An entry in an old “Porter’s Book” of John Broadwood and Sons, manufacturers of pianofortes in London, offers an agreeable starting-point for the story of Beethoven’s life in 1818. In this book the porter of the firm signs his name, Millet, to the record that on December 27, 1817, he took from the warehouse “A 6 octave Grand Pianoforte, No. 7,632, tin and deal case, Thomas Broadwood, Esq., marked V. B. care of F. E. J. Bareaux and Co., Trieste (a present to Mr. van Beethoven, Viene), deliv’d to Mr. Farlowes to be shipped.” Some time previously Mr. Thomas Broadwood, the then head of the house, with a Mr. Goding (probably the rich brewer), visited the principal cities of the continent and doubtless became acquainted with Beethoven and offered to present to him one of the firm’s pianofortes. On January 3, 1818, Mr. Broadwood seems to have informed Beethoven that the instrument had been shipped, and exactly one month later Beethoven sent the following acknowledgment to the generous donor:

This letter was sent to Broadwood by Joseph Anton Bridi of the firm of Bridi, Parisi and Co., in Vienna, who had evidently been commissioned to look after the delivery of the instrument to Beethoven after its arrival in Trieste. At least Bridi, in transmitting the letter to Broadwood under cover and date February 5, informs the latter that he had taken the proper steps to have the pianoforte sent to Vienna by Bareaux (or Barraux) and Co., and asks for instructions how to carry out what he understands to be the donor’s desire that the instrument be delivered to Beethoven without his being put to any expense whatever, not even for the import duty. The latter charge must have been in the mind of Beethoven when he wrote a letter, without date, to Count Lichnowsky enclosing a document bearing on the case expressing the hope that he be permitted to receive the instrument and proposing to apply by word of mouth to Count Stadion, the Austrian Minister of Finance. Madame Streicher was also appealed to in the matter, Beethoven begging her in a letter to ask her “Cousin from Cracow” to get from the chief customs official in Vienna an order for the forwarding of the pianoforte, which could be sent to the custom house in Trieste. But neither Broadwood nor Beethoven was called on to pay the duty, the Austrian Exchequer remitting the charge. After some delay the pianoforte was delivered at Streicher’s wareroom and later sent to Beethoven at MÖdling. While it was still in his possession, Streicher asked Potter to try it, saying that Moscheles and others could do nothing with it—the tone was beautiful but the action too heavy. Potter, who was familiar with the English instruments, found no difficulty in disclosing its admirable qualities. He told Beethoven, however, that it was out of tune, whereupon the latter replied in effect: “That’s what they all say; they would like to tune it and spoil it, but they shall not touch it.” Beethoven’s delight in the pianoforte must have been great. Bridi reports to Broadwood that the composer already rejoiced in it in anticipation and expressed a desire to dedicate the first piece of music composed after its reception to the donor, “convinced that it would inspire something good.” His jealousy of it seems to have been so great that he would not permit anybody to tune it except Stumpff, of London, who came with a letter of introduction from Broadwood.[185]

The case of the instrument, simple, plain but tasteful in design, is of mahogany and the structure generally of a solidity and strength paired with grace which caused no little surprise at the time. The compass is six octaves from C, five leger-lines below the bass staff. Above the keys is the inscription: Hoc Instrumentum est Thomoe Broadwood (Londini) donum, propter Ingenium illustrissimi Beethoven. On the board, back of the keys, is the name “Beethoven,” inlaid in ebony, and below this the makers’ mark: “John Broadwood and Sons, Makers of Instruments to His Majesty and the Princesses. Great Pulteney Street. Golden Square. London.” To the right of the keyboard are the autograph names Frid. Kalkbrenner, Ferd. Ries, C. G. Ferrari, J. L. Cramer and C. Knyvett. The presence of these names gave rise to a theory which was widely spread, and is not yet wholly dissipated, that their owners had joined Mr. Broadwood in making the gift; it has also been stated that the gift came from the Philharmonic Society. This latter statement is disproved by the fact that the records of the Society contain no mention of such a transaction; as for the names of the virtuosi, they were no doubt scratched upon the instrument as a compliment to Beethoven and an evidence that they had played upon it. Beethoven kept the instrument as long as he lived. At the sale of his effects it was bought by Spina, the music publisher, for 181 florins; Spina gave it to Liszt, in whose house at Weimar it was up to his death. In 1887, Princess Marie Hohenlohe, daughter of Liszt’s friend, the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, presented it to the National Museum in Buda-Pesth.

The time had come for Beethoven to take his nephew from the home and institute of the Giannatasios. On January 6 he wrote to inform the director that Karl would leave his “admirable institute” at the expiration of the month and that Giannatasio might rest assured of his and the lad’s life-long gratitude: “I have observed in Karl that he already feels grateful, and this is a proof that though he is frivolous he is not malicious, and least of all is he bad at heart. I have hopes of all manner of good from him, all the more because he has been under your excellent care for nearly two years.” Karl left the institute on January 24, and on June 15 Fanny Giannatasio wrote in her diary: “We hear nothing from Beethoven,” who was then in MÖdling.

Ill-advised and full of evil consequences as was Beethoven’s step in taking personal charge of his nephew, it was yet creditable to his heart and bears strong witness to his high sense of duty. His purpose was pure and lofty, and his action prompted by both love and an ideal sense of moral obligation. It was a woeful mistake, however; Beethoven sadly misjudged his fitness to fill the delicate and difficult rÔle of guardian and parent. In all his life he had never had occasion to give a thought to the duties which such an office involved. In the conduct of his own affairs he had always permitted himself to be swayed by momentary impulses, emotions and sometimes violent passions, and he could not suddenly develop the habits of calm reflection, unimpassioned judgment and consistent behavior essential to the training of a careless and wayward boy. In his treatment of him he flew from one extreme to the other—from almost cruel severity to almost limitless indulgence, and, for this reason, failed to inspire either respect for his authority or deep affection for his person, to develop the lad’s self-control or a desire for virtuous living. Very questionable, too, if not utterly unpardonable, were the measures which Beethoven took to separate the boy from his mother in spite of the dying wishes of his father. We have seen his protestations at times of his unwillingness to give her pain. When he was cruel in his own confession it was because he imagined himself constrained to be so by a high obligation of duty. There can be no doubt that the woman whom Beethoven called “The Queen of Night” was wicked and vicious, and that his detestation of her was as well founded as his wish to save his nephew from evil communications and influences. But there were times when he seemed willing to give filial instincts their due. “Karl did wrong,” he writes to Madame Streicher from MÖdling in June 1818, “but—mother—mother—even a bad one remains a mother. To this extent he is to be excused, especially by me, who know his intriguing, passionate mother too well.” Why did he not follow this thought to its ultimate conclusion? Why did he permit, if indeed, he did not encourage, the lad to speak disrespectfully of his mother? A memorandum in the Tagebuch after February 20th reads: “Karl’s mother has not seen him since August 10”—a period of more than six months. How often she was allowed to see him during the following months is not of record; we only know from Beethoven himself, in his letters to Madame Streicher, that the mother’s instinct—if, because she was a bad woman, the word “love” be not allowed—drove her to employ the only means by which she could know the condition of her son during the summer in MÖdling—i.e., bribing or feeing the servants. That at least is Beethoven’s accusation, and exceedingly wroth he was.[186]

After taking Karl from Giannatasio’s institute to his own home Beethoven engaged a tutor to prepare him for matriculation at the gymnasium. This tutor, whose name has not been learned, was a professor at the Vienna University and had evidently agreed not only to look after all of the lad’s intellectual needs but also to have an eye on some of the domestic affairs and to that end to become a member of the Beethoven household. On this point, Beethoven enjoined secrecy upon Madame Streicher. How long the service of his “steward,” as he playfully called him to Madame Streicher, continued is not known, nor how satisfactory it was. He does not become a subject of Beethoven’s correspondence beyond a single reference to the fact that once he staid out all night. Beethoven’s London trip had been abandoned without notice or explanation to the Philharmonic Society, apparently; but Ries must have written to him, renewing the offer previously accepted, for on March 25, Beethoven writes to his old pupil as follows:

Ries’s reverence for royalty, apparently, led him to omit Beethoven’s unkind allusion to his august patron and pupil, Archduke Rudolph; Schindler, writing much later, prints it and admits, very properly, as we know from other instances of the same kind, that Beethoven sometimes used his friends as whipping-boys and that his words and deeds were not always consistent with each other. Beethoven removed to MÖdling on May 19, taking with him his nephew and the two servants whose treachery aroused the storm of passion which he loosed in the long letter to Madame Streicher, written in June. He found lodgings in the so-called Hafner House in the Hauptstrasse, now ornamented by a memorial tablet. He began taking the baths two days after his arrival and the desire and capacity for work soon returning, he took up energetically the Pianoforte Sonata in B-flat. Karl was placed in a class of boys taught by the village priest, named FrÖhlich, who dismissed him a month later for reasons which became a matter of judicial record before the end of the year.[187] In a document filed as an appendix to Madame van Beethoven’s application for guardianship over her son, FrÖhlich sets forth that Beethoven had encouraged his nephew to revile his mother, applauding him when he applied vile epithets to her either in writing or by shrieking them into his ear, “thus violating the fourth divine commandment”; that the boy had confessed to him that while he knew that he was doing wrong he yet defamed his mother to curry favor with his uncle and dared not tell him the truth because he would only believe lies. “This he once told his mother and would have said more had he not feared being found out and maltreated by his uncle.” Once, too, Beethoven came to him (the priest) and in a tone of malicious joy told him that his nephew had that day called his mother a “Ravenmother” (Rabenmutter—meaning a wicked and unnatural mother). Karl’s training being thus contrary to all moral principles, he having also displayed indifference to religious instruction, been guilty of unruly conduct in church and in the streets, so that many of the inhabitants of the village had come to him with complaints, and, therefore, admonitions to the boy and appeals to the uncle having borne no fruit, he had been constrained for the sake of his twelve other pupils, who had said “they did not want to study with the unruly Karl van Beethoven,” to dismiss him.

These unfortunate first-fruits of Beethoven’s error in undertaking personal and sole care of his nephew will call for more attention before the history of the year 1818 is closed, and may be dismissed for the present for more cheerful topics. Towards the end of the year 1815, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde had instituted inquiries through Zmeskall touching Beethoven’s willingness to compose a work of magnitude for the Society. Beethoven signified his assent to the project and in turn asked Zmeskall whether or not the Society would allow him 400 ducats as an honorarium. There the matter seems to have rested until May, 1818, on the 17th of which month Vincenz Hauschka, a violoncello player and member of the governing committee of the Society, was authorized by his associates to offer Beethoven from 200 to 300 “pieces of gold” for the music to a “heroic oratorio” to be the exclusive property of the Society for one year after the date of its first performance. Hauschka wrote to Beethoven at MÖdling and received a droll letter in reply. It bears no date. In it Beethoven addresses his friend as “Chief Member of the Society of Enemies of Music [the play on the words Freunde and Feinde is impossible in English], in the Austrian Empire” and “Grand Cross of the Order of the Violoncello.” He signifies his willingness to accept the commission in the words: “I am agreed” (Ich bin bereit) set to a fugue-theme:

adding that he had no subject on hand except a sacred one, while the Society had expressed a desire for a heroic work. This was satisfactory to him, but he suggested that as the choir was a large one something sacred be “mixed in”:

Mr. v. Bernard would suit him as poet, but the Society, since it claimed to be friendly to music, ought to pay him. He said nothing of his own compensation, but concluded with:

Schindler also places this letter in 1818, and is doubtless correct in so doing, for its tone and contents show that it was not designed as an official communication to the Society, whose minutes show that such a communication was not received until June 15, 1819. In the interim, no doubt, some negotiations were in progress between Beethoven and Hauschka, for the former had refrained from mentioning the matter of remuneration. Some understanding on this point must have been reached, however, for, if Pohl is correct, Beethoven was paid an advance sum of 400 florins on August 18, 1819. Nothing came of the matter, as we shall see later. In this year, however, there came to Beethoven an incitation of a different nature and one productive of lasting and magnificent results. About the middle of 1818, as Schindler relates, it became known as a settled fact that Archduke Rudolph had been appointed Archbishop of OlmÜtz. March 20th, 1820, was fixed as the day of his installation. Without bidding, invitation or summons of any kind Beethoven “resolved to compose a mass for the solemnity, thus turning again after the lapse of many years to that branch of his art, toward which, after the symphonic—as he himself often said—he felt himself most drawn. This resolution shows that his outburst against the Archduke[188] was merely a passing cloud, even if we did not know that the master never missed an opportunity to disclose his affection for his august pupil. I saw the score begun late in the Autumn of 1818, after the gigantic Sonata in B-flat major, Op. 106, had just been finished.” Though there is no reason for questioning the rest of Schindler’s statement, the concluding observation is probably incorrect. It may be accepted, inasmuch as the Credo of the mass was already far advanced in 1819, that the Kyrie, at least, perhaps the Gloria, as well, was begun in 1818. The two great works which now filled the mind of Beethoven, which he wrote, indeed, with his heart’s blood, were not only dedicated to the Archduke, but were designed for him from the beginning—facts which may be cited as proof that despite his petulant outbursts against his pupil and patron he was after all sincerely devoted to him in his innermost soul.

The same summer saw the beginning of the most widely distributed portrait of Beethoven. At the instance of his uncle, Baron von Skrbensky, a young painter named August von KlÖber (born at Breslau in 1793), who was continuing his artistic studies in Vienna, undertook to paint a portrait of the composer. His own account of his acquaintance with Beethoven and the incidents connected with the painting of the portrait (or rather with the original sketch) were published in the “Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung,” of 1864 (p. 324). From it we learn that the artist was introduced to Beethoven by a letter written by Dont.[189] He visited Beethoven at MÖdling, after receiving permission to make a drawing of him and found him giving a lesson to his nephew on the Broadwood pianoforte. This fact fixes the date of the picture. Though the artist found it impossible to make himself understood unless he wrote his words or spoke them into an ear-trumpet, Beethoven corrected the errors in the lad’s playing, compelled him to repeat passages apparently without difficulty. He grew uneasy after KlÖber had worked about three-quarters of an hour and the latter, heeding the advice given by Dont, suspended his work and asked permission to come again on the morrow, since he was living in MÖdling. “Then we can meet often,” said Beethoven, “because I do not like to sit long. You must take a good look at MÖdling, for it is very beautiful here, and, as an artist, you must be a lover of nature.” KlÖber met him often in his promenades and saw him suspend his work at intervals, stand as if listening and make notes on music paper which he carried about with him. When Beethoven saw the picture he was pleased with the treatment of the hair; the artists had hitherto always made him look too well groomed. KlÖber’s description of the composer as he saw him was this:

KlÖber’s original painting has disappeared. It was a full-length portrait with a bit of MÖdling landscape as a background. The nephew Karl was included, reposing under a tree. The composer was depicted with note-book and pencil. The head only was reproduced in a lithograph in KlÖber’s atelier, and has been widely copied.

We now reach an incident in the story of Beethoven’s life concerning which much has been written from the biased and frequently erroneous, because uninformed or ill-informed, point of view adopted by Schindler and which it becomes a duty to rectify not only so that the picture of Beethoven as he was may be kept true, but that the better motives and impulses which prompted the woman whom he so cordially and no doubt justly detested be placed in their proper light also. There is nothing in the narrative which brings reproach upon Beethoven so far as his high sense of duty and disinterested affection for his nephew is concerned—an affection which was as little weakened by the self-sacrifice which it entailed as it was balked by the conduct of his ward and the frequently unwarranted means employed by his mother to acquire possession of the lad and the right to superintend his physical, mental and moral training; but the rights of a woman and the honor which a world has always accorded to the strongest, noblest, divinest instinct of woman—maternal love—were also at stake. The mother of Karl, though she had been convicted and punished for adultery at an earlier period, and though she might not have proved a safe mentor for her son, was yet a mother, his mother. That fact Beethoven was willing, in the long letter to Madame Streicher in which he set forth the wicked acts of his servants, to recognize as palliating the conduct of the boy; but he could not bring himself to recognize that it might also palliate if it did not justify the steps which his harshness compelled a mother to take to gratify the need implanted in her by nature. Johanna van Beethoven is at least entitled to the same hearing at the bar of posterity that she received in the tribunals of her day, and it is the duty of Beethoven’s biographer to strip the story of the quarrel between her and her brother-in-law of the romantic excrescences which many writers have fastened upon it. In this narrative the truth will be told, perhaps for the first time, as it is disclosed by the documents, the evidence and the judicial decrees in the case. To set forth these documents in full in the body of the text would call for the sacrifice of much space and sadly interrupt the story; what is essential in them will be given literally, or in outline, whenever it becomes necessary.[190]

After his dismissal from the class of the parish priest at MÖdling, Karl van Beethoven was placed in the hands of a private tutor to be prepared for admission to one of the public schools of Vienna—no doubt that known as the Academic Gymnasium. To enter this school the boy had to pass an examination, and for this purpose Beethoven brought him to Vienna about the middle of August. Madame van Beethoven was now determined to wrest from her brother-in-law the authority, which was his as sole guardian, to keep the boy in his care and to direct his training. She took to her aid Jacob Hotschevar, a Hofconcipist (clerk or scrivener in the government service), and petitioned the Landrecht of Lower Austria to take from Beethoven the authority to direct the future training of his ward. The Landrecht was a tribunal with jurisdiction in litigations and other matters affecting the nobility. Acting on the assumption that the Dutch “van,” like the German “von,” was a badge of noble birth, it had listened to Beethoven’s plea and appointed him sole guardian of his nephew, removing the widow from the joint guardianship directed in the will of the boy’s father on the score of her immorality, as we already know. The proceedings were begun in September and were dismissed, as the records show, on the 18th of that month. Three days later, that is, on September 21, she applied to the court again, this time for permission to place her son in the Royal Imperial Convict, where he would have board, lodging and instruction. She and Beethoven as “co-guardian” were commanded to appear in court on September 23, and the latter was directed to bring the report of the lad’s examination with him. There was a postponement of the hearing till September 30, and on October 3d the widow’s application was rejected. Thus far victory had gone to Beethoven.

The postponement of the hearing was had in great likelihood to enable Beethoven to change his residence from MÖdling to the city. At any rate, Karl is a public school scholar on November 6th, as Fanny Giannatasio records in her diary on that day together with the fact that her father had met Beethoven, who had shortly before returned from the country. That the boy was in the third grammar class and remained there during the months of November and December, receiving also instruction in pianoforte playing, French and drawing from a private teacher, is known from the court proceedings which were held later. The lad made good progress in his studies, all seemed well and something of the old cordial relations seemed again to be established between Beethoven and the Giannatasios. They provided him with a housekeeper and on one day in November he spent three hours with the family. Fanny writes:

Before long Beethoven is at the Giannatasio house again and becomes interested in the singing of the sisters, singing with them, which produced a comical effect, as he seldom was in tune, but helping them to give the correct expression to the music. Fanny now deplores that their childish timidity had so long deprived them of such a pleasure, which would now perhaps be of short duration, since he had received a second invitation to England. This entry bears date November 20. Within a fortnight the diary chronicles the severest trial that the boy had yet caused his uncle: he ran away from home and sought a haven with his mother. The sympathetic young woman wrote later:

“One day B. came in great excitement and sought counsel and help from my father, saying that Karl had run away! I recall that on this occasion amid our expressions of sympathy he cried out tearfully: ‘He is ashamed of me!’” The incident is recorded in her diary under date of December 5; it occurred, apparently two days before. The diarist’s entry is as follows:

We learn the probable reason for the lad’s truancy from Beethoven’s statement at the examination in court on December 11th. Two letters written by his housekeeper to Fanny Giannatasio, and one written by the latter, had fallen into Beethoven’s hands and from them he had learned of certain delinquencies with which he then confronted his nephew. But let us call Beethoven himself to the witness stand; his recital will give more vitality to the history than any statement of a historian writing nearly a century later. We quote from the minutes of the Landrecht:

In listening to these words from Beethoven on the witness stand we have stretched the thread of our story; for this testimony was given in court on December 11th, and the second attempt of the widowed mother to get control of her son had been foiled by the decision on October 3rd. It was therefore a new case which the court had under consideration when Beethoven made the above utterances. This third application on the part of the mother was filed on December 7, and grew out of the runaway prank of Karl and her fear of what might be its consequences. In her petition she set forth the fact that her son had left the home of his uncle and guardian without her knowledge, that he had been taken back by the police, and that “as, to judge by his actions, Ludwig van Beethoven was willing to send her son away from Vienna, perhaps into foreign lands,” she asked that he be restrained from doing so, and she renewed her request that she be permitted to send her son to the Royal Imperial Convict for keep and education.

Hotschevar supported this petition in a document like a modern law brief, explaining his interest in the matter on the grounds that his wife was a stepsister of Madame van Beethoven’s deceased mother, that the law permitted such an act in all cases where human rights were concerned and that he, having had experience for several years as instructor in the houses of the aristocracy, could not be blamed if he put the knowledge of pedagogics and psychology thus acquired at the service of a lad to whom he bore a family relationship and brought to the attention of the supreme guardian matters which it (the Landrecht) could not possibly know concerning its wards unless proceedings were brought before it. He admitted that Madame van Beethoven had years before been guilty of a moral delinquency for which she had been punished, but asserted her right to a standing in court; he then contended: (1) that the mother had illegally been denied all influence over her son partly with, partly without the knowledge of the court, and (2) that her son could not remain under the sole influence of his uncle and guardian without danger of suffering physical and moral ruin. In support of these contentions he recited that the brothers van Beethoven were eccentric men, so often at odds with each other that they might better be called enemies than friends, Karl van Beethoven being pleasantly disposed toward his brother only when he was in need of money from him, and that the suspicion lay near that the boy had been an object of traffic between them, inasmuch as an agreement touching the payment of 1,500 florins had been made only on condition that Ludwig van Beethoven surrender a document which appointed him guardian. Karl van Beethoven, moreover, knowing the animosity which his brother felt towards his wife, had in a codicil to his will expressly said that he did not want Ludwig van Beethoven to be sole guardian of his son but joint guardian with the mother, and had, for the sake of the boy, admonished more compliancy on the part of the mother and more moderation on that of the brother. Although the Court had deprived the mother of the guardianship over her son, it had granted permission to her to visit him; but this privilege had been withheld from her. The statement of the village priest FrÖhlich (which has already been given in these pages) was appended to the widow’s application as evidence of the physical and moral degeneration of the boy, and for himself Hotschevar says that he had observed after the boy had run away from his uncle that his hands and feet were frostbitten, that he had no seasonable clothing and that his linen and baths had been neglected. The priest’s statement was also appealed to to show that the boy had been led into unfilial conduct, indifference toward religion, hypocrisy, untruthfulness and even theft against his guardian—in short, was in danger of becoming a menace to society. He willingly granted Beethoven’s readiness and desire to care for his ward, but maintained that his hatred of the mother, his passionate disposition inflamed by the talebearing of others (once naming Giannatasio), made it difficult for him to employ the proper means. Conceding Beethoven’s magnanimity, he yet urged that in view of the danger in which the lad was, he ought to forgo the guardianship or associate with himself either the mother or some other capable person, it appearing from the facts in the case that he was “physically and morally unfit” for the post.

Madame van Beethoven’s deposition, apparently filed as appendix to Hotschevar’s brief (like that of FrÖhlich), alleges that a letter of Giannatasio’s dated March 8, 1816, showed that she had to forgo her desire to visit her son or satisfy it once a month and then “like a thief.” After Beethoven took the boy, and especially after his removal to MÖdling, she was not permitted to see him at all. She had been assured that her son would be admitted to the Convict, but his testimonials had been withheld from her and so she had been unable to file them with her application for a scholarship. His expenses were 750 florins per year for board, lodging, clothes, books, medicines, etc., to pay which 2,000 florins had been deposited in Court and yielded 100 florins interest per annum. She had pledged herself to give one-half of her pension of 333 florins, 20, that is 116 florins, 40 kreutzers towards his education. This amounted to 380 florins W. W., including the interest on the deposit; and she would gladly pay the difference between this sum and 750 florins until she should get the promised scholarship for her son. On December 11, the widow appealed to the court that in case the guardian of her son should make application touching plans for his future training it be not granted without giving her a hearing. This was the day when Beethoven, who had brought Joseph Carl Bernard with him, no doubt to protect him in his deafness, gave the testimony already set forth. The nephew had been examined before him:

Carl van Bethoven [sic] age 12 years, student in the 3rd Latin class, was examined:

Had he received good testimonials?

“Eminent” in Latin, “1st class” in other studies.

Why had he left his uncle?

Because his mother had told him she would send him to a public school and he did not think he would make progress under private instruction.

How did his uncle treat him?

Well.

Where had he been of late?

He had been in hiding at his mother’s.

Where would he rather live—at his mother’s or his uncle’s?

He would like to live at his uncle’s if he but had a companion, as his uncle was hard of hearing and he could not talk with him.

Had he been prompted by his mother to leave his uncle?

No.

When did he leave him?

Eight days ago.

How could he say that he could not succeed under private instruction when he had made such good progress?

This had been the case since he had studied in public; before that he had received 2nd class in mathematics and had not made it up.

Had his mother commanded him to return to his uncle?

She had wanted to take him back to him herself, but he had resisted because he feared maltreatment.

Had his uncle maltreated him?

He had punished him, but only when he deserved it; he had been maltreated only once, and that after his return, when his uncle threatened to throttle him.

How long had he been with his mother?

Two days.

Who had given him instruction in religion?

The same teacher who taught him other subjects, formerly the priest at MÖdling, who was not kindly disposed towards him because he did not behave himself in the street and babbled (or talked) in school.

Had he indulged in disrespectful remarks about his mother?

Yes; and in the presence of his uncle, whom he thought he would please in that way and who had agreed with him.

Was he often alone?

When his uncle was not at home he was left wholly alone.

Had his uncle admonished him to pray?

Yes; he prayed with him every morning and evening.

Johanna van Beethoven examined:

How did her son come to her from the house of his guardian?

He had come to her in the evening for fear of punishment and because he did not like to live with his uncle.

Had she advised him to return to his uncle?

Yes; but her son did not want to do so because he feared maltreatment.

It looked as if she had concealed her son?

She had written to her brother-in-law that she would send her son back to him, but she had not seen him for a long time and was therefore glad to have him with her for awhile, and for this reason she had not sent him back at once.

Had she been forbidden to see her son?

Her wish to do so had been frustrated by telling her of different places where she might see him, but when she went to the places he was not there.

Had her son been taken from her by the police?

She had herself taken him to the police at 4 o’clock.

How did she learn of the plan to send her son out of the country?

Giannatasio had disclosed the project to the police.

Did she consider that her son had been well treated at his uncle’s?

She thought it unsuitable for the reasons given in her former application. She wished to say in particular that v. Beethoven had only one servant and that one could not rely on servants; he was deaf and could not converse with his ward; there was nobody to look after the wants of her son satisfactorily; his cleanliness was neglected and supervision of his clothing and washing; persons who had brought him clean linen had been turned back by his guardian.

What prospects had she for caring for her son?

She had previously had the assurance of Count von Dietrichstein that her son would be accepted at the Convict; she had not been to him since because her application [to the Court] had been rejected.

In whose presence had her son spoken disrespectfully of her?

She had not herself heard him do so, nor could she mention the names of persons who had heard him.

From what source would she meet the deficiency in her income which would have to be applied to the support of her son?

She had no fortune herself but the Hofconcipist Hotschevar would defray the expenses.

Was her husband of noble birth?

So the brothers had said; the documentary proof of nobility was said to be in the possession of the oldest brother, the composer. At the legal hearing on the death of her husband, proofs of nobility had been demanded; she herself had no document bearing on the subject.