run out into the street, and had been
prevented from following Beethoven until she overtook him only by the
butler's timely action!
Therese's brother Franz was devoted to her. As a boy he had taken his
other sister (afterward Blanka Teleki's mother) out in a boat on the
"Mediterranean," one of the ponds at Montonvasar, the Brunswick country
estate. The boat upset. Therese, who was watching them from the bank,
rushed in and hauled them out. Franz was asked if he had been
frightened. "No," he answered, "I saw my good angel coming."
When he became intimate with Beethoven, he told the composer about this
incident, and also how, after that stormy music lesson, Therese had
started to overtake him with his coat and muffler. Knowing what a
lonely, unhappy existence the composer led, he could not help adding
that life would be very different if he had a good angel to watch over
him, such as he had in his sister.
Franz little knew that his words fell upon Beethoven like seed on eager
soil. From that time on he looked at Therese with different eyes. His
own love soon taught him to know that he was loved in return. No
pledge had yet passed between them when, in May, 1806, he went to
Montonvasar on a visit; but one evening there, when Therese was
standing at the piano listening to him play, he softly intoned Bach's--
"Would you your true heart show me,
Begin it secretly,
For all the love you trow me,
Let none the wiser be.
Our love, great beyond measure,
To none must we impart;
So, lock our rarest treasure
Securely in your heart."
Next morning they met in the park. He told her that at last he had
discovered in her the model for his Leonore, the heroine of his opera
"Fidelio." "And so we found each other"--these were the simple words
with which, many years later, Therese concluded the narrative of her
betrothal with Beethoven to Miriam Tenger.
The engagement had to be kept a secret. Had it become known, it would
have ended in his immediate dismissal by the Countess' mother. In only
one person was confidence reposed, Franz, the devoted brother and
treasured friend. Therese's income was small, and Franz, knowing the
opposition with which the proposed match would meet, pointed out to
Beethoven that it would be necessary for him to secure a settled
position and income before the engagement could be published and the
marriage take place. The composer himself saw the justice of this, and
assented.
[Illustration: "Beethoven at Heiligenstadt." From the painting by Carl
Schmidt.]
Early in July Beethoven left Montonvasar for Furen, a health resort on
the Plattensee, which he reached after a hard trip. Fatigued, grieving
over the first parting from Therese, and downcast over his uncertain
future, he there wrote the letter to his "Immortal Beloved," which is
now one of the treasures of the Berlin Library. It is a long letter,
much too long to be given here in full, written for the most part in
ejaculatory phrases, and curiously alternating between love, despair,
courage and hopefulness and commonplace, everyday affairs. Nor will
space permit me to tell how Alexander W. Thayer, an American, who spent
a great part of his life and means in gathering detailed and authentic
data for a Beethoven biography,--which, however, he did not live to
finish,--worked out the year in which this letter was written
(Beethoven gave only the day of the month); showed that it must be
1806; proved further that it could not have been intended for Giulietta
Guicciardi, yet did not venture to state that Countess Therese
Brunswick was the undoubted recipient. Afterward, I believe, he heard
of Miriam Tenger, entered into correspondence with her, and the letters
doubtless will be found among his papers; but he did not live to make
use of the information.
One of the reasons why the identity of the recipient of Beethoven's
letter remained so long unknown was that he did not address her by
name. The letter begins: "My angel, my all, myself!" In order to
secure a fixed position, Beethoven had decided to try Prussia and even
England, and this intention he refers to when, after apostrophizing
Therese as his "immortal beloved," he writes these burning words:
"Yes, I have decided to toss abroad so long, until I can fly to your
arms and call myself at home with you, and let my soul, enveloped in
your love, wander through the kingdom of spirits." The letter has this
exclamatory postscript:
"Eternally yours!
Eternally mine!
Eternally one another's!"
The engagement lasted until 1810, four years, when the letters, which
through Franz's aid had passed between Beethoven and Therese, were
returned. Therese, however, always treasured as one of her "jewels" a
sprig of immortelle fastened with a ribbon to a bit of paper, the
ribbon fading with passing years, the paper growing yellow, but still
showing the words: "_L'Immortelle à son Immortelle--Luigi_."
It had been Beethoven's custom to enclose a sprig of immortelle in
nearly every letter he sent her, and all these sprigs she kept in her
desk many, many years. She made a white silken pillow of the flowers;
and, when death came at last, she was laid at rest, her head cushioned
on the mementos of the man she had loved.
Mendelssohn and his Cécile
Mendelssohn was a popular idol. On his death the mournful news was
placarded all over Leipsic, where he had made his home, and there was
an immense funeral procession. When the church service was over, a
woman in deep mourning was led to the bier, and sinking down beside it,
remained long in prayer. It was Cécile taking her last farewell of
Felix.
Mendelssohn was born under a lucky star. The pathways of most musical
geniuses are covered with thorns; his was strewn with roses. The
Mendelssohn family, originally Jewish, was well-to-do and highly
refined, and Felix's grandfather was a philosophical writer of some
note. This inspired the oft-quoted _mot_ of the musician's father:
"Once I was known as the son of the famous Mendelssohn; now I am known
as the father of the famous Mendelssohn."
Felix was an amazingly clever, fascinating boy. Coincident with his
musical gifts he had a talent for art. Goethe was captivated by him,
and the many distinguished friends of the Mendelssohn house in Berlin
adored him. This house was a gathering place of artists, musicians,
literary men and scientists; his genius had the stimulus found in the
"atmosphere" of such a household. There was one member of that
household between whom and himself the most tender relations
existed,--his sister Fanny, who became the wife of Hensel, the artist.
The musical tastes of Felix and Fanny were alike: she was the
confidante of his ambitions, and thus was created between them an
artistic sympathy, which from childhood greatly strengthened the family
bond. Growing up amid love and devotion, to say nothing of the
admiration accorded his genius in the home circle, with tastes,
naturally refined, cultivated to the utmost both by education and
absorption, he was apt to be most fastidious in the choice of a wife.
Fastidiousness in everything was, in fact, one of his traits. One has
but to recall how, one after another, he rejected the subjects that
were offered him for operatic composition. "I am afraid," said his
father, who was quite anxious to see his famous son properly settled in
life, "that Felix's censoriousness will prevent his getting a wife as
well as a libretto."
[Illustration: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.]
It may have been a regretful feeling that he had disappointed his
father by not marrying which led him, after the latter's sudden death
in November, 1835, to consider the matter more seriously. He hastened
to Berlin to his mother, and then returned to Leipsic, where he had
charge of the famous Gewandhaus concerts. He settled down to work
again, and especially to finish his oratorio of "St. Paul." In March,
1836, the University of Leipsic made him a Ph.D.
In May or June of this year a friend and colleague named Schelble, who
conducted the Caecilia Singing Society at Frankfort-on-the-Main, was
taken ill, and, desiring to rest and recuperate, asked Mendelssohn to
officiate in his place. The request came at an inconvenient time, for
he had planned to take some recreation himself, and had mapped out a
tour to Switzerland and Genoa. But Felix was an obliging fellow, and
promptly responded with an affirmative when his colleague called upon
him for aid. The unselfish relinquishment of his intended tour was to
meet with a further reward than that which comes from the satisfaction
of a good deed done at some self-sacrifice, and this reward was the
more grateful because unexpected by his friends, his family, or even
himself. Yet it was destined to delight them all.
Felix was in Frankfort six weeks. So short a period rarely leads to a
decisive event in a man's life, but did so in Mendelssohn's case. He
occupied lodgings in a house on the Schöne Aussicht (Beautiful View),
with an outlook upon the river. But there was another beautiful view
in Frankfort which occupied his attention far more, for among those he
met during his sojourn in the city on the Main was Cécile,--Cécile
Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud. Her father, long dead, had been the
pastor of the French Walloon Reformed Church in Frankfort, where his
widow and children moved in the best social circles of the city.
Cécile, then seventeen (ten years younger than Felix), was a "beauty"
of a most delicate type. Mme. Jeanrenaud still was a fine-looking
woman, and possibly because of this fact, coupled with Felix's shy
manner in the presence of Cécile, now that for the first time his heart
was deeply touched, it was at first supposed that he was courting the
mother; and her children, Cécile included, twitted her on it.
Now Felix acted in a manner characteristic of his bringing up and of
the bent of his genius. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt,
Wagner--not one of these hesitated a moment where his heart was
concerned. If anything, they were too impetuous. They are the masters
of the passionate expression in music; Mendelssohn's music is of the
refined, delicate type--like his own bringing up. The perfectly
polished "Songs without Words," the smoothly flowing symphonies, the
lyric violin concerto--these are most typical of his genius. Only here
and there in his works are there fitful flashes of deeper significance,
as in certain dramatic passages of the "Elijah" oratorio. And so, when
Felix found himself possessed of a passion for Cécile Jeanrenaud, the
beautiful, he did not throw himself at her feet and pour out a
confession of love to her. Far from it. With a calmness that would
make one feel like pinching him, were it not that after all the story
has a "happy ending," he left Frankfort at the end of six weeks, when
his feelings were at their height, and in order to submit the state of
his affections to a cool and unprejudiced scrutiny, he went to
Scheveningen, Holland, where he spent a month. Anything more
characteristically Mendelssohnian can scarcely be imagined than this
leisurely passing of judgment on his own heart.
Just what Cécile thought of his sudden departure we do not know. No
doubt by that time she had ceased twitting her mother on Felix's
supposed intentions to make Frau Mendelssohn of Mme. Jeanrenaud, for it
must have become apparent that the attentions of the famous composer
were not directed toward the beautiful mother, but toward the more
beautiful daughter. If, however, she felt at all uneasy at his going
away at the time when he should have been preparing to declare himself,
her doubts would have been dispelled could she have read some of the
letters which he dispatched from Scheveningen. That she herself was
captivated by him there seems no doubt. It was an amusing change from
her preconceived notion of him. She had imagined him a stiff,
disagreeable, jealous old man, who wore a green velvet skull-cap and
played tedious fugues. This prejudice, needless to say, was dispelled
at their first meeting, when she found the crabbed creation of her
fancy a man of the world, with gracious, winning manners, and a
brilliant conversationalist not only on music, but also on other topics.
[Illustration: Fanny Hensel, sister of Mendelssohn.]
It is a curious coincidence that when Felix left Frankfort for
Scheveningen, with the image of this fair being in his heart, the
Caecilia Society should have presented him with a handsome
dressing-case marked "F. M.-B. and Caecilia.'" [1] He had come to
Frankfort to conduct the Caecilia; he had met Caecilia; and now he was
at the last moment reminded that he was leaving Caecilia behind; yet he
was carrying Caecilia with him. If there is anything prophetic in
coincidences, everything pointed to the fact that Caecilia was to play
a more prominent part in his life than that of a mere name.
Even before Felix left Frankfort there were some who were in his
secret. Evidently the Mendelssohn family had received reports of his
attentions to the fair Cécile Jeanrenaud and were all a-flutter with
happy anticipation. For there is a letter from Felix to his sister
Rebecca which must have been written in answer to one from her
containing something in the nature of an inquiry regarding the state of
his feelings. "The present period in my life," he writes to her, "is a
very strange one, for I am more desperately in love than I ever was
before, and I do not know what to do. I leave Frankfort the day after
to-morrow, but I feel as if it would cost me my life. At all events I
intend to return here and see this charming girl once more before I go
back to Leipsic. But I have not an idea whether she likes me or not,
and I do not know what to do to make her like me, as I already have
said. But one thing is certain--that to her I owe the first real
happiness I have had this year, and now I feel fresh and hopeful again
for the first time. When away from her, though, I always am sad--now,
you see, I have let you into a secret which nobody else knows anything
about; but in order that you may set the whole world an example in
discretion, I will tell you nothing more about it." He adds that he is
going to detest the seashore, and ends with the exclamation, "O
Rebecca! What shall I do?" Rebecca might have answered, "Tell Cécile,
instead of me;" and, indeed, I wonder if she did not take occasion to
drop a few hints to Cécile during her brother's absence in Holland.
There was another who might have told Cécile how Felix felt toward
her,--his mother. For to her he wrote from Scheveningen that he gladly
would send Holland, its dykes, sea baths, bathing-machines, Kursaals
and visitors to the end of the world to be back in Frankfort. "When I
have seen this charming girl again, I hope the suspense soon will be
over and I shall know whether we are to be anything--or rather
everything--to each other, or not." Evidently his scrutiny of his own
feelings was leading him to a very definite conclusion. He was in
Scheveningen, but his heart was in the city on the Main, and he was
wishing himself back in the Schöne Aussicht--longing for that
"beautiful view" once more.
Back to Frankfort he hied himself as soon as the month in Holland was
happily over. It was not only back to Frankfort, it was back to
Cécile, in every sense of the words; for if Rebecca and his mother had
not conveyed to the delicate beauty some suggestion of the feelings she
had inspired in Felix's heart, she herself must have become aware of
them, and of something very much like in her own, since matters were
not long in coming to a point after his return. He spent August at
Scheveningen; in September his suspense was over, for his engagement to
Cécile formally took place at Kronberg, near Frankfort. Three weeks
later he was obliged to go back to his duties at Leipsic. How much he
was beloved by the public appears from the fact that at the next
Gewandhaus concert the directors placed on the programme, "Wer ein
Holdes Weib Errungen" (He who a Lovely Wife has Won) from "Fidelio,"
and that when the number was reached, and Felix raised his bâton, the
audience burst into applause which continued a long time. It was their
congratulations to their idol on his betrothal.
[Illustration: Cécile, wife of Mendelssohn.]
"Les Feliciens" was the title given to Felix and Cécile by his sister
Fanny later in life. At this time Mendelssohn himself was
indescribably happy. At least, he could not himself find words in
which to express all he felt. It is pleasant to find that a great
composer is no exception to the rule which makes lovers "too happy for
words." "But what words am I to use in describing my happiness?" he
writes to his sister. "I do not know and am dumb, but not for the same
reason as the monkeys on the Orinoco--far from it."