VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED
"Though thou hast now offended like a man.
Do not persever in it like a devil;
Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul,
If sin by custom grow not into nature."
Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"
Few novels are so brilliantly written, or so variously absorbing, as the
life of Von Weber, written by his son, the Baron Max Maria von Weber.
For years the son had resisted the urgence of his mother to undertake
the work, fearing that partiality would warp, and indelicacy stain, any
such memorial of a father who had lived so lively a life. When at last
the work was begun and done, it was a miracle of impartiality, of
frankness which seems complete, of sins confessed and expiated in their
confession, and of trenchant characterisation, which one will hardly
find surpassed outside of Dickens.
The Von Webers are the most numerous musical dynasty after the Bachs. We
have already seen something of the fortunes of the family into which
Mozart married. The father of Mozart's wife was the older brother of
Franz Anton von Weber, father of Carl Maria. This Franz Anton was a
strange mixture of stalwart and shiftless qualities. He gave up his
orchestral position to fight against Frederick the Great, and brought
home a red badge of courage. It is wonderful, by the way, how many
musicians have earned distinction as soldiers--what, indeed, would the
soldiers do without music?
Later Franz Anton entered civil service, and succeeded to the position
of Court Financial-Councillor Fumetti, and married his beautiful
daughter, Maria Anna. But Franz Anton was so rabid a fiddler that he
used to be seen playing his violin in public places, followed by his
large family of children, or even sawing away in the open fields, to the
neglect of his work and finally the loss of his position. Thereupon he
decided that his large family should help in its own support, and
dragged them one and all upon the stage. The proud mother saw her
fortune squandered, and her pride massacred. She died some years later.
Franz Anton's heart was too industrious to remain idle long, and, though
he was now fifty years of age, he somehow won the hand of Genofeva von
Brenner, who was only sixteen years old. It is gratuitous to say that
the young girl was not happy. In 1786 she bore him the child who was to
realise the father's one great and vicarious ambition: to bring a
musical genius into the world.
While Carl Maria von Weber was still a babe, Franz Anton started once
more after the will-o'-the-wisp of theatrical fame, with his "Weber's
Company of Comedians." Genofeva, sickly and melancholy, dragged herself
about with the troupe until Carl Maria was ten years old, when her
health gave way, and the travel was discontinued. Poverty and
consumption ended her days two years later. Within a year Franz Anton
was betrothed to a widow, whom, strange to say, he never married.
Again Franz Anton, the Bedouin that he was, dragged his son back into
the nomad life. The boy seemed astonishingly stupid in learning music,
though the father encouraged him with intemperate zeal. Meanwhile Carl's
character was forming, and he was becoming as brilliant as the mercurial
life he was leading, and at the same time as irresponsible. Like his
relative, Mozart, he was precocious at falling in love. Perhaps his
first flame was Elise Vigitill, in whose autograph album he wrote:
"Dearest Elise, always love your sincere friend, Carl von Weber; in the
sixth year of his age; Nüremberg, the 10th of September, 1792." We
hear of no more sweethearts for eleven long years. When Carl Maria was
seventeen, Franz Anton left him in Vienna, where he plunged into
dissipation at a tempo presto appassionato. As his son writes, "through
carolling, kissing, drinking Vienna, he wandered with a troop of choice
spirits, drinking, kissing, carolling." The intoxicating draught of
pleasure quaffed in the lively capital fevered the lad's blood, and the
ardent imaginative temperament burst forth in that adoration of female
beauty which strewed his life's path with roses, not without thorns. His
teacher, Abbé Vogler, however, secured him a position as conductor at
the Breslau opera, and he was compelled to tear himself away from a
sweetheart of rank, who was somewhat older than he. His father went with
him, and by his bumptiousness brought the boy many enemies, and, through
his speculations, many debts in addition to those he acquired for
himself. Here another entanglement awaited him. His son tells it thus:
"Many a female heart, no doubt, both within the theatre and without its
walls, was allured by the sweet smile and seductive manners of the pale,
slender, languishing, but passionately ardent young conductor; whilst
his own heart seems to have been more seriously involved in an
unfortunate and misplaced attachment for a singer in the theatre. This
woman was married to a rough drunkard who mishandled her. The couple
were daily falling more and more into an abject state of poverty. Young
Carl Maria pitied the woman; and pity was soon transformed in the
feeling next akin."
"That she was an unworthy object of either pity or affection is very
clear: she misused his goodness of heart, gnawed incessantly at his
slender purse, and quickly plunged him into a slough of difficulties
nigh equal to her own."
Various misfortunes and indiscretions brought Von Weber to the loss of
his post. But a woman intervened to save him from disaster. This was a
Fräulein von Belonda, maid of honour to the Duchess of Würtemberg, who
took a deep interest in Carl, and persuaded the duke to make him musical
director. The continual successes of the French armies overrunning
Europe forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But he
secured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother,
Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Würtemberg, a monster of
corpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that he
might get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovable
figures and their ugly court Weber was thrust.
"Thus then the fiery young artist, his wild oats not yet fully sown,
plunged into a new world, where no true sense of right or wrong was
known; where virtue and morality were laughed to scorn; where, in the
chaotic whirlpool of a reckless court, money and influence at any price
were the sole ends and aims of life; where, in the confusion of the
times, the insecurity of conditions, and the ruthless despotism of the
government, the sole watchword of existence, from high to low, was
'Après moi, le deluge!'" The Prince Ludwig was a great spendthrift,
and was continually appealing to his brother for funds. It was poor
Weber's pleasant task to be the go-between, and to receive on his head
the rage of Behemoth. Again to quote the vivid language of the Baron
Max:
"The stammering, stuttering, shrieking rage of the hideously corpulent
king, who, on account of his unwieldy obesity, was unable to let his
arms hang by his side, and who thus gesticulated wildly, and perspired
incessantly, and had the habit, moreover, of continually addressing his
favourite, generally present on these occasions, with the appeal, 'Pas
vrai, Dillen?' after each broken sentence,--would have been
inexpressibly droll, had not the low-comedy actor of the scene been an
autocrat who might, at a wink, have transformed laughter into tears. But
there was a demoniacal comicality about the performance, which, if it
did not convulse the spectator, made him shudder to his heart's core.
"Weber hated the king, of whose wild caprice and vices he witnessed
daily scenes, before whose palace-gates he was obliged to slink
bareheaded, and who treated him with unmerited ignominy. He was wont, in
thoughtless levity of youth, to forget the dangers he ran, and to answer
the king with a freedom of tone which the autocrat was all unused to
hear. In turn he was detested by the monarch.
"The royal treatment roused young Carl Maria's indignation to the
utmost; and his irritation led him one day to a mad prank, which was
nigh resulting in some years' imprisonment in the fortress of
Hohenasberg, or of Hohenhaufen. Smarting under some foul indignity, he
had just left the private apartment of the king, when an old woman met
him in the passage, and asked him where she could find the room of the
court washerwoman. 'There!' said the reckless youth, pointing to the
door of the royal cabinet. The old woman entered, and was violently
assailed by the king, who had a horror of old women; in her terror, she
stammered out that a young gentleman who had just come out had informed
her that there she would find the 'royal washerwoman,' The infuriated
monarch guessed who was the culprit, and despatched an officer on the
spot to arrest his brother's secretary, and throw him into prison.
"To those who have any idea how foul a den was then a royal prison, it
must appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessed
sufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved art
during his arrest. But so it was. He managed to procure a dilapidated
old piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a common
door-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808,
composed his well-known beautiful song, 'Ein steter Kampf ist unser
Leben.'
"The storm passed over. Prince Ludwig's influence obtained the young
man's pardon and release. But the insult was never forgotten by the
king: he took care to remember it at his own right time. Nor had prison
cured Carl Maria of his boyish desire to play tricks upon the hated
monarch, when he conceived that he could do so without danger to
himself."
Carl proceeded to make himself an appropriate graduate of such a
university of morals, and devoted himself to wine, women, and debts,
with a small proportion of song. He belonged to a society of young men,
who called themselves by the gentle name of "Faust's Ride to Hell." He
now began also the composition of an opera, "Sylvana." This brought him
into acquaintance with operatic people, and he fell under the charm of
that "coquettish little serpent Margarethe Lang."
"To stem such a passion, or even to have given it a legal form, would
have been merely ridiculous and absurd in the eyes of the demoralised
circle by which he was surrounded. Gretchen possessed a little plump
seductive form, was about twenty years of age, and, in addition to her
undoubted musical talent, was endowed with a fund of gay, sprightly
humour, wholly in sympathy with the youth's own joyous nature. She
became the central point of all his life and aspirations."
Thus the biographer describes the new dissipation, which carried Carl
away from his old riots; the new magnet that dragged from him all the
money he could earn, and more than he could borrow. It was a wild and
reckless crew and addicted to such entertainments as the travesty on
Marc Antony, with music by Carl, who played Cleopatra, while Gretchen
played Antony.
The last straw upon Carl's breaking back was the arrival of his father,
who descended upon him with a bass viol, an enormous basket-bed for his
beloved poodles, and a large bundle of debts, as well as an increased
luggage of eccentricities. While Weber was trying to secure loans to pay
off one of his father's debts, he was innocently implicated in a scandal
of bribery, by which it was made to seem that he had offered a post in
the prince's household, in return for an advance of money. The king had
been driven to despair by the disasters of the German army, and the
increase of discontent of the German people, and desired to gain a
reputation for virtue by the comfortable step of reforming his brother's
household. Learning of the proffered bribe, in which Weber seemed to be
concerned, but of which he was perfectly innocent, the king had him
arrested during a rehearsal of his opera "Sylvana," and had him thrown
into prison for sixteen days. When at last he was examined, there was
nothing found to justify the accusation of dishonesty, he was released
from the prison for criminals, and transferred to the prison for debt,
and then a little later he and his father were placed into a carriage
and driven across the border to exile.
This sudden plunge from the froth of dissipation to the dregs of
disgrace was a fall that Weber could never thereafter think or speak of,
and every mention of it was forbidden.
Almost from this moment Weber's life is one of seriousness, with an
occasional relapse into some of his old qualities, but never a complete
laying aside of earnestness. He gained friends elsewhere, and finally
settled in Darmstadt, where he still found women's hearts susceptible,
in spite of his small, weak frame, his great long neck, and his calfless
legs, of which he writes: "And, oh, my calves, they might have done
honour to a poodle!"
Eight months after his banishment, his opera "Sylvana" was produced at
Frankfort, the first soprano being Gretchen Lang, and the part of
Sylvana being taken by Caroline Brandt, of whom much more later. At
Munich the next year, he found himself in high favour with two singers.
They were vying with each other for him, while two society beauties
exerted their rival charms. Weber was kept busy with his quadruple
flirtation. He was driven into cynicism, and his motto became "All women
are good for nothing" ("_Alle Weiber taugen nichts_"), which he used so
often that he abbreviated it to "A.W.T.N." In the columns of his
account-book he was provoked to write: "A. coquettes with me, though she
knows I am making love to her friend. B. abuses N., tells me horrid
stories of her, and says I must not go home with her." He took a journey
to Switzerland, where the beautiful Frau Peyermann occupied his heart
long enough to inspire him to the scene in "Athalie," and to his song,
"The Artist's Declaration of Love." He wandered here and there, for
about three years, and his biographer, Spitta, thus portrays him:
"Roving restlessly from place to place, winning all hearts by his sweet,
insinuating, lively melodies, his eccentricities making him an imposing
figure to the young of both sexes, and an annoyance to the old, exciting
the attention of everybody, and then suddenly disappearing, his person
uniting in the most seductive manner aristocratic bearing and tone with
indolent dissipation, his moods alternating between uproarious spirits
and deep depression,--in all ways he resembled a figure from some
romantic poem, wholly unlike anything seen before in the history of
German art."
In 1813 he found himself at Prague, with the post of musical director to
the opera. In the company were two women who took hold of his heart;
one, a spirit of evil, the other an angel of good. The former was
Theresa Brunetti, wife of a ballet-dancer, and mother of several
children, the acquisition of which had robbed her of neither her fine,
plump figure, nor her devotion to the arts of coquetry. There is no
improving upon the description of Max von Weber as given of this
entanglement, so here it is at length, with all its frankness of
exposure and its writhing humiliation:
"He soon conceived for the handsome seductive woman a passion, which
seemed to have deprived his otherwise clear mind of all common sense and
reason, and which neither the flood of administrative affairs nor the
cold breath of duty could extinguish. Vain were all his efforts to
conceal it. In a very short time it became the topic of general remark;
excited the ridicule or grave anxieties of his friends; involved him in
a thousand disagreeable positions; lowered his character, without the
slightest compensating advantage to his artistic career; and nigh
dragged him down into an abyss beyond hope of rescue.
"The new opera-director was soon lodged in the house of the careless
husband of the light woman. She herself may have had some inclination
for the man. But as soon as she felt her true power over him, she held
out her fair hand only to lead him into a life of torment.
"The woman's power over her poor victim was immense. He was dragged in
her train, against his better reason, to country excursions, suppers,
balls, at which, whilst he watched her every look, her every breath, to
discover her slightest wish, although nigh dead with fatigue, she would
be bestowing her attention on other men, wholly regardless of her slave.
Now again he would scour the town, in scorching heat or drenching rain,
frequently sacrificing the only moments he could snatch from business
for his dinner, to procure a ribbon, a ring, or some dainty, which she
desired, and which was difficult to obtain; and on his return she would
receive him perhaps with coldness and toss the prize aside. Sometimes,
when the proof became too evident that she had duped, deceived, betrayed
him, the scenes between the two were fearful; and then she would
cleverly find means of asserting that it was she who had the best right
to be jealous, and thus turn the tables on him. By every thought, in
every action, in every moment of his life, there was but one feeling
ever present--'How will she receive me?'
"Even in his account-book, now so often neglected, are to be found the
lamentations of his despairing heart over her unworthiness; and again,
but a few hours later, expressions of delight that she had smiled on
him. There is something terrible in the bitter slavery to which his
better nature was condemned by this wild passion. One day he writes: 'A
fearful scene.... The sweetest dream of my life is over. Confidence is
lost for ever. The chain is broken,' On the next: 'A painful
explanation. I shed the first tears my grief has wrung from me.... This
reconciliation has cleared the thunder from the air. Both of us felt
better,' And then again: 'My dream is over! I shall never know the
happiness of being loved. I must for ever be alone! ... She can sit near
me, hours long, and never say one word; and when some other man is
mentioned, burst out in ecstasy. I will do all I can to please her; but
I must withdraw within myself, bury all my bitter feelings in my own
heart, and work--work--work!'" It was in the fall of 1813--_prosit
omen!_--that Von Weber met the Brunetti. In the next year he was still
clinging to her whom the biographer calls "the rotten plant," and wrote
in a note-book: "I found Calina with Thérèse, and I could scarcely
conceal the fearful rage that burned in me." Or an elegy like this: "No
joy without her, and yet with her only sorrow."
Cupid has always been jealous of the cook. On Thérèse's birthday, Carl
presented her with a double gift, first a gold watch with a cluster of
trinkets, each of them a symbol of love; with this cluster of trinkets,
something very rare and costly in Prague--oysters. Thérèse
glanced--merely glanced--at the jewelry; she fairly gobbled the oysters.
Carl's love had survived his jealousy of Calina, but he could not endure
a rivalry with mollusks. As his son explains: "On a sudden the scales
fell from his eyes." Ought he not rather have said, the shells?
Lacking even this ogress for an idol, poor Carl was lonely indeed. Even
music turned unresponsive, and success was only ashes on his tongue.
Then faith gave him, unsought, ability to revenge himself on the
Brunetti. She had despised him as a mere genius toddling after the
frou-frou of her skirts, but she began to prize him when she saw him
casting interested looks in another direction. Now it was her turn to
writhe with jealousy, and to writhe in vain. Her storms and tirades had
more effect upon him than his pleas had had upon her. But whereas she
had formerly been _insouciante_ and amused at his pain, her pain hurt
him to distraction, broke down his health, and drove him to ask for a
leave of absence, that he might recover his strength. When he went away,
he carried with him in his heart a new regret, sweetened, or perhaps
embittered, by a tinge of new hope. But he could not know that he had
reached the end of the worthless pages of his life, and that the new
leaf was to be inscribed with a story of happiness, which was by no
means untroubled, but yet was constructive happiness, worth-while
happiness.
In the year 1810 his opera "Sylvana" had been sung, as I have said, with
Caroline Brandt in the title rôle. When, in 1813, he was given the
direction of the opera at Prague, though he fell into the clutches of
the Brunetti, he had unconsciously prepared himself a better, cleaner
experience by engaging for the very first member of his new company this
same Caroline Brandt, who happened to write him that she happened to be
"at liberty," as they say.
Like Carl himself, she had known stage-life from childhood, being the
daughter of a tenor, and appearing on the stage at the age of eight.
She is described as "small and plump in figure, with beautiful,
expressive gray eyes and fair wavy hair, and a peculiar liveliness in
her movements." She was a woman of large and tender heart, electrified
with a temper incisive and immediate. She was an actress of genuine
skill, "her sense of grace and beauty in all things infallible." She did
not appear at the theatre in Prague until the first day of January,
1814. She bore a curious resemblance to Thérèse Brunetti in a fresher
edition, and was not long in giving that lady a sense of uneasiness. The
oysters, as we have seen, had given the Brunetti the _coup de disgrâce_.
Caroline won the poor director's gratitude first by being quick to adopt
suggestions, and to rescue him from the embarrassments buzzing about the
head of an operatic manager. She was glad to undertake tasks, and slow
to show professional jealousy. She lived in seclusion with her mother,
and received no visits. Even the young noblemen could not woo her at the
stage door, though the Brunetti advised her to accept the advances of a
certain banker, saying: "He is worth the trouble, for he is rich."
Having failed to drag Caroline into her own game, the Brunetti tried to
keep Von Weber from breathing the better air of her presence. As we
have seen, she drove him almost to distraction, and sent him a wreck to
the baths in Friedland.
Caroline's mother had permitted Von Weber to pay his court to her, and
her father and brother had found his intentions worthy. Caroline had not
hesitated to confess that her affection was growing with Carl's. But
what she had seen of his life with the Brunetti, and what she must have
heard of his magnificent dissipations, gave her pause. Therefore, when
Carl went away for his health, he took with him a riddle, and left
behind "a sweet, beloved being who might--who may--make me happy." "The
absence of three months shall test our love." They wrote each other long
and daily letters; his were all of yearning, while hers were mingled
with fear, lest he be, as she wrote him, "a sweet poison harmful to the
soul."
After taking the baths, he went on to Berlin, arriving there August 3d
in the very ferment of rapture over the downfall of Napoleon at Prague.
He was moved to write a number of patriotic songs from Koerner's "Leier
und Schwert." These choruses for men were sung throughout the
Fatherland, as they still are sung.
But from the height of glory to which he was now borne, as the living
voice of the nation, he was dragged back to the depths by the little
hand and the little finger-nails of Caroline, who could be jealous
enough to suspect that not all the adoration Von Weber was receiving
from the women of Berlin was pure and impersonal patriotism.
Von Weber had from the first insisted that no marriage of theirs could
have hope of success, unless she left the stage. This sacrifice of
herself and her career and her large following among the public was a
deal to ask, and a deal to grant. Her combined reluctance to sacrifice
her all, and her jealous fears that he would not find her all in all, at
last led her to write him that they would better give up their dream,
and break their troth.
In his first bitterness at this inopportune humiliation, coming like a
drop of vinegar in the honey of royal favour, he wrote furiously to
Gansbacher, "I see now that her views of high art are not above the
usual pitiful standard--namely, that art is but a means of procuring
soup, meat, and shirts." To another friend, Lichtenstein, he wrote more
solemnly:
"All my fondest hopes are vanishing day by day. I live like a drunken
man who dances on a thin coating of ice, and spite of his better reason
would persuade himself that he is on solid ground. I love with all my
heart and soul; and if there be no truth in her affection, the last
chord of my whole life has been struck. I shall still live on,--marry
perhaps some day,--who knows? But love and trust again, never more."
In September he returned to Prague with an anxious heart, and took up in
person a new battle for Caroline's hand. They were agreed upon the
subject of affection, but wrangled upon the clauses in the treaty of
marriage. While this debate was waging, Weber took care of her money and
her mother's. A benefit being given her, he announced that he himself
would sell the tickets at the box-office, and he spent a whole day
bartering his quick wit and his social influence, for increased prices.
Such public devotion brought scandal buzzing about the ears of the two.
But still Caroline would not give up her career, nor Weber his opinion
of stage marriages.
Even his patriotic songs, "The Lyre and the Sword," were a cause of
disagreement, for Caroline, like so many women, deified Napoleon, and
her lover's lyric assaults upon him were so much sacrilege; while to him
her adoration of that personified prairie-fire, who had devastated the
Fatherland, was treason. The Brunetti, being well out of the running,
Caroline found new cause of jealousy in the newly engaged actress,
Christine Bohler. Indeed, Carl and Caroline did little but fight and
make up for months, until even Caroline was convinced that one of the
two must leave Prague, at least for a period of probation. It was Carl
who left, and in a condition of almost complete spiritual collapse.
How little music has to do with one's state of mind, may be seen from
the fact that in his weak and complaining despair, he composed one of
his sturdiest works, "Kampf und Sieg." He settled in Munich, and
continued to correspond with Caroline, writing her the most minute
descriptions of his life and his lodgings, and begging her to write him
with equal fulness. His loneliness, however, at length told upon his
spirits, and gradually stifled his creativeness.
At length it became time for him to return to Prague again, and on the
eve of his home-going he received a letter from Caroline, which she said
she had been for weeks trying in vain to write. She was now convinced
that they must absolutely give up all thought of love and marriage. This
blow smote him to the ground. He had no strength even for wrath; he
could only write in abject meekness, as if thanking her for delaying the
blow so long:
"Be not angry, my beloved one, that I repeat my words of love and sorrow
again and again. They flow from a pure heart, that knows no other wish
than your happiness. When time shall have gone by, and you can look back
in peace and quiet on the broken tie between us, you will then
acknowledge that never was a truer heart than mine. Thanks, my dearest
life, my never-to-be-forgotten love, for the many sweet flowers you have
woven into the garland of my life, for all your love, for all your care.
Forgive me for my excess of love--forgive the passion that may have torn
many a wound, when it should have soothed and healed--forgive me all
the sorrow I have caused you, though Heaven knows it was through no will
of mine--forgive me for having stolen one whole sweet year of your
precious life, for which I would willingly give ten of my own, could I
but buy it back for you.... Farewell--farewell."
On the 7th of September he arrived in Prague. His first view of Caroline
was as she sang the Cinderella on the stage. The sight of her was too
much; he broke down and ran home. But still, as director, he must
frequently meet her in more or less familiar situations. And as for her,
she later confessed that she was suffering even more than Carl.
Her every strength and resolution melted away one afternoon in the
autumn, at a reception, where the lovers met face to face. Their gaze
blended; their hands blended; the war was over.
Instantly, with the resumption of his love-life, his interest in music
began again. Caroline, apparently alarmed at the condition of his
health, never robust, persuaded her mother to let him board at her
house. New health and old-time gaiety began again. But he was tired of
Prague, and determined to find a larger field elsewhere. While he was
hunting for a place for himself, he secured a starring engagement for
Caroline at the then high salary of ten gold louis, per performance.
Before he left Prague, he announced his engagement publicly. By a
curious coincidence, the engagement was announced at a reception, just
after a total eclipse of the sun. When the daylight came out of the
darkness, Carl rose and proclaimed his conquest.
On Christmas morning he received a costly ring from the King of Hanover,
a splendid snuff-box from the King of Bavaria, and an appointment as
Kapellmeister to the King of Saxony.
At Dresden there were honours enough and jealousies more. But Carl
assailed them with new strength. And now, he took up an opera on a
subject he had thought of but discarded, fortunately for himself and the
world. He wrote Caroline that a friend of his was writing a libretto
based on the old national legend, "Der Freischütz." Kind, the
librettist, wrote night and day for ten days, and Carl, in great
enthusiasm, forwarded the libretto for Caroline's opinion. She sent it
back with violent criticisms, based upon her long stage experience and
her intuition of stage effects. We can never thank her sufficiently for
cutting out endless pages of songs and recitative by the melancholious
old Hermit who, in the original version, was to commence the opera, and
wander in and out of it incessantly. Caroline wrote, like Horace:
"Away, with all these scenes.... Plunge at once into the popular
element. Begin with the scene before the tavern." This seemed
outrageous mutilation at first to the composer, and the librettist took
it with still more violence; threatening for a time to withdraw his book
completely. But often, thereafter, did Carl express his gratitude to
her, whom he called his "Public with two eyes." Would to heaven, that
there had been some Caroline Brandt to give similar advice to Wagner
concerning his Wotan and his King Mark!
Meanwhile, during the composition of "Der Freischütz," which was to mean
so much for the happiness of Germany and the betterment of opera
generally, Carl, the genius who struck out the magnificent work, was
spending almost less time upon the details of composition and scoring
than upon the purchase of articles for the home he was making for his
bride-to-be. He wrote her long letters, describing his purchases of
"chairs, crockery, curtains, knives, forks, spoons, pails, brooms, and
mustard-pot."
She had ceased to be in his mind the brilliant and fascinating
soubrette, and had become in the silly lover's-Latin, his "pug, his
duck, his bird." He answered a letter she wrote him describing her
success in the "Magic Flute:"
"I was amused with your account of the 'Zauberflöte,' but you know I
hope soon to see you lay by all your pretty Papagena feathers. All your
satins and ermines must give place to a coarse apron then. You will be
only applauded by my hungry stomach, called out before the cook-wench,
and saluted with 'da capo' when you kiss your Carl. It is very shocking,
I know. What will my own pearl say to be dissolved in the sour vinegar
of domestic life, and swallowed by a bear of a husband?"
In March, 1817, Weber was called to Prague, on business connected with
his opera company; he was overjoyed at the thought of seeing Caroline,
who was still singing there. Just as he was stepping into the
travelling-carriage, a letter was handed him, saying that the firm in
Prague, with which he had deposited all his savings and those of
Caroline, was about to go into bankruptcy. There was indeed, of his long
and careful hoardings only as much left as Caroline had deposited on his
advice. Her savings were quite swept away.
But, without saying a word to her, he transferred the last penny he had
in the world to her name, and left himself, except for his strength and
fame, a pauper. It was many years after, and then only by chance, that
Caroline learned the beautiful sacrifice he had made from his great love
for her. When he reached Prague, he concealed from her all the distress
he had suffered, and there was nothing but happiness in their reunion.
Returning to Dresden, he took up more seriously the composition of "Der
Freischütz." The first note of it that he wrote was the second act duet
between Agathe and Aennchen; he took Caroline as his ideal. Indeed,
through the whole composition of the work, he declared that he saw
Caroline always presiding. He seemed to hear her voice singing every
note, and saw her fingers playing it on the piano; now smiling, over
what she liked; now shaking her head over what displeased her. This
spirit he took as the critic and judge of the whole work. There have
rarely been such instances of actual personal inspiration in any work of
art, and certainly none which do more credit to the absorption of the
artist-mind in the worship of its idol. Furthermore, much of the
composition was done at the home preparing for Caroline's actual
presence, and he wrote those suave and optimistic pages of music to an
accompaniment of hammers and saws, the wrangling of carpenters,
painters, upholsterers, and scrub-women; sleeping at nights in the
kitchen, and glad to find a kitchen-table to compose upon. The
longed-for marriage could not take place until a court wedding for which
he was writing music. This was postponed and postponed, until he was
driven to distraction. But at last, when the royal bridegroom was sent
on his way the composer fled toward Prague. Caroline surprised him by
coming part way to meet him. On November 4, 1817, they were married.
Carl gave Caroline's mother a pension of nine hundred thalers, though
her husband and son were living. The honeymoon was paid for by concerts
here and there, in which both took part, and by a benevolent royal
commission to hunt for artists. Caroline, though her matrimonial treaty
forbade her singing on the stage, was allowed to sing at concerts, and
at some of them she sang duets, with Carl at the piano, while she played
the guitar.
Carl had often told Caroline that she must expect a chaos in her new
home in Dresden. When she arrived, and found everything beautiful and in
perfect order, she wept with rapture. Late on the last night of the year
1817, Carl wrote in a diary these words; they show what depths there
were in the soul and what heights in the ambition of one whose youth and
training and early recklessness had promised so little of solidity and
solemnity.
"The great important year has closed. May God still grant me the
blessing He has hitherto so graciously accorded me; that I may have the
power to make the dear one happy; and, as a brave artist, bring honour
and advantage to my Fatherland! Amen!"
As for Caroline, who had been so volatile a soubrette and so happy in
the footlight glitter, she turned out to be even a greater success as a
_Haus-frau._ She began to win a more limited, but an equally profound,
reputation for her perfect dinners and receptions, and for the minute
care with which she kept all her "account-books, housekeeping-books,
cellar-books." Finally, she even learned to cook, and the household
became a dove-cote!
The instinct of jealousy is one that is not easily uprooted, and
Caroline did not permit Carl's life to grow too monotonous. His high
favour at court kept her in subjects for uneasiness. He finally
attempted a violent cure. He began to absent himself from the house with
unusual frequence, but would not explain where he had been, even though
Caroline wept and wailed. At length he wrought her to the pitch of
desperation by his heartless indifference; then, one day, he brought
home a portrait bust which a sculptor friend had made and with it a
signed record of every hour and minute of his absence. This, if not a
permanent cure, was at least a partial remedy.
Weber's home became a proverb of hospitality and good cheer. The two
sang duets, or Caroline recited poems, while Carl improvised
accompaniments; excursions to the fields, and water parties, and
hilarious reunions of the opera-troupe kept life busy. Later, he took a
country home, where he surrounded himself with the dumb animals whose
society he so enjoyed; these included a large hound, a raven, a
starling, an Angora cat, and an ape.
On December 22, 1818, the first child, a girl, was born. Caroline was
dangerously ill; the child was not strong, and Carl's own health,
always at the brink of wreckage, broke down. Caroline, hardly able to be
about, nursed her husband and concealed from him the serious condition
of the child. Just as he was beginning to recover, in April, his
firstborn died. The news could not be kept from him, and he was sent
into delirium. Caroline's health gave way completely, and "the unhappy
couple lay in neighbouring rooms, where they could only cry 'Comfort!'
to each other through the wall; and where, in the still hours of night,
each smothered the sobs of grief in the pillows, that the other might
not hear."
Caroline was the first to recover. Carl's health and strength were on
the final ebb--the long, slow ebb that made of his last years one dismal
tragedy, which only his superb devotion to his wife and his immitigable
optimism could brighten. In July, 1820, they decided to take a tour.
They met with great success, but he found his weakness almost
unbearable. At Hanover, he and Caroline were both prostrated, and could
not join in the concert planned. On the road to Bremen, the postilion
fell asleep and the coach was overturned into the ditch. The driver was
stunned and the sick Carl had himself to revive the man, untie the
baggage from the roof, unharness the horses, put everything in place
again, and drive the postilion to the next station. At Hamburg,
Caroline was too ill to continue the tour; she was about to become a
mother, and Carl was compelled to go on without her, but he wrote her
daily letters full of devotion. It was the first separation of their
married life.
Later she rejoined him, and at Hamburg, the oyster entered once more
into Weber's domestic career. The Brunetti had cured him of his love for
her by her inordinate fondness for bivalves. Caroline, on the other
hand, hated them. But Weber said:
"There can be no true sympathy between us while you detest a food I
relish. For the love of me, swallow this oyster."
The first three were a severe trial, but, as the French might say, "Ce
n'est pas que la première huitre qui coute." Afterward Weber would
groan, "Alas, why did I ever teach you the trick?"
In 1821, there rose a famous operatic war between Spontini and Weber at
Berlin. Caroline was prostrated with terror. Spontini's "Olympic" was
given first with enormous success, and "Der Freischütz," in which
Caroline had had so large a share, and which meant so much to the two,
was forced into a dramatic comparison. In spite of a somewhat dubious
beginning, the first night was one of the greatest ovations a musician
has ever lived to see. In the midst of the tempestuous applause, every
one looked for the composer, who was "sitting in a dark corner of his
wife's box and kissing away her tears of joy."
When they returned to Dresden in July, Caroline's health was undermined
by the emotions of the Berlin triumph, and it was necessary for her to
be taken to Switzerland, where Carl was compelled to leave her. An
accident in crossing the Elbe led him to write his will, leaving
Caroline everything without reserve, and his dying curse upon any one
who should disturb his wishes.
Now consumption began to fasten its claws more deeply on him, and when
his wife returned she found him constantly racked with cough and fever.
One day he saw the first fatal spot of blood upon his handkerchief; he
turned pale and sighed: "God's will be done."
From that moment neither his conviction that he was doomed to an early
death, nor his courage to die pluckily, ever left him. When "Der
Freischütz" was given in Dresden, Caroline was ill at home. Carl
arranged a courier service by which he received, after every scene, news
of his wife. In February of the next year, he was compelled to leave
Dresden; he placed in his wife's hands a sealed letter only to be opened
in case of his death. This letter gave a complete account of all his
affairs, and a last expression of his immense love for her. On his many
tours, he met almost uninterrupted triumph, but as he wrote to Caroline:
"I would rather be in my still chamber with you, my beloved life.
Without you all pride is shorn of its splendour; my only real joy can be
in that which gives you joy too."
From now on he spent a large part of his time away from her, always
tormented to the last degree by homesickness, always harrowed by the
fear that he might die out of the reach of his adored wife and two
children, and never feeling that he had laid by money enough to leave
them free of the danger of want, after he should have drifted into the
grave that yawned just before his weary feet.
It is hard to find in story or history a more pitiful struggle against
fate and the frustration of every deep desire than the last days of Carl
Maria von Weber, hurrying from triumph to triumph, and dying as he
jolted along his way, or stood bowing with hollow heart before
uproarious multitudes. Homesickness grew to be a positive frenzy with
him.
"They carry me in triumph," he wrote to Caroline: "they watch for every
wink to do me kindnesses. But I feel I can only be happy there, where I
can hear my lambs bleat, and their mother low, and can beat my dog, or
turn away my maids, if they are at all too troublesome."
In 1825, Christmas found him at a distance, and he could not reach home.
"I shall think of you all on Christmas-eve," he wrote, "But that I
never cease to do. All my labours are for you--all my joy is with you."
"Can I but be with you on New Year's eve," he wrote again, with that
tinge of superstition which always more or less pervaded his character,
"I shall be with you all the year."
Now London beckoned to him, as she had to so many German musicians, to
whom she always has stood for the city of gold and of rescue from
pauperdom. Ghastly as Von Weber looked in the clutches of his disease;
hungry as his heart and body were for a long, an eternal rest, he felt
that he must not shrink from this final goal. As his son writes with
aching heart in the biography:
"To Gublitz, who doubted of his ability to undertake the journey to
London, he replied, in a tone of melancholy irony: 'Whether I can or no,
I must. Money must be made for my family--money, man. I am going to
London to die there. Not a word! I know it as well as you.' The bright,
cheery, lively Weber, who revelled in the triumph of his 'Freischütz,'
was already dead and gone.
"Before his departure, Weber regulated all his affairs in the most
punctilious manner. The presentiment of the fast-approaching end
rendered him doubly careful that all should be in order; and, in his
last conferences with his legal friends, he was always anxious to insure
the presence of his wife, whose strong practical good sense he knew.
During these painful duties his personal appearance became so fearfully
changed, that most of his friends began to fear he would no longer find
strength sufficient for his journey. His form sank together: his voice
was almost totally gone: his cough was incessant.
"In the circle of intimates who still visited him at that tea-table, of
which his wit, and pleasantry, and genial humour had so long made the
charm, he would often murmur, with a faint smile, 'Don't take it ill,
good people, if I drop asleep: indeed I cannot help it.'
"And his head would fall upon his breast. His poor wife suffered cruel
agonies: she could not but feel that he was really spending the small
remaining breath of life for the sake of her and the children. She
manoeuvred in secret to induce friends to persuade him that he ought to
renounce his fearful journey, when all her own affectionate efforts to
this intent had failed. But the response was ever the same sad one.
"'Whether I undertake this journey, or no, it is all one! Within a year
I am a dead man. But if I go, my children will have bread, when their
father is gone: if I do not, want may stare them in the face. What is to
be done?' On one occasion he added, 'I should like to come back once
more and see my dear ones' faces again: and then, in God's name, let
God's will be done! But to die there, it would be hard, very hard!'
"The morning of the 7th of February had not yet dawned, after a night of
bitter tears, when Weber's travelling-carriage drove up to his door. The
time was come for the separation of the husband, who scarcely hoped to
see his home again, from the loving wife, who felt that he was a dying
man. Another tear upon the forehead of his sleeping children--another
long lingering kiss--the suffering man dragged his swollen feet into the
carriage, huddled feverishly in his furs--the door was closed--and he
rolled away from home, on that cold winter's morning, sobbing till the
shattered chest might almost burst at once.
"Caroline rushed back to her room, and sank on her knees, with the cry:
'It is his coffin I have closed upon him!'
"At the first post, Weber parted with his own coachman and his own
horses. It was the last wrench from home and its remembrances. His
voluminous correspondence with his wife was the only tie left to Weber;
and nothing can be more touching than these letters, amounting in all to
fifty-three, in which the sufferer was always trying to conceal, as far
as he could, his sufferings; the anxious woman left behind, always
repressing her own bitter anguish lest it should increase the other's
sorrow."
Carl had been lured to London by reports of the enormous craze of the
whole people over his work. It was his fate to reach there just after
the tide of enthusiasm had turned, and was lapsing into the ebb of
weariness and impatience. After the first rapturous curiosity of
personal greeting, he found that the public would take little of him but
"Der Freischütz," and of this opera he had grown weary, as composers
always grow of their spoiled children of fortune.
His health, too, was in tragic state. Frightful spasms and hemorrhages
seemed to tear him asunder. At a dinner given him, two of the guests had
to carry him up the stairs. He was hardly strong enough to stand during
the cheers that greeted him when he came before his audience. But the
worst disease of all, the one that would not cease gnawing at his heart,
was his homesickness. To a doctor who offered him a new remedy, he
cried:
"Go! go! no doctor's tinkering can help me now. The machine is
shattered. But, ah, would but God in His mercy grant that it might hold
together till I could embrace my Lina and my boys once more!" His
effort to keep Caroline from knowing his illness was kept up. When she
wrote him that the children were begging to know why he remained so long
away, he answered:
"Yes, the father is long, long away; ah, and how long is the time to
him! how every day is counted! Patience! patience! Day crawls after
day."
"God bless you, my deeply beloved ones!" he wrote once more. "I count
days, hours, minutes, until we meet again. We have often been parted
before, and loved each other dearly, God knows. But this terrible
yearning I have never known before."
At last he grew so desperately sad that he broke his rule and wrote his
wife full details of his suffering; he had given up hope of ever seeing
his home again.
At this time, a singer wished to bring out a new song of his, and
furnished him with words. His once alert fancy groped long for a melody,
but, as his son writes:
"At last on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist's flitting
genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss
upon that noble forehead now bedewed with the cold sweat of death--for
the last time! But the trembling hands were unable to write down more
than the notes for the voice."
Fate had still reserved a bitter blow for him. He had fastened his hopes
upon a farewell concert, and grew morbid upon the importance of it to
his future.
"This day week is my concert," he wrote on the 19th of May. "How my poor
heart beats when I think of it! What will be the result? The last
chances left me are this concert and my benefit. When I think on all
they cost me, should they not turn out so as to meet my modest
expectations, it were hard indeed. But I must not let my courage fail
me. I will rely on Him, who has already been so infinitely merciful to
us. You will think, my beloved life, that I lay far too much stress on
this. But remember that my hope of fortune for us was the only purpose
of this weary journey. Can you not comprehend, then, why I now hold for
so important that which has always played but a subordinate part in my
life? Pray, dearest heart, pray that poor old papa's wishes, which are
all for your dear sakes, may yet be fulfilled."
To complete the mockery of his last days, fashion declined to interest
itself in his concert, and, to keep even the common public away, the
skies poured down floods of rain. The house was almost empty. The
enthusiasm of the few good hearts there were Job's consolation. At the
end of the concert he was led to his room, where he sank down, a
complete wreck in mind and hope, muttering:
"What do you say to that? That, that is 'Weber in London'!"
His hand trembled so that he could hardly write any more to his wife;
still, in a quivering scrawl, he bade her address her answer not to
London, but to a city on the way home, for he is starting
homeward--homeward at last! But he is not coming home through Paris, as
he had planned. He writes:
"What should I do there? I cannot walk--I cannot speak. I will have
nothing more to do with business for years to come. So it is far better
I should take the straight way home by Calais, through Brussels,
Cologne, Coblenz, and thus by the Rhine to Frankfort. What a charming
journey! I must travel very slowly, however, and probably rest for half
a day now and then. I shall gain a good fortnight thus; and by the end
of June I hope to be in your arms.
"How will you receive me? In Heaven's name, alone. Let no one disturb my
joy of looking again upon my wife and my children, my dearest and my
best... Thank God! the end of all is fast approaching."
The end of all was fast approaching. He sent his friends out to purchase
souvenirs of unhappy London, as gifts for his family. He was so
impatient to be off that he would listen to no advice to postpone his
starting.
"I must go back to my own, I must!" he sobbed incessantly. "Let me see
them once more--and then God's will be done." The attempt appeared
impossible to all. With great unwillingness he yielded to his friend's
request to have a consultation of physicians. "Be it so," he answered.
"But come of it what may, I go!"
His only thought, his only word, was "Home!" On the 2d of June he wrote
his last letter to his beloved,--the last lines his hand ever traced.
"What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me! What a happiness
to me to know that you are well! ... As this letter requires no answer,
it will be but a short one. What a comfort it is not to have to
answer... God bless you all and keep you well! Oh, were I but amongst
you all again! I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my dearest one!
Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure on him who loves
you above all, your Carl."
He was to leave London on the 6th of June; on the night of the 4th he
could talk to his friends only of their kindness and of his eagerness to
be home. To a friend, who stayed to help him through the painful ordeal
of undressing, he murmured his thanks and said, "Now let me sleep."
The next morning, when they came to his room, he had been dead for
hours. London was full of words of regret for the man whose music had
added so much to the beauty and cheerfulness of the world. A great
benefit for his family was arranged, but fate would not cease mocking
him in his grave,--the receipts hardly equalled the expenses!
A committee petitioned the Dean of Westminster to allow the funeral to
be held in the Abbey. The courteous answer of regret reminded the
committee that Von Weber was a Roman Catholic! The musicians
volunteered, however, to give him a splendid funeral, and at least music
was not wanting when his body was lowered into the grave in an alien
land. Von Weber's son, Max, describes how the news was sent to
Caroline by Von Weber's devoted friend, Fürstenau:
"It was the death-warrant of the purest wedded bliss that had ever made
two mortals happy; it was nigh a fatal cup of poison to one of the
noblest hearts of womankind: it told two little blooming boys that they
were orphaned. No wonder that Fürstenau had not the courage to address
Caroline von Weber herself: his letter had been sent to her dearest
friend, Fräulein von Hanmann. The sad messenger of death went down to
Kosterwitz, the letter in hand.
"But she, too, had not the courage to break the fearful news to the
impulsive little woman, unaided and alone. She stopped her carriage at a
little distance from the house, to beg the support of Roth, who lived
close by. But Caroline had heard the carriage-wheels--had looked
out--had seen her friend descend on that unaccustomed spot, and
disappear into Roth's house. A fearful presentiment seized her--she
rushed toward the spot--she saw the two standing in the little garden,
wringing their hands and weeping--she knew all--and she lay senseless at
their feet. Her little boy Max had followed her in childish alarm. Nigh
forty years have gone by since then; but he has never forgotten the
sound of that terrible cry, when his mother, slowly recovering from her
swoon, clasped him convulsively in her arms, and wetted his face with a
flood of tears."
Nearly twenty years later it was before Von Weber's body at last reached
the Fatherland. The agonies of homesickness he had endured seemed to
haunt even the cold clay. In 1841, a writer made an ardent appeal for
the restoration of this glory of German song, to the German soil. The
idea became a crusade. But it was not until 1844, and then chiefly by
the aid of Wagner, then conductor in Dresden, and a close friend of
Caroline and her children, that success was attained. The younger son,
Alexander, had already been buried; on December 14, 1844, the father's
body was placed by his side. It had been carried through the streets of
Dresden behind a black banner, on which were inscribed words which once
would have meant so much: "Weber in Dresden."
"In the richly decorated chapel of the cemetery, all the ladies of the
theatre, with Schröder-Devrient at their head, awaited the body, and
covered the coffin with their laurels. The ceremony was at an end. The
torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But, by the light of two
candles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small,
now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a pale
young man knelt praying by her side."
This pale young man was the Baron Max Maria von Weber, to whose pen we
owe a wonderful portrait of a wonderful man. It was the son's love,
strangely tempered with wisdom, that showed us all the phases of this
character, which, by revealing its worser side, made the better side
convincing, complete, alive.
Weber had lived hardly more than half of the allotted three score and
ten, but he had lived life in all its phases, from riotous dissipation
amid royal splendour and insolence to a brave and whole-souled battle
for the welfare of his home. It is futile to attempt judging the effect
of music upon life, and of life upon music. Too many sorts of man have
written too many sorts of music and lived too many sorts of life. But,
if you wish to use Von Weber's life as an example of the influence of
music, surely, you would write Von Weber's name on the credit side of
the ledger, for he reached his best music when his life was best
managed. He took a musician for his wife, and her high ideals of art and
life made him a man and a soldier against Fate.
Home they brought his body, a pride to his Fatherland, and the greater
Wagner who owed the great Weber so much, spoke over his grave these
words:
"Here rest thee, then! ... Wherever thy genius bore thee, to whatsoever
distant lands, it stayed for ever linked by a thousand tendrils to the
German people's heart; that heart with which it wept and laughed, a
child believing in the tales and legends of his country. And though the
Briton may yield thee justice; the Frenchman, admiration; yet, the
German alone can love thee. His thou art; a beautiful day in his life, a
warm drop of his own blood, a morsel of his heart--and who shall blame
us that we wished thy ashes, too, to mingle with this earth, to form a
part of our dear German soil."