Chapter II The Years 1820 and 1821-End of the Guardianship Litigation-A Costly Victory-E. T. A. Hoffmann-Financial Troubles-Adagios and English Hymn-tunes-Arrested as a Vagrant-Negotiations for the Mass in D-The Last Pianoforte Sonatas. A LMOST involuntarily, in passing in review the incidents of the year whose story has just been told and projecting a glance into the near future, the question arises: Where, in these moments of doubt, ill-health, trial, vexation of spirit and torment of body were the old friends of Beethoven who in the earlier years had stood by him faithfully and lovingly? Where was Stephan von Breuning? Alas! he seems to have been an early sacrifice to Beethoven's obstinate course in respect of his nephew. Schindler says that he had advised against the adoption of the boy and thus wounded Beethoven in his most sensitive part. The temporary estrangement began in 1817. Some others of the old friends may have been rebuffed in like manner; some, like the faithful seneschal, Zmeskall, were ill; some were absent from Vienna-Count Brunswick, Schuppanzigh; some were dead; in some the flames of friendship may have died down because there was so little in Beethoven's public life to challenge their sympathy and support. Count Lichnowsky has dropped out of the narrative and does not appear for some years. What had happened to the ardent friend of the youthful days, Count Waldstein? There is no answer. Once a Conversation Book awakens curiosity and a hope. Somebody warns Beethoven in a public place not to speak so loud, as everybody is listening. "Count Waldstein is sitting near; where does he live?" Beethoven's answer is unrecorded and thus passes the only opportunity which the known material offers from which might have been learned what caused the death of that beautiful friendship. Bernard, Schindler, Oliva, Peters and Bach were near to him, and the last was of incalculable DEPARTURE OF OLD FRIENDS 25 value to him in his great trial. But could they replace those who were gone? Beethoven was become a lonely man-an enforced seeker of solitude. No doubt many who would have been glad to give him their friendship were deterred by the wide-spread reports of his suspicious, unapproachable, almost repellant nature. But a miracle happens. Driven in upon himself by the forces which seem to have been arrayed against him, introspection opens wider and wider to him the doors of that imagination which in its creative function, as Ruskin tells us, is "an eminent beholder of things when and where they are not; a seer that is, in the prophetic sense, calling the things that are not as though they were; and for ever delighting to dwell on that which is not tangibly present." Now he proclaims a new evangel, illustrates a higher union of beauty and truthfulness of expression, exalts art till it enters the realm of religion. In the Tagebuch there stands a bold inscription written in February of the year 1820: "The moral law in us, and the starry sky above us-Kant." This and two other citations, the first of which Beethoven surely culled from some book, also deserve to be set down here as mottoes applicable to the creative work which occupied his mind during the year and thereafter: 'Tis said that art is long and life is fleeting:- If e'er her breath vouchsafes with gods a meeting, A moment's favor 'tis of which we've had a part. The world is a king and desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is perverse and will not submit to the mould of flattery. Famous artists always labor under an embarrassment;-therefore, first works are the best, though they may have sprung from dark ground. We can only record the fact that Beethoven began the year 1820, as he had begun its immediate predecessor, by sending a New Year's greeting to the august pupil who was now almost continually in his mind-Archduke Rudolph, soon to be Archbishop and Cardinal—before taking up the story of the incubus which oppressed the composer's mind, the clog which impeded his creative activities during much of the year-the legal proceedings "Two things fill the soul with ever new and increasing wonder and reverence the oftener the mind dwells upon them—the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. ."-Kant's "Criticism of Practical Reason.' The greeting was in the form of a four-part canon beginning with a short homophonic chorus, the words: "Seiner Kaiserlichen Hoheit! Dem Erzherzog Rudolph! Dem geistlichen Fürsten! Alles Gute, alles Schöne!" The autograph is preserved by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. B. and H. Ges. Aus. Series XXIII, page 187. concerning the guardianship of nephew Karl. Fortunately for the tinge of these pages the end is not distant. Two applications made by Beethoven to the Court of Magistrates had been denied and he now asked for a review of these decisions by the Court of Appeals. The action of the Magistracy had grievously pained him, so he informed the superior tribunal, and not only had his rights been set aside, but no regard had been shown for the welfare of his nephew. Against this he now sought relief, and he set forth his grievances: (1) He was testamentary appointee and the Landrecht had confirmed him and excluded the mother; circumstances compelling his absence from Vienna, he had arranged that Herr Nussböck should be appointed guardian ad interim; back permanently in the city, his nephew's welfare required that he resume the guardianship; (2) The higher education which his nephew's talents demanded neither the mother nor Nussböck could direct-the former because she was a woman and had conducted herself in a manner which had led the Landrecht to exclude her, Nussböck because he was too much occupied with his duties as Municipal Sequestrator and, having been no more than a paper-maker, he did not possess the insight and judgment essential to the scientific education of the ward. (3) Having no child of his own, his hopes were set on the boy, who was unusually talented, yet he had been told that he had been held back a year in his studies and that owing to a lack of funds he was to be taken from the institution in which he had been placed and given in the care of his mother; by her mismanagement the boy would be sacrificed, it being the aim of the mother to expend his share of the pension money on herself. He had declared to the Magistracy his willingness to defray the costs at the institute and also to engage other masters for the boy. Being "somewhat hard of hearing" communication with him was difficult and therefore he had asked that a co-guardian be appointed in the person of Herr Peters, Prince Lobkowitzsian Councillor, whose knowledge and moral character would assure such a training and education as were justified by the boy's capacity. "I know of no more sacred duty than the care and education of a child," he observes. He would offer no objection to the mother's having a "sort of joint-guardianship," but its duties and privileges should be limited to her visiting him and learning what plans were making for his education; to permit more would be to compass the ruin of the boy.1 The reader who desires to read the documents in full is referred to the German edition of this biography for the decrees and minutes of the courts and to the KalischerShedlock collection of letters for Beethoven's pleadings. AN APPEAL TO A HIGHER COURT 27 This petition was filed on January 7, 1820; three days later the Appellate Court commanded the Magistracy to file a report of the proceedings had before it, together with all minutes and documents. The Magistracy complied on February 5, citing its decision of September 17, 1819, and defending its action on the grounds that (a) Beethoven, owing to his deafness and his hatred of the mother of the ward, was incapable of acting as guardian; (b) the guardianship belonged to the mother by right of law; (c) the commission of an act of infidelity against her husband in 1811, for which she had suffered punishment, was no longer a bar; (d) none of the alleged "injurious disturbances and interferences" had been definitely set forth or proven: If under injurious disturbances we are to understand that the mother is desirous to see her child once every 14 days or 4 weeks, or to convince herself about the wear and cleanliness of his clothing, or to learn of his conduct toward his teachers, these can appear injurious only in the eyes of the appellant; the rest of the world, however, would find it amiss in a mother if she made inquiry concerning her child only once a fortnight or month. Answering the second charge, the magistrates urged that the appellant seemed to ask of the mother and other guardian that they themselves educate the boy in the sciences. For this not even the appellant was fitted, at least he had not demonstrated such a fitness; he had left the preparation for the higher studies to others and this the mother and guardian could also do, having, indeed, a better plan, which was to send the boy to the R. I. Convict, where he would surely make better progress at smaller expense. Ad tertium, the failure of the boy to advance in his classes could not be laid to the mother or guardian, but must be charged against the appellant, who had taken the boy away from his studies for the university after two months, kept him at home three months, and sent him to another institution of learning at the end of June; naturally enough he lost a school year. The Court of Appeals demanded a more explicit report, which the Magistracy filed on February 28, taking advantage of the opportunity to review the proceedings had before the Landrecht from the beginning, and to make severe strictures on the conduct of Beethoven in filing an exhibit (F) with his petition in support of which no evidence was offered, though because of it the Landrecht was asked to exclude the mother from the guardianship which belonged to her under the law. Again we quote: This exclusion can have nothing for its foundation except the misdemeanor of which the mother was guilty in 1811, for all the rest contained in appellant's exhibit F is unproven chatter to which the Landrecht could give no consideration, but which gives speaking proof of how passionately and inimically the appellant has always acted, and still acts, towards the mother, how little he recks of tearing open wounds that were healed, since after having endured punishment she stood rehabilitated; and yet he reproaches her with a transgression for which she had atoned years before, which had been pardoned by the injured husband himself who petitioned for leniency in her sentence and who had declared her capable and fit for the guardianship of his son in his last will and testament, directing that the son be not taken away from his mother. Regardless of this the appellant last year, certainly not in the interest of the boy's welfare, inasmuch as we have excellent educational institutions here, but only to pain the mother, to tear the heart out of her bosom, attempted to send him out of the country to Landshut. Fortunately the government authorities, acting on information derived from this court, frustrated the plan by refusing a passport. Let us try now to take a dispassionate view of the case as thus far presented in the pleadings and documents. Not only the law of nature but the laws of the land justified the mother in asserting her right to look after the physical well-being of her child and seeking to enforce it. Dr. Bach seems to have impressed that fact upon Beethoven, wherefore he declares his willingness in the bill of appeal to associate her with himself in the guardianship to that extent. That the Magistrates displayed unusual, not to say unjudicial zeal in her behalf while defending their own course is indubitable; but we are in no position to judge of the propriety of their course, which seems to have been in harmony with the judicial procedure of the place and period, least of all to condemn them, so long as it was permitted them so to do, for having made a stout resistance when their acts were impugned in the appeal to the higher court. The "Exhibit F," filed in the proceedings before the Landrecht, has not been found and its contents can only be guessed at from the allusions to it in the documents. Obviously it contained aspersions on the moral character of Madame van Beethoven, and it may have been, nay, probably was, true that they were unsupported by evidence and therefore undeserving of consideration in a court either of law or equity. Perhaps they were not susceptible of legal proof. It has been thought that Beethoven felt some hesitancy in flaunting evidence of his sisterin-law's infamy in the face of the world,1 but he certainly showed no disposition to spare her in his letters, nor did he hesitate to accuse 'Dr. Deiters remarks on this point: "No doubt Beethoven had hoped to attain his ends by general statements and thus spare himself the shame and humiliation which would have followed had he presented the truth, even in disguise, touching the lewdness and shameless life of his own sister-in-law; and her legal advisers and the members of the Magisterial Court knew how to turn this fact to their own advantage.” |