In the letter dated November 16, Beethoven’s strong expressions of desire and intention to exhibit his powers as pianist and composer in other cities, are striking and worthy of the reader’s attention, yet need no comment; but a new topic there introduced must be treated at some length, not because it is of very great importance in itself, but as an episode in the master’s life which has employed so many pens and upon which biographer and novelist seem to have contended which could make the most of it and paint it in the highest romantic colors.[120]

The sentences referred to are: “I am living more pleasantly since. I live more amongst men.... This change has been wrought by a dear fascinating girl, etc.” Notwithstanding all that has been written on this text there is little reason to think that Beethoven’s passion for this particularly fascinating girl was more engrossing or lasting than at other periods for others, although peculiar circumstances subsequently kept it more alive in his memory. The testimony of Wegeler, Breuning, Romberg, Ries, has been cited to the point that Beethoven “was never without a love, and generally deeply engrossed in it.”

So, also, friends of Beethoven with whom Jahn conversed in 1852. Thus according to Carl Czerny he was said to have been in love with a Countess Keglevics, who was not generally considered handsome. The Sonata in E-flat, Op.7 (dedicated to her), was called “Die Verliebte” (“The Maiden, or Woman, in Love”). Dr. Bertolini, friend and physician of Beethoven from 1806 to 1816, said: “Beethoven generally had a flame; the Countess Guicciardi, Mme. von Frank, Bettina Brentano and others.” He was not insensible to ladies fair and frail. Dolealek, a music teacher who came to Vienna in 1800 and was the master’s admirer and friend to the last, adds the particular that “he never showed that he was in love.”

In short, Beethoven’s experience was precisely that of many an impulsive man of genius, who for one cause or another never married and therefore never knew the calm and quiet, but unchanging, affection of happy conjugal life. One all-absorbing but temporary passion, lasting until its object is married to a more favored lover, is forgotten in another destined to end in like manner, until, at length, all faith in the possibility (for them) of a permanent, constant attachment to one person is lost. Such men after reaching middle age may marry for a hundred various motives of convenience, but rarely for love.

Upon this particular passion of Beethoven, the present writer labors under the disadvantage of being compelled to subordinate his imagination to his reason and to sacrifice flights of fancy to the duty of ascertaining and imparting the modicum of truth that underlies all this branch of Beethoven literature, of extracting the few grains of wheat from the immense mass of chaff. With what success remains to be seen.

When Schindler, in perusing the “Notizen,” came to the passages above quoted, with his usual agility in jumping at conclusions he decided at once, that Beethoven here refers to the Countess Julia Guicciardi, and so states in his book; probably hitting the truth nearer than on the next page, where he makes FrÄulein Marie Koschak the object of Beethoven’s “autumnal love,” some half a dozen years before the two had ever met. In this case, however, there is no reason to suppose him mistaken.

On the 16th of November, 1801—the date of Beethoven’s letter—the Countess Guicciardi was just one week less than seventeen years of age. She is traditionally described as having had a good share of personal attractions, and is known to have been a fine looking woman even in advanced years. She appears to have possessed a mind of fair powers, cultivated and accomplished to the degree then common to persons of her rank; but it is not known that she was in any way eminently distinguished, unless for musical taste and skill as a pianist, which may perhaps be indicated in the dedication to her of a sonata by Kleinheinz as well as by Beethoven.

Julia Guicciardi’s near relationship to the Brunswicks would naturally throw her into the society of Beethoven immediately upon the transfer of her father from Trieste to Vienna; their admiration of his talents, their warm affection for him as a man, would awaken her curiosity to see him and create a most natural prejudice in his favor. Coming to the capital from a small, distant provincial town when hardly of an age to enter society, and finding herself so soon distinguished by the particular attentions and evident admiration of a man of Beethoven’s social position and fame, might well dazzle the imagination of a girl of sixteen, and dispose her, especially if she possessed more than common musical taste and talents, to return in a certain degree the affection proffered to her by the distinguished author of the Symphony, the Quartet, the Septet, the “Prometheus” music, and so many wonderful sonatas, by the unrivalled pianist, the generous, impulsive, enthusiastic artist, although unprepossessing in person and unable to offer either wealth or a title. There was romance in the affair. Besides these considerations there are traditions and reminiscences of old friends of the composer all tending to confirm the opinion of Schindler, that the “fascinating girl” was indeed the young Countess Guicciardi. That writer, however, knew nothing of the matter until twenty years afterwards; but what he learned came from Beethoven himself.

It happened, when the topic came up between them, “that, being in a public place where he did not like to trust himself to speak,” says Schindler, Beethoven also wrote his share in the conversation, so far as it related to this subject; hence his words may still be read in a Conversation Book of February, 1823, preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. His statements have certainly gained nothing in clearness from his whim of writing them in part in bad French.

It is proper to state, before introducing the citation from this book, that the young lady married Count Wenzel Robert Gallenberg, a prolific composer of ballet and occasional music, on the 3rd of November, 1803. The young pair soon left Vienna for Italy and were in Naples in the spring of 1806; for Gallenberg was one of the composers of the music for the fÊtes, on the occasion of Joseph Bonaparte’s assumption of the crown of the Two Sicilies. When the Neapolitan Barbaja took charge of the R. I. Opera at Vienna, toward the close of 1821, he made the Count an associate in the administration, and thus it happened that Schindler had occasion to call upon him with a message from Beethoven.

The Conversation Books of those years show, that the question of selling the opera, “Fidelio,” to various theatres, was one often discussed by Beethoven and his friends, and, also, that the author had no complete copy of the score. It thus became necessary to borrow one for the purpose of copying the whole or parts; and at this point we turn to the Conversation Book. Schindler, in the midst of a long series of remarks upon heterogeneous topics, expresses surprise that the Dresden theatre has never purchased “Fidelio,” and adds his opinion, that Weber will do all in his power to further Beethoven’s interest, both in regard to the opera and to the Mass in D. Then follows political news—Spain, England, etc.—and the sale or hypothecation by Dr. Bach of certain bank shares on which Beethoven wishes to raise money; and then:

Reverence for the composer, and admiration for his compositions, must have led many who will read this to the perusal of the constantly accumulating literature of which Beethoven and his works are the subject; and they must remember the prominence accorded to the Guicciardi affair. Will they believe that all the established facts, which have ever been made public, are exhausted in these pages already? This is literally true. All else is but conjecture or mistake. There is nothing in the present state of knowledge on this subject to relieve the great mass of turgid eloquence expended upon it from being described in one word as—nonsense. The foundation for a tragedy is certainly small in a case where the lover writes: “It is the first time that I feel as if marriage might make me happy”; and immediately adds “now, of course, I could not marry!” because the gratification of his ambition was more to him than domestic life with the beloved one.

In November, 1852, Jahn had an interview with the Countess Gallenberg. On so delicate a topic as Beethoven’s passion for her fifty years before, reticence was natural; but had the affair in truth been of the importance that others have given it, some hint must have confessed it. Yet there is nothing of the kind in his notes of the conversation. Here they are:

In this simple record the lady’s memory evidently mistakes by overrating the poverty of Beethoven at the time she was his pupil and in making him then so negligent in dress. “In his earlier years Beethoven dressed carefully, even elegantly; only later did he grow negligent, which he carried to the verge of uncleanliness,” says Grillparzer; and Czerny: “About the year 1813-’14, when B. looked well and strong, he also cared for his outward appearance.” But what a blow to all the supposed romantic significance is the short, prosaic account of the dedication of the C-sharp minor Sonata to her—a composition which was not a favorite with the composer himself. “Everybody is always talking about the C-sharp minor Sonata! Surely I have written better things. There is the Sonata in F-sharp major—that is something very different,” he once said to Czerny.

There is but one well-authenticated fact to be added, namely, that Beethoven kept up his intercourse with the family Guicciardi certainly as late as May or June, 1823, that is, to within six months of the young lady’s marriage. A careful survey and comparison both of the published data and of the private traditions and hints gleaned during a residence of several years at Vienna, result in the opinion (an opinion, note, not a statement resting on competent evidence) that Beethoven at length decided to offer Countess Julia his hand; that she was not indisposed to accept it; and that one of her parents consented to the match, but the other, probably the father, refused to entrust the happiness of his daughter to a man without rank, fortune or permanent engagement; a man, too, of character and temperament so peculiar, and afflicted with the incipient stages of an infirmity which, if not arrested and cured, must deprive him of all hope of obtaining any high and remunerative official appointment and at length compel him to abandon his career as the great pianoforte virtuoso. As the Guicciardis themselves were not wealthy, prudence forbade such a marriage. Be all this as it may, this much is certain: Beethoven did not marry the Countess Julia Guicciardi; Count Wenzel Robert Gallenberg did. The rejected lover—true to a principle enunciated in a letter to Zmeskall of March 29, 1799, “there is no use in quarrelling with what cannot be changed”—made the best of it, and went to work on the “Sinfonia eroica”!

Every reader acquainted with Schindler’s book will have noticed that two grave matters, connected by him with the Guicciardi affair, have been silently passed over, notwithstanding the very great importance given to them by him and his copyists. They must now be considered. Schindler’s honest and conscientious desire to ascertain and impart the truth concerning Beethoven admits no doubt. The spirit was willing, but his weakness as an investigator was something extraordinary. His helplessness in finding and following the clue out of a difficulty is something pitiable, sometimes ludicrous. He reminds us, now and then, of the character described by Addison: “He is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own blunders.”

Take the present matter for an instance. In his first editions of the biography the date given to the Guicciardi affair is 1806. With Wegeler’s letter before him giving him one fixed point—November, 1801—and the “GrÄfliches Taschenbuch” to be consulted in every respectable bookstore and public library for the day of Gallenberg’s marriage, November 3, 1803, he is still at a loss. “I had first to come to Paris, there make the acquaintance of Cherubini, in order to hit, quite accidentally, upon a certain clue for this date for which I had vainly searched in Vienna. Cherubini and his wife, soon after their arrival in Vienna in 1805, heard of this affair as of something that had happened two years before.” Following this hint, in his edition of 1860, he changes the 1806 to 1803—that is, he adopts the new date because, twenty years before, he heard from an old gentleman of 80 years and his wife, nearly as old, that, thirty-five years before, they had heard that some two years before that time Beethoven had been jilted! They also “could say with certainty that the effect upon Beethoven’s mood had already been overcome”;—which we are very willing to hear from them, although the fact needed no confirmation. Again; his conversation with Beethoven, given as an appendix to the edition of 1845, was suppressed in the first because the Countess Gallenberg was then living; the “Taschenbuch” would have taught him that this objection remained in force until March 22nd, 1856! How is it possible to read with confidence the opinions and statements of so helpless a writer—even when we grant him, as we do Schindler, the utmost rectitude of intention—except when he speaks from personal knowledge, or upon evidence which he shows to be good?

Having in a manner so extraordinary fixed the date to his satisfaction, Schindler proceeds to the catastrophe:

Jedlersee is so near Vienna, that a stout walker like Beethoven would think nothing of the distance; and for him to obey the whim or necessity of the moment, and disappear for two or three days, is the very weakest of all grounds for the astounding conjecture here gravely related. But grant for a moment that something of the kind, some time or other, really occurred; what reason is there to suppose that it happened then, and in connection with the Guicciardi matter? None, Credat JudÆus Apella, non ego. Indeed the whole story, whatever its date and connection, is told on such mere hearsay evidence as would not justify the police in arresting a beggar. To prevent it from passing into the category of established facts—at least in connection with this particular love-affair, and until some new and competent proof be discovered—it may be remarked:

I. Schindler’s first knowledge of the passion of Beethoven for Julia Guicciardi was obtained in 1823. Whatever he heard from other sources could only have been afterwards; and in all probability was after Beethoven’s death, when his attention was recalled to the subject by a paper presently to be noticed. He does not pretend to have heard this Jedlersee story from any party to it; nor could he, for the Countess ErdÖdy had been banished from the Austrian dominions long before it could have come to his ears. He is, in fact and upon his own showing, gravely detailing a mere private rumor, current (he says) among certain friends of Beethoven, of an event which happened (if at all) fifteen, twenty or thirty years before, and which was surmised by them, or by him, to have occurred at the time he was jilted by the young Countess Guicciardi.

II. There is nothing whatever in Ries’s reminiscences, most of which are of the precise period of that affair, which, by any stretch of fancy, can be made to confirm the story; nay, more, they are utterly inconsistent with it. There is nothing even to show that he ever observed that his master’s relations to the Guicciardis were in any way remarkable; yet Beethoven’s inclination to the society of women was a point in his character that particularly impressed him. “Beethoven,” he says,

III. And so too with Breuning. There is no letter, or part of a letter by him (so far as made known by Wegeler), nor any tradition derived from him, that relates to this passion or its supposed consequences; and yet, it is only from one of his letters that we know of the proposal of marriage in 1810; nay, more, we shall find, in 1803, Beethoven inviting a friend to dine with “Countess Guicciardi,” at a time when he and Breuning lodged together!

IV. If the Jedlersee story be true at all in connection with this particular lady, the time must have been 1803. But it is totally inconsistent with what is known of the composer’s history during that year.

V. Brauchle was not the Countess ErdÖdy’s music-teacher, but the tutor of her children, in which capacity he could hardly have been employed at a time when the eldest was not six years of age! If we are correctly informed, he was not in that service until after the year 1803; nor is it known that Beethoven’s intimacy with the Countess had then been formed. In any case, the starvation story may be considered as disposed of for the present.

The force of these arguments will be incidentally but materially increased by the views—if they find favor and acceptance—advanced and supported in a short discussion of the single remaining question belonging to the Guicciardi affair, to which we now come.

It was well known to Beethoven’s friends, that he died possessed of a few bank-shares; but where the certificates were deposited neither his brother, Breuning nor Schindler knew. “B. kept his bank-shares in a secret drawer of a cabinet known only to Holz,” is one of Jahn’s notes of a conversation with Carl Holz. When Schindler read Jahn’s manuscript notices and memoranda upon Beethoven and added his comments, he remarked here:

In that “secret drawer” Breuning found not only the bank-certificates, but also various “letters of importance to his friend,” as Schindler describes them. One of these was a letter with two postscripts written by Beethoven on two pieces of note-paper with a lead pencil, at some watering-place not named, in the July of a year not given and to a person not indicated. It is couched in terms of enthusiastic love rarely equalled even in romance, being like a translation into words of the most tender and touching passages in his most impassioned musical compositions. This document, placed in Schindler’s possession by Breuning, is the original of what was first printed in 1840, as, “three autograph letters written by Beethoven to his Giulietta from a bathing-place in Hungary”[122] and which have so often been reprinted at various times. The letter is as follows:

Among the many persons before whom at various times Schindler kindly placed the original for examination were Otto Jahn and the present writer, neither of whom ever discovered any other reason to suppose this paper to have been intended for the Countess Guicciardi than Schindler’s conjecture and the grounds upon which he had formed it. Bearing in mind that the existence of this paper was utterly unknown to either Breuning or Schindler until after the death of its writer, who alone could have imparted its history, the mental process by which it came to be described in the words just quoted, “three autograph letters written by Beethoven to his Giulietta from a bathing-place in Hungary,” is perfectly easy to trace; thus:

In the first of the three parts, or letters, Beethoven speaks of the very disagreeable journey which he had performed with four post-horses, and Esterhazy with eight; in the second he writes of the “mail-coach from here to K.” and again, “As I am taking the baths I must go to bed.” Now, of the 218 places in the Austrian postal-guide whose names begin with K, a large number are in Hungary; the bathing-places in that kingdom are also numerous; and Esterhazy’s possessions were there; hence Schindler’s assumption that Beethoven wrote from a Hungarian watering-place—which may stand for the present. His conjecture as to whom he wrote was of course suggested by his conversation in 1823 upon the Countess Gallenberg. This assumption, so obvious and natural for him to make that it was accepted unquestioned and even unsuspected for thirty years, must nevertheless be tested.

The document presents three incomplete dates, the year being omitted in each:

A reference to the almanacs of 1795, 1801, 1807, and 1812, shows that July 6th fell upon a Monday in those years. The year 1795 is of course excluded, for Julia Guicciardi had not then completed her eleventh year, and we turn at once to 1801. The main subjects of Beethoven’s letter to Wegeler of June 29th were his ailments and the modes of treatment adopted by his medical advisers; to which he adds his desire for his friend’s counsel, Wegeler being a physician of eminent ability and skill. It was Wegeler’s reply which drew forth the second letter of November 16, only four and a half months after the first, which continues the subject with equal minuteness of detail. If now the reader will turn back and carefully reperuse the two, he will see that all possibility of a journey to some distant watering-place, requiring the use of four post-horses, whether in Hungary or elsewhere, in the interval between those letters is absolutely excluded by their contents. The conclusion is unavoidable that the diary was not written in 1801.

But may there not be an error either in the day of the month or of the week in the words: “Evening, Monday, July 6?” If there be, the inquiry is extended to the years 1800 and 1802.

On July 6th, 1800, the Guicciardi family had hardly reached Vienna from Trieste. But suppose Julia had been previously sent thither to complete her education, and thus had become known to Beethoven. In that case, what is to be thought of guardians and friends who could allow her such liberty, or rather license, that she, at the age of fifteen and three-quarter years, should already have formed the relations necessarily implied by the language of the diary with a man twice her age? What, too, must be thought of Beethoven! Granting him to have been, as Magdalena Willmann and others said, “half crazy,” the man certainly was not a fool!

The year 1800 may also be safely discarded. As to 1802, it is superfluous to say more than that in the next chapter will be found part of a letter by Beethoven, dated “Vienna, July 13, 1802.” His stay at the bath must, indeed, have been short if he reached it with four post-horses on the 5th and is in Vienna again writing letters on the 13th!

In 1803, July 6th fell upon Wednesday. But there was no such error in the date; Beethoven gives the day of the month three times in twenty-four hours—twice on the 6th, once on the 7th. A mistake here is inconceivable. The day of the week, indeed, is written but once; but then it is Monday, and Sunday and Monday are precisely the two days of the week which one most rarely or never mistakes. But that part of the document which bears the date “Evening, Monday, July 6” contains certain words that are decisive. This part is a postscript to the writing of the morning and is written, he says, because he was too late for the post on that day, and “Mondays, Thursdays, the only days on which the mail-coach goes from here to K.” The conclusion is irresistible: Schindler and his copyists are all wrong; the document was not written in the years 1800-1803; the “Immortal Beloved” for whom it was written was not the Countess Julia Guicciardi. Therefore, they who have wept in sympathy over this Werther’s sufferings caused by this Charlotte, may dry their tears. They can comfort themselves with the assurance, that the catastrophe was by no means so disastrous as represented. The affair was but an episode; not the grand tragedy of Beethoven’s life. But, being a love adventure, it has been treated with fact in ratio to fancy like Falstaff’s bread to his sack. One author in particular, who accepts all Schindler’s assumptions and conjectures without question or suspicion, has elaborated the topic at great length, though perhaps (to borrow Sheridan’s jest) less luminously than voluminously. Having wrought up the feelings of “his lovely readers, his dear lady friends of Beethoven,” to the highest pitch possible in a tragedy where the hero, after the catastrophe, still lives and prospers, he consoles them a few chapters farther on by giving to Beethoven for his one “Love’s Labor Lost” two new ones gained—the one, a married woman, the other, a young girl of fourteen years; and, moreover—if, in the confusion of his dates, the reader is not greatly misled—both at the same time! “Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before,” saith the ancient Hebrew poet.[123]

Even if one were disposed to attach no great importance to the arguments thus far advanced, there are two passages in the letter which could not have been written in that brilliant period of Beethoven’s life (1800-1802) and therefore are conclusive; viz.: “My life in W (Wien = Vienna) is now a wretched life,” and “At my age I need a quiet, steady life.” In fact, the severest critical discussion of my argument against the accuracy of Schindler’s statement has failed to find a flaw in it beyond the unessential assertion that Beethoven could scarcely be conceived as having erred in the matter of the day of the week. Since then the author has himself accidentally learned by experience how a mistake of this kind, made in the morning, can easily be perpetuated in private letters; he learned it by being compelled to prove the absolute accuracy of an official document.

Every attentive and thoughtful reader of the letter must realize that it is irreconcilable with the notion that Beethoven’s passionate devotion to the lady was a new and sudden one; also that Beethoven had parted with his beloved, whoever she may have been, only a short time before; that he writes in the full conviction that his love is returned and the desire for a union of their fates was mutual, and that by patient waiting the obstacles then in the way of their purpose to live together would be overcome.

In the effort to determine when Beethoven wrote in this strain his own inaccurate dates cannot be overlooked, but must be discussed at the outset of the inquiry. If the words “Evening, Monday, July 6,” are to be considered conclusive, the investigation will have to be confined to the years 1807 and 1812, both 1801 and 1818 being out of the question. But if an error of a day be assumed, inquiry may be extended to the following years. In the first three years

In the three later years

To pass by other reasons, the years 1808 and 1811 are to be excluded because they presuppose an error of two days. There remain, then, the years 1806, 1807, 1812 and 1813, which can be best studied in their reverse order. The year 1813 shows itself at once impossible because of the date of a letter to Varena: “Baden, July 4, 1813,” besides other circumstances which prove that Beethoven spent the months of June and July of this year in Vienna and Baden. In a similar manner 1812 must be rejected because he wrote a letter to Baumeister on June 28 from Vienna and arrived in Teplitz on July 7.

There remain, then, only the years 1806 and 1807. If we are willing to attach too great weight to the improbability of an error in Beethoven’s dates (July 6 and 7) it would certainly be impossible to decide in favor of the year for which other considerations plead with almost convincing force—viz., 1806. There is a letter from Beethoven to Brunswick proposing to visit him in Pesth printed with the date “May 14, 1806” which might be strong evidence in favor of that year; but, unfortunately, the true date is 1807, and so adds to our difficulty. For it is known that on July 22nd, 1807 (and for several days at least before), he was in Baden, and there is nothing thus far to prove that he did not make the proposed visit and return from Hungary in season to have written the love-letter on the 6th and 7th of that month; this is, it is true, a very unsatisfactory assumption. There is a date in a correspondence with Simrock touching the purchase of certain works, which, if it could be established with certainty, would remove all doubt and provide a satisfactory conclusion. If the correspondence took place in 1806 it would be impossible to avoid the unsatisfactory assumption.

The head of the famous house of Simrock once told the author that the letters written to his father by Beethoven had been stolen (they have since been recovered), and that the only possible information on the point might be obtained from the old business books of the house. The author asked that they be examined for him and his request was most courteously complied with, with the result that he was provided with the excerpts from the letters of which he has made use in a later chapter. To his great satisfaction the most important of the letters bears date May 31, 1807. This and the letter following show that Beethoven spent the months of June and July 1807 in Baden.

The result would, then, seem to be irrefutable:—there is an error of one day in Beethoven’s date. The letter was written in the summer which he spent partly in Hungary, partly in Silesia—the summer of 1806. In all the years from 1800 to 1815 there is no other summer in which he might have written the letter within the first ten days of July unless we choose to assume a state of facts which would do violence to probability.

But our contention has a much more serious purpose than the determination of the date of a love-letter; it is to serve as the foundation for a highly necessary justification of Beethoven’s character at this period in his life. The editor of Beethoven’s letters to Gleichenstein which appeared in “Westermann’s Monatsheften” (1865)[124] learned from Gleichenstein’s widow that the composer had once made a proposal of marriage to her sister Therese Malfatti. On the strength of this information, and certain references in the letters themselves, the editor founded a singular theory;—Beethoven, says the editor in question, fell in love with “the dark-brown Therese,” who, despite the fact that she was “then only 14 years old (in 1807), was fully developed.” “His love for her was as rapid in its growth as it was in its passionateness, but was not returned then or later.” “The affair was plainly embarrassing to the family, for the passion of the half-deaf, very eccentric man of 36 for a girl of fourteen could not fail in the long run to become dangerous (misslich).”

“Why, very well; I hope here be truths,” as the Fool says in “Measure for Measure.”

Reflect that this was the year of the Mass in C and the C minor Symphony, and imagine the picture: Beethoven, the mighty master, occupied in developing works which stirred the deepest depths of the soul. Such on one hand; on the other “the lover, sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” Or, if one prefer, instead of the first picture, a half-deaf, eccentric, 36-year old Corydon, wandering about by the side of mossy brooks vainly piping tunes to a melancholy early-developed and early-loved Phyllis! Let us admit for the nonce that the amiable picture of Beethoven in 1807 is the correct one; there is yet no excess of reason based on sense or probability, no boundlessness of imagination or immature logic which can assert that the letter of July 6 and 7 was written to Therese Malfatti, then 13 years old.

There is still another assumption or suspicion which must be touched upon here and if possible refuted; it is that, even in 1806, Beethoven’s letter was addressed to the Countess Guicciardi, then already the wife of Count Gallenberg. Moreover, a more natural solution of the difficulties could scarcely be found if it could but be proved or accepted as true that the composer was one of those exalted musical geniuses, recently lauded by a writer, who are “no longer subject to once accepted notions of morals and ordinary duties,” and who refuse to permit “narrow-minded ethics to be lifted to the real laws of existence.” If Beethoven had been a man of this character, what more should we need to believe that in the summer of 1806 he and the lady were impatiently awaiting the moment when they might steal away from husband and children and thus attain “their purpose to live together,” heart closely pressed to heart? Here a single objection will suffice: Count Gallenberg and his wife had at this time long been in Naples. No! This disgrace does not attach to the name of Beethoven.

Those who have thought it worth while to follow the discussion thus far will now understand why so much time and labor were spent on removing all doubt as to the dates of the letters of June 29, 1801, and July 6 and 7, 1806, and this after a long time had passed during which there had never arisen a doubt in the mind of the writer. For if these dates remain fixed, the extended romantic structures which have been reared on the sandy foundation of conjecture must fall in ruins.

The conclusions reached by the study seem as natural as they are satisfactory and indubitable. Young Beethoven, possessed of a temperament susceptible and excitable in the highest degree and endowed not only with extraordinary genius but, leaving out of consideration his physical misfortunes, with other attractive qualities—the great pianist, the beloved teacher, the highly promising composer, admired and accepted gladly in the highest circles of society of the metropolis—this Beethoven, as Wegeler expresses it, was always in love and generally in the highest degree. As he took on years, however, his passions cooled, and it is a truth of daily observation that at the last a strong and lasting attachment can obtain mastery over the most vacillating and fickle lover. According to our conviction this was also the case with Beethoven, and most assuredly the famous love-letter was addressed to the object of a wise and honorable love which had taken control over him. If this be true, and if he was so violently in love in 1806, it follows that the references in the Gleichenstein correspondence which their editor applies to a “completely developed girl of fourteen years of age,” in 1807, were aimed at an entirely different individual; and this, too, is the conviction of the author.

But who is the lady? it is asked.[125] The secret was too well guarded; and she is still unknown. This, only, is certain: that

1st. Of all Beethoven’s friends and acquaintances of the other sex whose names are on record one only could have been the “Immortal Beloved” of the letter and the party to this project of marriage; 2nd, all the circumstantial evidence points to her and to her only; 3rd, long after these two points were determined, Robert Volkmann, the fine musician and composer, in conversation with the author, mentioned a local tradition at Pesth which directly names her as having been once the beloved and even (if our memory serve) the bride in spe of Beethoven. This lady was the Countess Therese von Brunswick.

The scattered notices of the Brunswicks in these volumes, if taken connectedly, may appear of deeper significance than has been suspected. They were of the earliest and warmest friends of Beethoven in Vienna; they “adored him,” said their cousin, the Countess Gallenberg; Beethoven wrote the song “Ich denke dein” in the album of the sisters and dedicated it to them when he published it in 1805; he received from Therese her portrait in oil;[126] visited the Brunswicks in the autumn of 1806 and composed the Sonata, Op.57, which he dedicated to the brother; and immediately after his departure wrote the passionate love-letter,—to whom?—wrote to Count Franz, “Kiss your sister Therese,” and in the autumn of 1809, while on another visit to them, composed the Sonata, Op.78, dedicated to the sister. A few months later the marriage project fell through.

Two remarks may be noted here which, if of no great importance, are worth the space they will occupy: 1st. After the appearance of the dedication of Op.78, Therese von Brunswick’s name disappears from all papers, notes and memoranda concerning Beethoven collected by Jahn or the author; yet the friendship between him and the brother remained undisturbed. 2nd. This friendship of thirty years’ duration was broken only by death; yet, although in the later years long periods of separation were frequent, their known epistolary correspondence is comprised in some half dozen letters, and the half of these with false dates. Were these all? If not, why should all, except just these which are neither of particular interest nor importance, have been destroyed or concealed? Unless, indeed, there was a secret to be preserved. Therese von Brunswick lived to a great age, having the reputation of a noble and generous but eccentric character. In regard to Beethoven, so far as is known, she, like Shakespeare’s Cardinal, “died and made no sign.” Because she could not?[127]

(Postscript by the Editor of the English Edition.)

There are other candidates than the Countesses Guicciardi and Brunswick for the honor of having been the object of what, it must be admitted, was Beethoven’s supreme love;—or, at least, there are other women for whom writers have put in pleas. Though Dr. Kalischer professed to believe that he had effectually disposed of the Thayer hypothesis, it is significant that by far the most notable champions who fought for their respective lady-loves are those who entered the lists for the Countess Therese. I mention only the American Thayer; the Englishman Grove; the Germans La Mara, Storck, and Prelinger (like Kalischer, the editor of a collection of Beethoven’s letters); the Frenchmen Rolland and Chantavoine, both biographers of Beethoven. Schindler, Nohl and Kalischer carried the sleeve of the Countess Guicciardi; Frimmel and Volbach seemed gently inclined to Magdalena Willmann, the actress who said that Beethoven wanted to marry her but she would not have him because he was so ugly and “half crazy”; Dr. Wolfgang A. Thomas-San-Galli is the champion of Amalia Sebald as the “Immortal Beloved” and of 1812 as the year in which the love-letter was written. Of his book (“Die Unsterbliche Geliebte Beethovens, Amalia Sebald,” Halle, 1909) it may be said that its merit lies in its close, pertinent and dispassionate reasoning—the quality in which all of Dr. Kalischer’s arguments are most deficient.

Schindler’s story touching the letter and Giulietta Guicciardi was unquestioned for thirty years, when doubt was cast upon it by Thayer’s investigations, which fixed the date as 1806 and thereby eliminated the Countess as the composer’s inamorata. In Vol. II, Thayer contented himself with a demonstration that the Countess could not be the “Immortal Beloved.” In Vol. III, in the body of the book, he suggested that in “greatest probability” the lady was the Countess Therese von Brunswick. It does not appear that he ever went further than this, but he died, in 1897, in full conviction that by no possibility could the Guicciardi be rehabilitated in the place she had so long occupied in the minds of historians and romancers. His first contribution to the question (the first portion of this chapter) immediately called forth a defence of Schindler’s story, Dr. Alfred Christian Kalischer being in the van of Schindler’s defenders. Instead of traversing the evidence in the case as Thayer had done, Kalischer proposed and followed the “inductive method” thus: Beethoven could not have indulged in such transports at as late a date as 1806 or 1807. They were the outpourings of a sentimentalist, one of the Werther sort. Beethoven had said in the letter that he could only live wholly with his love or not at all—an expression not to be thought of in connection with a genius who had created the “Eroica” symphony, “Fidelio,” the Sonatas in D minor and F minor (Op.57), the Pianoforte Concertos in C minor and G major, the Quartets, Op.59, had finished the fourth Symphony and sketched the C minor and the “Pastoral”—could such a genius believe for a moment that he could not live without the object of his love? etc. The whole argument was merely rhetoric and psychologically speculative.

In a criticism of Thayer’s third volume, written for “Der Clavierlehrer” in 1879, Kalischer took up the subject of Therese Brunswick and, pursuing his old style of argumentation, urged that the “Immortal Beloved” was Giulietta and not Therese because, forsooth, Beethoven had dedicated the C-sharp minor Sonata to the former and nothing better than the Sonata in F-sharp major, Op.78, composed in 1809, to the latter. Kalischer saw no force in the fact that sketches for the so-called “Moonlight” Sonata antedated the dedication by a considerable period; the essential things in his mind were the dedication and that Lenz thought highly of the C-sharp minor and little of the Fantasia for Pianoforte, Op.77, dedicated by Beethoven “to his friend” Brunswick, and still less of the F-sharp Sonata dedicated to “another member of the house of Brunswick”; and that while Marx had described the C-sharp minor Sonata as “the low hymn of love’s renunciation” he did not consider the F-sharp major Sonata as worthy even of mention.

These essays, together with another in which Dr. Kalischer performed with great energy the work of disposing of the romantic vaporings of a writer who called herself Mariam Tenger, who had published a book (“Beethoven’s Unsterbliche Geliebte, nach persÖnlichen Erinnerungen”) at Bonn in 1890, in which she affected to prove what Thayer had set down as merely a probability. This writer (who had most obviously taken her cue from Thayer, though she protested that she had not read his biography when she wrote her book) professed to have had the tale from the lips of the Countess Brunswick herself, that Beethoven, while visiting at MartonvÁsÁr, the country-seat of the Brunswicks, in May, 1806, had become secretly engaged to the Countess, no one else knowing the fact except Beethoven’s friend Count Franz von Brunswick. Dr. Kalischer found little difficulty in demolishing a large portion of the fantastic fabric reared by Mariam Tenger, especially that portion which professed to rest upon the alleged testimony of a “Baron Spaun” who was plainly a creation of the romancer’s, though a veritable Spaun did figure, largely and creditably, in the life-history of Schubert. Not content with this the critic went further, and reviewing the sentimental career of Beethoven from 1806 to 1810 (in which latter year it is supposed the relations between him and the Countess Brunswick came to an end), he protested that, in 1807, Beethoven was in love with Therese Malfatti, then a girl of 14 years.

That question had already been discussed by Thayer, as we have seen. So also had the identity of Baron Spaun by Marie Lipsius, known in musical literature by her pen-name La Mara, who called attention to inaccuracies in the Tenger story in the first of a collection of essays entitled “Classisches und Romantisches aus der Tonwelt,” published in Leipsic in 1891. The same author who, in all her writings on the subject, has stoutly maintained the correctness of Thayer’s theory, made the most valuable contribution yet offered to the controversy by her book, “Beethoven’s Unsterbliche Geliebte. Das Geheimniss der GrÄfin Brunsvick und ihre Memoiren,” published by Breitkopf and HÄrtel in 1909. To this book it is necessary to pay rather extended attention; but before its contents are passed in review it deserves to be noted that Thayer, who followed the multitude of arguments for and against his hypothesis with the greatest interest and with a characteristically open mind, went down to his grave with his strong conviction unshaken that “in greatest probability” the Countess Therese was the “Immortal Beloved.” To La Mara he sent a letter dated January 22, 1892, to which attention was called in a foot-note on the history of the C-sharp minor Sonata in an earlier chapter of this work, and which, through the courtesy of the lady to whom it was addressed, is now given in substance:

The method pursued by La Mara in her investigation, which extended over several years, was much like that of Thayer: in every case in which it seemed that testimony might be had from the mouths of living persons she sought to obtain it. First she visited the Countess Marie Brunswick (or Brunsvik, as the Hungarian branch of the Braunschweigers, or Brunswicks, spelled the name), daughter of Count Franz. There was an interview followed by a correspondence. The Countess said that the family knew nothing whatever of the alleged romantic attachment between her aunt and Beethoven. She recalled that Beethoven had a “grosse SchwÄrmerei” for her father’s cousin, the Countess Guicciardi, afterwards Gallenberg, but the feeling was not reciprocated on the part of the Countess so far as had been learned. The family was still in possession of three or four letters from Beethoven to her father. In November, 1899, she sent four letters to La Mara which were then owned by her brother, Count GÉza Brunswick. Three of these letters had already been printed in the first edition of this biography. The only one bearing on the subject of this study was that in which Beethoven begs the Count to kiss his sister Therese. (This letter La Mara presents in facsimile in her book.) Count Gallenberg (son of the Countess Giulietta and the last of the family) had died in Vienna in 1893, two years after he had denied that there had been any talk of marriage or mutual love between his mother and Beethoven. The testimony of two grand-children of the Countess Giulietta was asked. “Beethoven wanted to marry grandmamma,” said the Countess Bertha Kuenburg, nÉe Countess Stolberg-Stolberg, in Salzburg, “but she loved Gallenberg.” Baroness Hess-Diller, nÉe Countess Gallenberg, in Baden said:

On the suggestion of the grand-children of the Countess Giulietta, La Mara called on FrÄulein Karoline Languider, a life-long friend of the Gallenbergs, who had lived with them and the Countess Marie Brunswick. This witness testified:

La Mara having sent FrÄulein Languider some of her writings and a copy of Lampi’s portrait of the Countess Therese, she wrote on January 24, 1901: “After all that has been said pro and contra I remain of the unalterable opinion that the Countess Therese was the ‘Immortal Beloved’ and fiancÉe of the great master, concerning which fact I heard innumerable conversations in my childhood, and that the portrait is hers. Countess Marie does not see a resemblance, but I do not trust her memory.” Countess Marie Brunswick had said to La Mara that she did not consider the painting which is now preserved in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn a portrait of her aunt; “but,” says La Mara, “since there was a difference of 57 years, she could no longer judge of a likeness with the youthful picture.”

Count GÉza Brunswick, son of Beethoven’s friend, died in the spring of 1902, having outlived his sister Marie. The direct line of Brunswicks reached its end in him. The castles Korompa and MartonvÁsÁr passed into other hands. Count Franz’s art collection was sold at auction in Vienna, but the widow of Count GÉza retained possession of the Beethoven relics (the letters and an oil portrait) and took them with her to Florence, where subsequently she married the Marchese Capponi. She, too, gave her testimony: “It is certain that there were soul-relationships between Beethoven and Therese Brunsvik.”

Next, La Mara went to Pressburg (in search of such traditions as Thayer had found in Pesth), working on the hint thrown out by FrÄulein Languider. In Pressburg she met Johann Batka, municipal archivist, who bore testimony to the fact that a relative of the Countess Therese Brunswick, who was in possession of her memoirs (a copy, evidently, since La Mara obtained the original from the family of Count Deym), had persuaded him to believe that Therese was the “Immortal Beloved” and secret fiancÉe of Beethoven. After La Mara had published the results of her investigation in the January number for 1908 of the “Neue Rundschau,” the grand-niece of Countess Therese, Isabella, Countess Deym, and her sister Madame Ilka Melichar, confirmed the statement that the letter had been addressed to their illustrious grand-aunt. An estrangement had sprung up between Count Franz and his sister Therese after his marriage; but the intimacy between the sisters Therese and Josephine, Countess Deym, had continued, and the romance, never known to the families of Count Franz and his sister Countess Teleky, had come down as a tradition in the family of Count Deym.

The rest of La Mara’s book is filled with the memoirs of Therese Brunswick, which she began writing in September, 1846, and called “My Half-Century.” In introducing the interesting document, La Mara thought herself compelled to abandon Thayer’s contention that the love-letter had been written in 1806, and substituted 1807 (a date urged also by Ladislaw Jachinecki, in an article published in the “Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft” for July and August, 1908), on the ground that 1806 had become untenable, 1807 agreed with the almanac and that Beethoven’s sojourn at Baden in the summer of 1807 did not preclude a visit to Hungary of three weeks’ duration between the end of June and July 26. La Mara was persuaded to make the change by her discovery in the memoirs of the fact that on July 5, 1806, Countess Therese was in Transylvania visiting her sister Charlotte, Countess Teleky, and was present when the latter gave birth to a daughter, Blanca, on that date. Having assumed, with Thayer, that Beethoven wrote the love-letter very soon after a visit to the Brunswicks at Korompa (which is her reading of the mysterious “K” in the letter), and sent it from a neighboring watering-place, convinced that Therese was with her sister on July 6, 1806, she adopted the theory that the letter was written in 1807, in which year the much-discussed 6th of July fell on a Monday. She also alludes to other evidence which she does not describe but by which she doubtless means a letter by Beethoven to Breitkopf and HÄrtel dated “Vienna, July 5, 1806,” which became known to the investigators when the well-known publishers of Leipsic made a private publication of the letters from the composer found in their archives. This was after the death of Mr. Thayer. Touching this letter and the significance of Beethoven’s “K” the writer of this note submits, without argument, a few suggestions:

1. There is nothing in the letter, beyond what might be called its atmosphere, to indicate that Beethoven had recently visited the object of his love. The words “To-day—yesterday—what tearful longings for you,” to which such an interpretation might be given, plainly refer only to his mood and his thoughts on the two days when the letter was in his mind; they tell us nothing about the distance or time which lay between him and his “ferne Geliebte.”

2. It is plain that Beethoven and Prince Esterhazy started from the same place for the Hungarian watering-place whence the letter was sent (if it ever was sent), Beethoven travelling by an unusual route because of a lack of horses, the Prince by the usual route. It is anything but likely that this place was MartonvÁsÁr; it is much more probable that it was one of Esterhazy’s country-seats.

3. There is no indication in the letter or anywhere else how long Beethoven was en route, but the journey extended over several stages, for “at the stage before the last” he was warned not to travel at night, etc. He may have been as far in the interior of Hungary as a post-coach could carry him in, let us say, two days.

4. We know nothing about the rapidity of travel over Hungarian roads a century ago, but we do know that as early as 1635, i.e., 171 years before Beethoven made the journey, an English post was established which made the trip from London to Edinburgh and back in six days; and Edinburgh is 357 miles from London by road. The English mail-coach, therefore travelled an average of 119 miles in 24 hours. At even half of this speed Beethoven might have been comparatively near the place in which Countess Therese spent June and July, 1806.

5. This place was not Korompa, but may have been Klausenburg or Kolosz, the principal town of Transylvania, where Count Teleky lived. This is at least remotely possible.

6. It is but natural to assume that the post between the important places of Hungary and the metropolis of Transylvania ran fairly often and at fair speed, and if Beethoven expected that a letter which he thought would be detained at the place where it was posted till early on Thursday morning would not reach its destination till Saturday, that destination must have been at a considerable distance (a two days’ run) from the watering-place. “So near, so far!” has little value as evidence; it is an ecstatic commonplace concerning the unattainable, or that which seems to be so.

7. The fact that the Countess Therese was not at Korompa in the early part of July, 1806, is not in itself a sufficient reason for abandoning that date; she was at Klausenburg. The letter to Breitkopf and HÄrtel, though plainly dated “Vienna, July 5, 1806” (Kalischer, No. 109), might easily be disposed of as convincing evidence against 1806, if it did not bear the publishers’ endorsement apparently indicating that it had either been received or answered on July 11 of the year. Nothing could make Beethoven’s carelessness in respect of dates plainer than the next letter of Beethoven’s in which he replied to the letter which Breitkopf and HÄrtel had sent him in answer to the proposition which he had made in the letter dated July 5, 1806. The second letter is dated “GrÄtz, am 3ten Heu-Monat,” (i.e., Hay month, otherwise July); yet it refers to the earlier letter and was written at Troppau in Austrian Silesia, where Beethoven spent the fall of 1806 as the guest of Prince Lichnowsky. Breitkopf and HÄrtel’s endorsement shows that the letter was received and answered in September. There is some significance, too, in the fact that Beethoven refers to his journey from Vienna to Troppau, which must have been nearly 200 miles long, as a short one (“Etwas viel zu thun und die kleine Reise hierher,” etc.). (See Kalischer, Letter No. 110.) Beethoven may have written the letter in Vienna on one of the first two days of July, or even the last of June, making one of his characteristic blunders in the dating, and yet have been deep in Hungary on the dubious date on which he wrote the love-letter. The endorsement of Breitkopf and HÄrtel, “July 5, 1806,” could not have been anything more than a transcript of the date found on the letter.

The editor is well aware that his suggestions do not clear up the mystery; he offers them nevertheless for what they are now or may hereafter be worth. The references to Beethoven in the Memoirs of Therese Brunswick made public by La Mara are to be found in the following excerpts:

Later, speaking of the loss of caste and poverty of her brother-in-law Count Deym (who had changed his name to MÜller because of a duel fought before he had attained his majority, and conducted an art museum, and who after his marriage to Therese’s sister Josephine tried in vain to take the position in society to which his rank entitled him), the Countess writes:

Shortly after the appearance of La Mara’s essay in 1909, a singular contribution to the controversy touching the “Immortal Beloved” came from France. The essay had been reviewed in the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” whereupon the editor of “Le Temps” asked one of its contributors to make inquiry as to possible family traditions of the mother of M. F. de Gerando, a grand-niece of the Countess Therese. This was done, but the lady would hear nothing of an identification of her grand-aunt with the object of Beethoven’s passion. Then came journalistic insinuations that family pride had much to do with the denial. This provoked M. de Gerando, who undertook, in the “Mercure de France,” to answer the arguments of Thayer and La Mara. There was one ludicrous feature in his argument and a new revelation. He disposed of the kiss sent to Therese by Beethoven through her brother Count Franz, by saying it was only such a familiarity as an old man might be permitted to indulge towards a young pupil; this notwithstanding that Therese was born in 1775 and Beethoven in 1770 and at the time he wrote the love-letter was still laboring under the delusion that the year of his birth was 1772. The revelation consisted in the circumstance, set forth by him, that among the letters of the Countess Therese he had found a thick portfolio inscribed “The Journal of my Heart. No Romance,” which (I quote now from an article contributed by Mr. Philip Hale to the “New Music Review,” in the numbers for July and September, 1909)