CONCLUSION
The third and last period of Beethoven’s life, from 1813 to 1827,
during which he produced the remarkable later pianoforte sonatas and
string quartets, the Quintet, opus 104, the Wind Octet, opus 103,
the noble Missa Solemnis, which he considered his greatest work,
and the immortal Ninth or Choral Symphony, was a time of affliction
and wretchedness. The record of these bitter years of the deaf,
lonely, poverty-hounded master, surrounded by unfeeling relatives and
indifferent and dishonest servants, stricken with disease, and laboring
through all to realize his grand artistic conceptions, is relieved only
by his unflinching fortitude and grim humor. The heroic spirit of the
man matched his misfortunes. For him, if for any one, the boast of the
stoic poet would have been justifiable:
“In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.”
There was something almost diabolically sinister in the fate that
placed Beethoven, so sensitive to personalities, so peculiarly in need
of tranquillity for the pursuit of his ideas, in the midst of such a
pack of rascally kindred. The great canker of his life was his nephew,
Carl, left his ward, in 1815, by the death of his brother. A loafer in
billiard-rooms, a devotee of cheap amours, a dissipated, frivolous, and
wholly irreverent weakling, this young man looked upon his uncle simply
as a source of florins, having apparently no respect for his age, his
sufferings, or his genius. To make matters worse, Beethoven found it
necessary, in order to secure the boy’s custody, to go to law against
his mother, whom he picturesquely and significantly named “The Queen
of the Night.” He was involved in endless lawsuits to gain the very
responsibilities which proved so heavy and so fruitless. Carl rewarded
all this care and love by holding clandestine meetings with his
mother, by squandering his uncle’s hard-earned money, by neglecting the
commissions which the composer, deaf and ill, was obliged to entrust to
him; and finally, brought to the verge of despair by his own weakness,
he attempted suicide, was locked up in an asylum, and was eventually
packed off to the army. In all Beethoven’s struggles with his nephew
he got no help from the boy’s other uncle, the “land-owner” of the
anecdote, Johann van Beethoven, whom the composer bitterly called his
“pseudo-brother.” This complacent apothecary saw no need of helping a
brother who was one of the greatest artists living, and whose life was
being slowly sapped by sordid anxieties. Doubtless Beethoven was a man
difficult to help--a man of high temper, perverse whims, uncompromising
speech. But the story, nevertheless, is an unpleasant one, in which
young Carl and old Johann Beethoven play unenviable rôles.
In his contact with these wretched relatives Beethoven was not
supported by a comfortable, congenial home. A bachelor, poor,
absent-minded, and engrossed in abstract pursuits, he was at the mercy
of rapacious landlords and self-seeking or incompetent servants. After
1816, when, largely for his nephew’s sake, he began keeping house,
he was given hardly a moment of ease by what he called his “domestic
rabble.” His letters are full of indignant protests or half-humorous
jibes against the old “witch,” or “Satanas,” as he called his
housekeeper--a half-crazy beldame who not only neglected his table and
let the dust thicken on his books, but on one occasion actually used
the manuscript of a part of his great Mass to wrap around old boots.
“My dear Son,” he writes (it was thus that he habitually addressed his
nephew), “It is impossible to permit this to continue any longer; no
soup to-day, no beef, no eggs, and at last _broiled meat_ from the inn!
Little as I require what nourishes the body, as you know, still the
present state of things is really too bad, besides being every moment
in danger of being poisoned.” Another time he exclaims: “Here comes
_Satanas_.... What a reproach to our civilization to stand in need of
a class like this, and to have those whom we despise constantly near
us.” How must Beethoven have felt when the nephew whom he had trusted
as a son descended so low as to borrow money surreptitiously from, this
very “Satanas”? “Last Sunday,” he writes, “you again borrowed 1 florin
15 kreutzers from the housekeeper, from a mean old kitchen wench,--this
was already forbidden,--and it is the same in all things. What avail
even the most gentle reproofs? They merely serve to embitter you. But
do not be uneasy; I shall continue to care for you as much as ever.”
Another constant harassment of Beethoven in his later years was
poverty. The annuity settled upon him by his patrons was so seriously
decreased by a depreciation in the value of paper money and by the
deaths of some of the donors that it eventually amounted to only
four hundred dollars a year. “If my salary,” he wrote in 1822, “were
not so far reduced as to be no salary at all, I would write nothing
but symphonies for a full orchestra, and church music, or at most
quartets.” As it was, he had to devote a part of his time to writing
for money, a servitude intensely distasteful to one so devoted to
high artistic ideals, so constitutionally incapable of compromise. He
puts the best face on the matter, jokes about it as he does about
everything; but it is obvious that he suffered much to gather the
florins his nephew so easily spent. “I wander about here with music
paper, among the hills and dales and valleys, and scribble a great
deal to get my daily bread; for I have brought things to such a pass
... that in order to gain time for a great composition, I must always
previously scrawl away a good deal for the sake of money.” But his
attitude towards publishers remained dignified, considerate; he knew
how to respect his own work and rights without falling into the petty
egotism of the so-called “artistic temperament.” “I must apprise you,”
he writes Herr Peters of the well-known Leipzig publishing house, “that
I cannot accept less than 50 ducats for a string quartet, and 70 for
a pianoforte one, without incurring loss; indeed, I have repeatedly
been offered more than 50 ducats for a violin quartet. I am, however,
always unwilling to ask more than necessary, so I adhere to the sum
of 50 ducats, which is, in fact, nowadays the usual price. I feel
positively ashamed when I have to ask a price for a really great work.
Still, such is my position that it obliges me to secure every possible
advantage. It is very different, however, with the work itself; when
I never, thank God, think of profit, but solely of how I write it.”
It is a similar dignified sense of his responsibilities, far removed
from vanity, that prompts him to request of an editor notice of his
nomination as an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Musical Academy.
“Although neither vain nor ambitious,” he says, “still I consider it
advisable not wholly to pass over such an occurrence, as in practical
life we must live and work for others, who may often eventually benefit
by it.” The sincerity of these convictions is proved by the fact that
after Beethoven’s death in poverty, eight bank-shares were found among
his papers, carefully preserved by him for the legacy of his nephew.
Beethoven’s deafness went on steadily increasing. That is a pathetic
picture his friend Schindler gives of him, improvising with all the
enthusiasm of his inner inspiration on the violin or the viola, which,
because of his inability to tune them, gave out the most distressing,
discordant sounds. On the piano it was but little better; he had to
guide himself largely by sight, and his touch became harsh and heavy.
The effect of this malady on his character, already mentioned in