Читать книгу The Love Affairs of Great Musicians - Hughes Rupert - Страница 14

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"Such music by such a nigger!" exclaimed one prince. Another called him a Moor. And two others could not endure him at all. He was undersized and slender as well; and his legs were so very short that they hardly reached the ground. His nose was long and beaked and disfigured, with nostrils of different shape, and he was undershot like a bulldog, and unusually pitted with smallpox even for those ante-vaccination days, when it was the ordinary thing to show the marks of this plague. He always wore a wig, too; beginning when he was a child of six, "for the sake of cleanliness"! and continuing to the day of his death, even when wigs were out of style.

This does not read like the portrait of a man particularly successful in his love affairs. It does not certainly read like a description of the hero of a novel written by The Duchess or even by Miss Jane Austen. Yet this is the picture of a man plentifully beloved, large-minded but strangely naïf; a revolutionist of childlike directness.

Everybody knows the story of the early life of Joseph Haydn, one of the twelve children of a journeyman wheelwright, and throughout his youth a shuttlecock of ill treatment and contempt.

Love seems to have reached his heart at a late day but with compensating suddenness. It is nearly incredible that a man whose after life was so heart-busy should not have felt the tender passion till he was nearly thirty, but stranger things have happened, and the anecdote given by his friend Griesinger of his wild agitation when at the age of twenty-seven he was accompanying a young countess, and her neckerchief became disarranged for a moment, would seem to indicate a remarkably unsophisticated nature.

A year later he found himself somewhat relieved of the burden of poverty that had always hampered him, and he remembered him of the two daughters of a Viennese wig-maker named Keller. Keller had frequently been kind to Haydn, and the younger daughter seems to have inspired him with an ardent love, but she took the veil. Elise Polko has worked up an elaborate fiction on this affair with her usual saccharinity. When the convent closed the younger Keller from the world, her father ingeniously suggested to Haydn that he might marry the elder sister.

As Louis Nohl says, "Whatever may have been the reason, gratitude, ignorance, helplessness in practical matters, or wish to have a wife at once—whatever may have been the motive, he married, and sorely suffered for it."

Anna Keller was older than Haydn, and the family religiousness that led the younger daughter to enter the convent, led Anna to contribute more of money to the Church, of food and society to the churchmen, and of her husband's compositions to the choir, than even so pious a Catholic as Haydn could afford or endure.

An account of the married life of these two is given by Haydn's friend Carpani, which incidentally brings up a bit of literary thievery of unusual quaintness. Carpani wrote his "Le Haydine" in the form of letters from Vienna; they were published in Milan. Some time after one Marie Henri Beyle published in Paris what purported to be an original series of "Letters written from Vienna." He published these under the pen name of L.A.C. Bombet. Carpani exposed the theft, but a little later the imperturbable Beyle published a second edition of his work under the name De Stendhal. An English translation from the French work is commonly seen, though never with credit to Carpani. Carpani, in his account of the home life of the Haydns, says they were happy for a honeymoon.

"But soon the caprices of Mrs. Anna turned the knot to a chain, the bliss to torment, and affairs went so far that, after suffering many years, this new Socrates ended by separating from his Xantippe. Mrs. Anna was not pretty, nor yet ugly. Her manners were immaculate, but she had a wooden head, and when she had fixed on a caprice, there was no way to change it. The woman loved her husband but was not congenial. An excess of religious piety badly directed came to disturb this happy harmony. Mrs. Anna wanted the house always full of priests, to whom she furnished good dinners, suppers, and luncheons. Haydn was a bit economical; but rather for cause than desire. At this time he had hardly enough to live on discreetly, and he began to look with evil eye on this endless procession of holy grasshoppers (locuste) who ravaged his larder. Nor was it appropriate to the house of a studious man, this ceaseless clatter of a numerous, genial, and lazy society; therefore, solidly religious as he was, he could not enjoy these sacred repasts and he had to close the door of the refectory. After that the deluge (inde iræ). Mrs. Anna had a religious brother. Haydn couldn't keep him from visiting his sister.

"Monks are like cherries; if you lift one from the basket, ten come along with it. Haydn's convent was not depopulated. Nor did the demands decrease. Every now and then Mrs. Anna had a new request; to-day a responsory, to-morrow a motet, the day after a mass, then hymns, then psalms, then antiphons; and all gratis. If her husband declined to write them, there appeared on the scene the great confederates of capricious women; the effects of hysteria, spleen (gli insulti di stomaco), spasms; then shrieks, then criminations, weepings, quarrels, and bad humour unceasing. Haydn ended with having to appease the woman, to lose his point, and pay the doctor and the druggist to boot. He had always drouth in his purse and despair in his mind. It is a true miracle that a genius in such a contrast could create the wonderful works that all the world knows.

"It was at this time that, seeking solace in friendship, he contracted that bond of sentiment which lasted till death with Boselli, a singer in the service of Prince Esterházy. This friendship, rousing jealous suspicions in the mind of Mrs. Anna, ended by rendering her unendurable. The hostile fates willed that no fruit should be borne of Haydn's marriage." [On this point Haydn once opened his heart to Griesinger, saying: "My wife was incapable of bearing children, and therefore I was less indifferent to the charms of other womankind."] "Lacking its most solid link, the marital chain could not stand such shocks, and grew fatally weaker. The pair ceased to live together, and only that sacramental knot remained indissoluble and strong, which Haydn had contracted at the age of twenty-seven. Mrs. Anna lived to seventy years on a sufficient pension which her husband faithfully paid, and she died in 1800. These vicissitudes in great part explain why Haydn, though he earned much, could not for a long while put aside a penny and make himself a little ease."

It is not a pretty picture that Carpani draws of this home life, and Anna is made out to be far from a lovable creature. She is compared to the patron saint of shrews, Xantippe. But even Xantippe had her side of the story to tell; and with all possible admiration for that man Socrates, of such godlike wisdom and such great heart, it must be remembered that Socrates had many habits which would not only cause ostracism from society to-day, but would have tried the temper of even such a wife as the meek Griselda of Chaucer's poem.

We constantly meet these husbands who are seemingly rich in geniality and yet are mysteriously unhappy at home. It is the custom of the acquaintances of these fellows to put all the blame on the wife. But there is a distinct type of mind which always enjoys dining abroad and appreciates a few herbs in a stranger's house more than a stalled ox at home. These people are gentle and genial and tender only out-of-doors. You might call them extra-mural saints.

I have a strong suspicion that Haydn, who was so dear and good a soul that he was commonly called "Papa" by his friends and disciples, was one of the souls that shrivel up inside the house. In any case he can never be forgiven for publishing his domestic miseries as he did. He talked inexcusably to his friends about his wife; he complained everywhere of her extravagances and of her quarrelsomeness. When Griesinger wished to make Haydn's wife a present, Haydn forbade him, saying:

"She does not deserve anything! It is little matter to her whether her husband is an artist or a cobbler."

As he passed in front of a picture of her once, he seized the violinist Baillot by the arm, and pointing to the picture said, "That is my wife. Many a time she has maddened me."

In 1792 he wrote to his mistress from London:—"My wife, the infernal beast" (bestia infernale—Pohl translates this höllische Bestie) "has written so much stuff that I had to tell her I would not come to the house any more; which has brought her again to her senses."

This was thirty-two years after his marriage, and a year later he writes again:

"My wife is ailing most of the time and is always in the same miserable temper, but I do not let it distress me any longer. There will sometime be an end of this torment."

Louis Nohl speaks of this as written in a gentle and almost sorrowful tone! As his biographers find gentleness in such writing, it is easy to see why Mrs. Haydn has had few defenders.

Heaven forbid that I should be considered as throwing all the blame for the unhappiness upon the husband. Anna Keller had a remarkably long and sharp tongue whose power she did not neglect; she once complained to her husband that there was not money enough in the house to bury him in case he died suddenly. He pointed to a series of canons which he had written and framed. When he was in London revelling in his triumph, she sent him a letter in which she asked him for money enough to buy a certain little house she had set her heart on, naïvely adding that it was just a cosy size for a widow.

Haydn bought it later for himself, and lived in it several years as a widower. Carpani in his thirteenth letter draws a pleasant picture of Haydn's life with his mistress Boselli, and incidentally describes how various composers composed: Gluck with his piano in a summer meadow and the bottled sunshine of Champagne on each side; Sarti in a dark room at night with a funereal lamp pendant from the ceiling; Salieri in the streets eating sweets; Paer while joking with his friends, gossiping on a thousand things, scolding his servants, quarrelling with his wife and children and petting his dog; Cimarosa in the midst of noisy friends; Sacchini with his sweetheart at his side and his kittens playing on the floor about him; Paesiello in bed; Zingarelli after reading the holy fathers or a classic; Anfossi in the midst of roast capons, steaming sausages, gammons of bacon and ragouts.

"But Haydn, like Newton, alone and obscure, voyaged the skies in his chair; on his finger the ring of Frederick like the invisible ring of Angelica. When he returned among mortals, Boselli and his friends divided his time. For thirty years he led this life, monotona ma dolcissima, not knowing his growing fame nor dreaming of leaving Eisenstadt, save when he mused on Italy. Then Boselli died and he began to feel the ennui (le noje) of a void in his days. It was then that he went to London."

This mistress of Haydn's, whom Carpani and Fétis call Boselli and whom Dies calls Pulcelli, is now generally called Polzelli, following the spelling in Haydn's own handwriting. The pleasant legend Carpani gives of Haydn's life with this woman, undisturbed by ambition until her death, is as much upset by later writers as is the spelling of her name. Pohl, closely followed by Haydn's recent biographer, Schmidt, describes Luigia Polzelli as a Neapolitan who was nineteen when she was engaged to sing at the theatre of the Prince Esterházy. She was the wife of Anton Polzelli, an insignificant and sickly violinist, with whom she was apparently not in love. Luigia is pictured—doubtless by guesswork—as not beautiful, but of a pleasing appearance, showing the indications of her Italian birth in "her small slim face, her dark complexion, her black eyes, her chestnut-coloured hair; her body of medium height and elegant form."

"To this woman," says Schmidt, "Haydn fetched his own deep and lasting sorrow. Polzelli was in the same position as he: she lived unhappily with her spouse. Whether she honestly returned Haydn's love cannot be known. Facts hint that she often abused and took advantage of his good nature. But for all that she beautified his life, so often joyless, by the tenderness which she awoke in him; and the woman who throughout twenty years could do that, deserved well of the man whose friend she was; and she earns our consideration and sympathy besides. From London the master wrote her the tenderest letters. Both, as their correspondence shows, only postponed their union, till the day when 'four eyes shall be closed,'

"Yet when finally both were free, Time had worked his almighty influence; Haydn had grown gray; outwardly as well as spiritually an estrangement had widened between them, and of their once so dear a desire there is no more word. Yet Haydn never ceased to provide for his friend, as well as to care for the education and the success of her sons. The elder, Pietro, Haydn's favourite, on whom he hung with his whole heart, died early." [Pohl quotes many allusions to him in Haydn's letters.] "The younger, Anton, who was reported without proper foundation to be Haydn's natural son, later became musical director of the prince's chapel, but then gave up music and turned farmer, finally dying of the plague in sad circumstances."

Pohl is somewhat fuller upon this alliance than Schmidt, who, in fact, merely condenses and paraphrases him. He says that Polzelli's maiden name was Moreschi [which, being interpreted, is "Moor," a name once given to Haydn]; she was a mezzo-soprano, who played secondary rôles in the operas. She earned the same salary as her husband, 465 gulden a year. The letters Haydn wrote her were always in Italian, and in one of them he wishes her better rôles, and "a good master who will take the same interest as thy Haydn." Haydn had come to her for sympathy, since, as Pohl says and we have seen, "thanks to his wife he had hell at home" [die Holle im House].

When increasing fame took Haydn by the hand and led him away to royal triumphs in London, he did not take jealousy along with his other luggage. He seems to have heard that his place was promptly filled in Polzelli's heart, but with all his geniality, he could write of the rumoured rival as "this man, whose name I do not know, but who is to be so happy as to possess thee." Then there was a recrudescence of the old ardour:

"Oh, dear, dear Polzelli, thou lingerest always in my heart; never, never shall I forget thee (O cara Polzelli, tu mi stai sempre nel core, mal, mal scordeo di te)."

When some one in London told him that Polzelli had sold the piano he had given her, he could not believe it, and only wrote her, "See how they tease me about you" (vedi come mi seccano per via di te). Still less will he believe that she has spoken ill of him, and he writes:

"May God bless thee, and forgive thee everything, for I know that love speaks in thee. Be careful for thy good name, I beg thee, and think often of thy Haydn, who cherishes and tenderly loves thee and to thee will always be true."

Even to Bologna, whither Polzelli went with her two sons, says Pohl, "followed Haydn's love—and his gold." He intended after his first London visit to go to Italy to visit her, and wrote further:

"I cherish thee and love thee as on that first day, and am always sad that I cannot do more for you. Yet have patience. Surely the day will come when I can show thee how much I love thee."

Loisa's choice of a spouse had been unhappy, as so many marriages have been where the wife is a singer on the stage, and the husband a fiddler in the band. Haydn seems to have sympathised with Loisa in her unhappy domestic affairs, as cordially as she had sympathised with him in his. He had sympathy, too, for her similarly ill-matched sister, Christine Negri, for he writes of her as—

"Already long separated from her husband, that beast, she has been as unhappy as even you, and awakes my sympathy."

Also in March, 1791, he wrote Loisa about her husband in a manner implying that he was a brute or a maniac: "Thou hast done well to have him taken to the hospital to save thy life." Haydn and Loisa, being Catholics, never thought of seeking divorce: their only hope of celebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutish husband and his shrewish wife—"when four eyes shall close." Loisa's husband was the first to oblige, for in August, 1791, his death wrings a charitable word from even Haydn:

"Thy poor husband! I tell thee that Providence has managed well in freeing thee from thy heavy burden, for it is better to be in the other world, than useless in this one. The poor fellow has suffered enough."

Later he writes:

"DEAR POLZELLI:—Probably that time will come which we have so often longed for. Already two eyes are closed. But the other two—ah, well, as God wills!" Eight years more, and the reluctant and wide-eyed Anna Haydn was foiled of her desire to be a widow in the snug cottage of her choice. The lovers at last were both single. But now, freed of their shackles, why do they not rush to each other's arms? The only answer we receive is this chill and shocking document found long after Haydn's death; it is written in Italian and dated shortly after Frau Haydn's death:

"I, the undersigned, promise Signora Loisa Polzelli (in case I shall be disposed to marry again) to take no other for wife than the said Loisa Polzelli; and if I remain a widower, I promise the said Loisa Polzelli after my death to leave her a life pension of 300 gulden, that is 300 florins in Vienna money. Valid before every court. I sign myself,

"JOSEPH HAYDN,

"Maestro di Cappella of his Highness, the Prince Esterhazy.

Vienna, May 23, 1800."

On this sad and icy postscript to the ardent love affair, Schmidt comments: "The form of this writing leaves the conclusion plain, that Haydn was forced to this act by the Polzelli. This throws a poor light on her character, and we dare not evade the conclusion that, for twenty years in this love affair for life, she had in mind a business arrangement with the master."

Thus cynically writes Schmidt of the woman who for a score of years occupied Haydn's affections. And all of the biographers are inclined to heap upon her more or less contempt; but as you shall see a little later, the genial master himself was not above reproach, and Loisa's anxiety was not unfounded, for her Joseph was casting amorous glances elsewhere. Thus after the long ardour, the love letters have frozen into a hard and fast negative betrothal in which Haydn promises to marry no one else. This, Schmidt says, was dragged out of Haydn. But, if such a bond were necessary, it speaks surely as ill for Haydn as for the woman who had given her life and her good name to brighten his joyless heart.

Yet, dead as his love was, honour remained with him, though it was a rather close-reckoning honour. Three months later he answered with money her request for house-rent, and in a will dated May 5, 1801, occurs this clause, cancelling his former agreement, and making new provisions:

"To the widow Aloysia Polzelli, formerly singer at Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's, payable in ready money six months after my death, 100 florins, and each year from the date of my death, for her life … 150 florins. After her death her son, Anton Polzelli, to receive 150 florins for one year, having always been a good son to his mother and a grateful pupil to me. N.B.—I hereby revoke the obligation in Italian, signed by me, which may be produced by Mme. Polzelli; otherwise so many of my poor relations with greater claims would receive too little. Finally Mme. Polzelli must be satisfied with the annuity of 150 florins." Two years later we find him writing to her (and, rumour said, his) son: "I hope thy mamma finds herself well." In a new will, dated 1809, the year of his death, Haydn withdraws the cash gift to Loisa, and leaves her only 150 florins annuity. She still remains, however, his chief heir. Meanwhile, without waiting for his death, she had married again to Luigi Franci, like herself a singer and an Italian. She outlived him and Haydn also, only to die in poverty and senility, far away in Hungary. Poor, eighty-two year old Loisa! Her affairs had been sadly mismanaged.

Why had Loisa given up all hope of marrying Haydn, even when his wife was dead and she was possessed of his agreement, signed, sealed, and delivered, to marry no one but her? Awhile ago I stooped to repeating the scandal that during Signora Polzelli's life, Haydn had been casting sheep's eyes elsewhere. But it is such a pretty scandal! Besides, these old contrapuntists were trained from youth to keep two or more tunes going at once.

I am not referring to Haydn's friendship with Frau von Genzinger. It was Karajan who discovered and published this pleasant correspondence with her. She was the wife of a very successful physician, a "ladies' doctor" (Damen Doktor). She was the daughter of the Hofrath von Kayser; her name was Maria Anna Sabina; she was born Nov. 6th, 1750, and had been married some seventeen years, and was the mother of five children when Haydn began taking his every Sunday dinner with the family. Karajan says that she was an ausgezeichnete singer and pianist.

A deep friendship sprang up at once between them and they corresponded freely. Haydn's letters to her were published by Nohl, and you may read them in Lady Wallace's translation. They are full of the most interesting lights upon Haydn's life and experiences, and are brimful of affection for Frau von Genzinger. But the husband and the children are almost always referred to in the letters, and the friendship seems to have been entirely and only a friendship—as Schmidt calls it, "eine tiefe und zugleich respectvolle Neigung."

Mr. Upton, who accepts the friendship as "honourable," finds in Frau von Genzinger the only true feminine inspiration Haydn ever had for composition. "We owe much of his music to his wife; but the savage and truculent manner in which she inspired him was not conducive to the best work of his genius. There is no record that the Polzelli was of any benefit to him musically; certainly she was not morally."

But there was another woman who idolised Haydn the musician, and with Haydn the man conducted a quaint and curious love duet embalmed in many a billet-doux fragrant with charm.

It was not, then, Frau von Genzinger that threatened Polzelli's supremacy. Nor was it Madame Bartolozzi, for whom Haydn wrote a sonata and three trios; nor Mrs. John Hunter, who wrote words for many of his canzonets. Nor yet Mrs. Hodges, for whom he composed, and whom he called "the loveliest woman I ever saw." Nor yet again the fascinating actress, Mrs. Billington, of whom the pleasant story is told, that Haydn, when he went to London, called on Sir Joshua Reynolds at his studio, found him painting Mrs. Billington as "Saint Cecilia listening to the angels," and protested gallantly that Reynolds ought to have painted the angels listening to her. For which sprightliness he received immediately a fervent hug and a kiss from those so sweet and promiscuous lips. The skeptics object, that Reynolds exhibited the picture in London in 1790, a year before Haydn reached London, but it is a shame to spoil a good and famous story.

The true woman in the case makes her entrée in this innocent style:

"Mrs. Schroeter presents her complements to Mr. Haydn, and informs him that she is just returned to town, and will be very happy to see him whenever it is convenient to him to give her a lesson.

"James-st., Buckingham gate, Wednesday, June the 29th, 1791."

This little note was the first of a series of genuine love letters preserved for many years by Haydn. His answers to them seem to have been lost, though the whimsical spade of time that has recently brought to light the works of Bacchylides, after two thousand years and more of oblivion, may with equal speed unsod Haydn's letters to this interesting personage. May we be there to see!

Just nineteen years before this little preludising note, Mrs. Schroeter was an Englishwoman of wealth and aristocracy. In that year there came to London a German musician, Johann Samuel Schroeter, a brother of Corona Schroeter, one of that Amazonian army of beauties to whom Goethe made love and wrote poetry. He became music-master to the English queen as successor to that son of Sebastian Bach who is known as "the English Bach." He speedily won pupils and esteem among the higher circles of London society. But being welcomed as a musician was one thing and as a son-in-law quite another. When, therefore, he made one of his most aristocratic pupils his wife by a clandestine marriage, there was, according to Fetis, such scandal and such a threat of legal proceedings that he consented to the annulment of the marriage in consideration of a pension of five hundred pounds, and retired from the city to escape notoriety. Sixteen years after his entry into London Schroeter died of consumption.

Three years later another German musician, Joseph Haydn, appears in London, and is taken up by society. Mrs. Schroeter, apparently not sated by her first experience, proceeds to repeat it pat. Just as before, she becomes a pupil in music, and later a pupil in love of the newcomer. But whereas her husband had died at the age of thirty-eight, her new lover Haydn was fifty-nine when she met him.

Dies quoted Haydn's own words as saying, "In London, I fell in love with a widow, though she was sixty years old at the time." But Mr. Krehbiel shows good reason for believing that Dies must have misunderstood Haydn. To me it occurs as a possibility that Haydn said to Dies, not "though she was sixty years old," but "though I was sixty years old." I think we are safe in assuming with Mr. Krehbiel that she was not more than thirty-five or forty, an age not yet so great, according to statistics, as that of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Marian Delorme, at the times of their most potent beauty.

Let us also dismiss as unauthorised and gratuitous the words of Pauline D. Townsend, in her biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeter that she was "an attractive, although, according to modern taste, a somewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is no disguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn. Her letters to Haydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her have not been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmer in tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between him and Frau Haydn in Vienna." We know how little Frau Haydn had had to do with Haydn's life in his own town. You may judge for yourself as to the charge of "vulgarity."

The existence of Mrs. Schroeter's veritable Love Letters of an Englishwoman was known for many years, and Pohl in his book on "Mozart und Haydn in London" quoted from them. But for their complete publication in the original English, we are indebted to Mr. Krehbiel's "Music and Manners in the Classical Period." This captivating work contains also a note-book which Haydn kept in London; it is filled with amusing blunders in English and vivid pictures of London life of the time, pictures as delectable in their way as the immortal garrulity of Pepys.

I cannot do better than let these letters speak for themselves through such quotations as I have room to make. There are twenty-two of them in all, in Mr. Krehbiel's book. The abbreviations are curious and explain themselves. M.L. is "my love," D.L. is "dear love," M.D. is "my dear," and M. Dst. is its superlative. The abbreviations were possibly due to the fact that the letters exist only in Haydn's own handwriting, copied into his note-book without attention to their proper order. Or they may have been simply the amorous shorthand of that day.

Two of them are signed R.S. and this leads me to believe that Mrs. Schroeter's first name began with R., though we know neither that nor her maiden name. In the first letter Mrs. Schroeter says that she encloses him "the words of the song you desire." This letter is dated February 8th. In his note-book there is an entry on February 13, 1792, and just preceding it a little Italian poem in which I have been pleased to see what was possibly this very song, its first lines being suggestively like the first line of Mrs. Schroeter's letter.

"Io vi mando questo foglio

Dalle lagrime rigato,

Sotto scritto dal cordoglio

Dai pensieri sigillato

Testimento del mio amore

(Io) vi mando questo core."

Among the letters there are many anxious allusions, which may indicate that Haydn was suffering from insomnia, unless you are inclined to give them a more subtle significance. But to the quotations, with regrets that they must be incomplete.

"Wednesday, Febr. 8th, 1792.

"M.D. Inclos'd I have sent you the words of the song you desire. I wish much to know how you do to day. I am very sorry to lose the pleasure of seeing you this morning, but I hope you will have time to come tomorrow. I beg my D you will take great care of your health and do not fatigue yourself with too much application to business. My thoughts and best wishes are always with you, and I ever am with the utmost sincerity M.D. your &c."

"March the 7th 92.

"My D. I was extremely sorry to part with you so suddenly last night, our conversation was particularly interesting and I had a thousand affectionate things to Say to you. my heart was and is full of tenderness for you but no language can express half the Love and Affection I feel for you. you are dearer to me every Day of my life. I am very Sorry I was so dull and Stupid yesterday, indeed my Dearest it was nothing but my being indisposed with a cold occasioned my Stupidity. I thank you a thousand times for your Concern for me. I am truly Sensible of your goodness and I assure you my D. if anything had happened to trouble me, I wou'd have open'd my heart and told you with the greatest confidence, oh, how earnestly I wish to See you. I hope you will come to me tomorrow. I shall be happy to See you both in the Morning and the Evening. God Bless you my love. my thoughts and best wishes ever accompany you and I always am with the most Sincere and invariable Regard my D,

"Your truly affectionate—

"my Dearest I cannot be happy till I see you if you Know do tell me when you will come."

"April 4th 92.

"My D: With this you will receive the Soap. I beg you a thousand pardons for not sending it sooner. I know you will have the goodness to excuse me. I hope to hear you are quite well and have Slept well. I shall be happy to See you my D: as soon as possible. I shall be much obliged to you if you will do me the favor to send me Twelve Tikets for your Concert. may all success attend you my ever D H that Night and always is the sincere and hearty wish of your "Invariable and Truly affectionate—"

"James St. Thursday, April 12th

"M.D. I am so truly anxious about you. I must write to beg to know how you do? I was very sorry I had not the pleasure of Seeing you this Evening, my thoughts have been constantly with you and my D.L. no words can express half the tenderness and affection I feel for you. I thought you seemed out of Spirits this morning. I wish I could always remove every trouble from your mind, be assured my D: I partake with the most perfect sympathy in all your sensations and my regard is Stronger every day. my best wishes always attend you and I am ever my D.H. most sincerely your Faithful etc."

"M.D. I was extremely Sorry to hear this morning that you were indisposed. I am told you were five hours at your Studys yesterday, indeed my D.L. I am afraid it will hurt you. why shou'd you who have already produced So many wonderful and Charming compositions Still fatigue yourself with Such close application. I almost tremble for your health let me prevail on you my much-loved H. not to keep to your Studys so long at one time, my D. love if you could know how very precious your welfare is to me I flatter myself you wou'd endeaver to preserve it for my sake as well as your own. pray inform me how you do and how you have Slept. I hope to see you to Morrow at the concert and on Saturday I shall be happy to See you here to dinner, in the mean time my D: my Sincerest good wishes constantly attend you and I ever am with the tenderest regard your most &c.

"J.S. April the 19th 92"

"April 24th 1792.

"My D. I cannot leave London without Sending you a line to assure you my thoughts, my best wishes and tenderest affections will inseparably attend you till we meet again. the Bearer will also deliver you the March. I am very Sorry I could not write it Sooner, nor better, but I hope my D. you will excuse it, and if it is not passable I will send you the Dear original directly. If my H. would employ me oftener to write Music I hope I should improve and I know I should delight in the occupation, now my D.L. let me intreat you to take the greatest care of your health. I hope to see you Friday at the concert and on Saturday to dinner, till when and ever I most sincerely am and Shall be yours etc."

"M.D. If you will do me the favor to take your dinner with me tomorrow I shall be very happy to see you and particularly wish for the pleasure of your company my Dst Love before our other friends come. I hope to hear you are in good Health. My best wishes and tenderest Regards are your constant attendants and I ever am with the firmest Attachment my Dst H most sincerely and Affectionately yours,

"R.S."

"James S. Tuesday Ev. May 22d."

"M.D. I can not close my eyes to sleep till I have return'd you ten thousand thanks for the inexpressible delight I have received from your ever Enchanting compositions and your incomparably Charming performance of them, be assured my D.H. that among all your numerous admirers no one has listened with more profound attention and no one can have Such high veneration for your most brilliant Talents as I have, indeed my D.L. no tongue can express the gratitude I feel for the infinite pleasure your Musick has given me. accept then my repeeted thanks for it and let me also assure you with heart felt affection that I Shall ever consider the happiness of your acquaintance as one of the Chief Blessings of my life, and it is the Sincer wish of my heart to preserve to cultivate and to merit it more and more. I hope to hear you are quite well. Shall be happy to see you to dinner and if you can come at three o'Clock it would give me a great pleasure as I shou'd be particularly glad to see you my D. befor the rest of our friends come. God Bless you my h: I ever am with the firmest and most perfect attachment your &c.

"Wednesday night, June the 6th 1792."

"My Dst, Inclosed I send you the verses you was so Kind as to lend me and am very much obliged to you for permitting me to take a copy of them, pray inform me how you do, and let me know my Dst L when you will dine with me; I shall be happy to See you to dinner either tomorrow or tuesday whichever is most Convenient to you. I am truly anxious and impatient to See you and I wish to have as much of your company as possible; indeed my Dst H. I feel for you the fondest and tenderest affection the human Heart is capable of and I ever am with the firmest attachment my Dst Love

"most Sincerely, Faithfully

"and most affectionately yours

"Sunday Evening, June 10, 1792"

"M.D.

"I was extremely sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you to-day, indeed my Dst Love it was a very great disappointment to me as every moment of your company is more and more precious to me now your departure is so near. I hope to hear you are quite well and I shall be very happy to see you my Dst Hn. any time to-morrow after one o'clock, if you can come; but if not I shall hope for the pleasure of Seeing you on Monday. You will receive this letter to-morrow morning. I would not send it to-day for fear you should not be at home and I wish to have your answer. God bless you my Dst. Love, once more I repeat let me See you as Soon as possible. I ever am with the most inviolable attachment my Dst and most beloved H.

"most faithfully and most

"affectionately yours

"R.S."

"I am just returned from the concert where I was very much Charmed with your delightful and enchanting Compositions and your Spirited and interesting performance of them, accept ten thousand thanks for the great pleasure I always receive from your incomparable Music. My D: I intreat you to inform me how you do and if you get any Sleep to Night. I am extremely anxious about your health. I hope to hear a good account of it. god Bless you my H: come to me to-morrow. I shall be happy to See you both morning and Evening. I always am with the tenderest Regard my D: your Faithful and Affectionate

"Friday Night, 12 o'clock."

This is the last of these letters to which one could apply so fitly the barbarous word "yearnful," once coined by Keats. After Haydn's return to London, in 1794, there are no letters to indicate a continuance of the acquaintance, but it doubtless was renewed, judging from the sagacious guess based upon the fact that Haydn did not come back to his old lodgings but took new ones at No. 1 Bury Street, St. James's.

This much more pleasantly situated dwelling, he probably owed to the considerate care of Mrs. Schroeter, who, by the same token, thus brought him nearer to herself. A short and pleasant walk of scarcely ten minutes through St. James's Palace and the Mall (a broad alley alongside of St. James's Park) led him to Buckingham Palace, and near at hand was the house of Mrs. Schroeter. Perhaps he preferred the walk to letter-writing. When he went away from London for ever, he left behind him the scores of his six last symphonies "in the hands of a lady," probably Mrs. Schroeter. It was this same woman to whom Haydn dedicated three trios, his first, second, and sixth. It was undoubtedly she to whom he referred when he made that little speech which Dies probably misquoted, in telling the answer Haydn gave him when he was asked what the letters were. "They are letters from an English widow in London who loved me; she was, though she already counted her sixty years, still a pretty and lovely woman, whom I would very probably have married had I then been single."

Let us remember that these old love letters, so fragrant with faded affections, were being received by Papa Haydn even while he was writing to Polzelli, rejoicing in the closing of two of those four baleful eyes that forbade their union. And let us not judge too harshly the Italian woman who had given this unbeautiful Austrian of such beautiful genius so much of her sunshine and tenderness. Nor let us judge too harshly the enamoured English widow. Why indeed need we judge harshly at all?

When Haydn died he had no child to leave his wealth to—even the fable that Anton Polzelli was his natural son is taken away from us by Pohl, who points out how small and temporary was the provision made for him in Haydn's will.

Among the heirlooms left by Haydn was a watch given to him by that Admiral of Admirals, Lord Nelson—and that points to us as a by-path, which it were pleasant, though forbidden now, to wander, the story of Nelson's fervent amour with Lady Hamilton, that beautiful work of art, that pet of artists.

As a postscript to Haydn's story we may tag on here a concise statement in his note-book, of the domestic affairs of one whom we do not think of now as a musician.

"On June 15th, I went from Windsor to Slough to Doctor Herschel, where I saw the great telescope. It is forty feet long and five feet in diameter. The machinery is vast, but so ingenious that a single man can put it in motion with ease. There are also two smaller telescopes, of which one is twenty-two feet long and magnifies six thousand times. The king had two made for himself, of which each measures twelve Schuh. He gave him one thousand guineas for them. In his younger days Doctor Herschel was in the Prussian service as an oboe player. In the seven years' war he deserted with his brother and came to England. For many years he supported himself with music, became organist at Bath, turned, however, to astronomy. After providing himself with the necessary instruments he left Bath, rented a room not far from Windsor, and studied day and night. His landlady was a widow. She fell in love with him, married him, and gave him a dowry of £100,000. Besides this he has £500 for life, and his wife, who is forty-five years old, presented him with a son this year, 1792. Ten years ago he had his sister come; she is of the greatest service to him in his observations. Frequently he sits from five to six hours under the open sky in the severest cold."