Alexander Wheelock Thayer

The Last Days in Gneixendorf—A Brother’s Warning—Beethoven and his Kinspeople—The Fateful Journey to Vienna—Sickness—Schindler’s Disingenuousness—Conduct of the Physicians—Death and Burial.

The Conversation Books add nothing to the picturesque side of the account of Beethoven’s sojourn in Gneixendorf as it has been drawn from other sources. They indicate that there were some days of peace and tranquility, and that not only Johann, but his wife and nephew also, were concerned with making the composer comfortable and providing him with such diversion as place and opportunity afforded. At the outset Beethoven seems to have been in a conciliatory mood even towards the woman whom he so heartily despised; and her willingness to please him is obvious. She talks with him about various things, praises Karl’s musical skill, which the nephew demonstrates by playing four-hand marches with his great uncle. She discusses his food with him, and if he ever was suspicious of the honesty in money matters of herself and her family, he hides his distrust and permits her brother, the baker, to collect money for him in Vienna, and the woman to go thither to fetch it. There are frequent walks into the country round about and drives to neighboring villages, and it would seem from one of Karl’s speeches that sometimes argument and warning were necessary to dissuade Beethoven from undertaking promenades in inclement weather. Characteristic of the suspicious nature which his dreadful malady had developed in him to an abnormal degree, and confirmatory also of Michael Krenn’s remark that he was always called upon to give an account of the conversations at table, is the evidence that the wife, Karl and even a woman boarder are questioned as to the goings-out and comings-in of the inmates of the house. Before the departure from Gneixendorf, Karl begins to chafe under his uncle’s discipline. Johann is occupied with the affairs of the estate and Karl does errands for him as well as his greater uncle in Krems, whither he is willing to journey on foot as often as necessary, perhaps oftener, for there are soldiers stationed at the village, there is a theatre, English circus riders give an exhibition (to which Karl offers to accompany the composer) and, what is perhaps more to the young man’s liking, there is a billiard-room. Of this fact, however, we are informed later by a remark recorded in the Conversation Books by Johann after the return to Vienna. The old suspicions touching the reasons for Karl’s absence from Wasserhof again arise to plague Beethoven’s mind, nor are they dissipated by Madame van Beethoven’s repeated assurances that he will return soon. It is plain that the young man is taken to task, not only for these absences, but also for what his uncle looked upon as moody and defiant silences when suffering rebuke. Thus we read:

You ask me why I do not talk. Because I have enough. Yours is the right to command; I must endure everything.... I can give no answer as to what you say; the best I can do is to hear and remain silent, as is my duty.

At a later period, when Beethoven has apparently upbraided the young man for his unwillingness to return to Vienna, Karl retorts:

If you want to go, good; if not, good again. But I beg of you once more not to torment me as you are doing; you might regret it, for I can endure much, but not too much. You treated your brother in the same way to-day without cause. You must remember that other people are also human beings.—These everlastingly unjust reproaches!—Why do you make such a disturbance? Will you let me go out a bit to-day? I need recreation. I’ll come again later.—I only want to go to my room.—I am not going out, I want only to be alone for a little while.—Will you not let me go to my room?

Karl was a young man of nearly twenty years; thriftless, no doubt; indolent, no doubt; fond of his ease and addicted to idle pleasures, no doubt—but still a man; and no matter how much he ought to have been willing to sacrifice himself to make his uncle happy, it is a question if there was any way in the world to that sure and permanent result. He was not wise enough, nor self-sacrificing enough, to do that which not a single one of the composer’s maturer friends, not even Stephan von Breuning, had been able to do. Once in the Books he shows a disposition to resort to the wheedling tactics which had been frequently successful in earlier years, and urges as a reason for tarrying longer in Gneixendorf that it will make possible their longer companionship. He is pleading for a week’s longer stay: Breuning had said that he should not present himself to the Fieldmarshal until no evidences of the recent “incident” were longer visible; in a week more the scar would not be noticeable, nor would a stay be necessary had he provided himself with pomade; then he remarks: “The longer we are here the longer we shall be together; for when we are in Vienna I shall, of course, have to go away soon.” It was after this speech that he made the remark already referred to about the cheapness of fire-wood. Karl had plainly grown more than content with his life in Gneixendorf and there is evidence to show that Beethoven had begun to fear that he was wavering in his determination to enter the army. Some drastic measure or occurrence was necessary to change the native irresolution of Beethoven’s mind. Schindler, in his desire to paint all the Beethovens, with the exception of the composer, with the blackest pigments on his imaginative palette, does not scruple to accuse Karl of undue intimacy with his aunt and offers this as a reason for the departure. To this no reference can be found in the pages of the Conversation Books, unless it be a remark which preceded Karl’s outburst, last recorded. Here he tells his uncle that all his “talk about intrigues needs no refutation.” The reference is vague and it is extremely unlikely that the intrigues meant were those involved in the vile insinuation of Schindler, for a reason which will be made apparent presently. The house at Gneixendorf was not fitted for tenancy in winter; the weather was growing boisterous; Madame van Beethoven had left the men to their own devices and gone to her town-house. This, apparently, was the state of affairs when Johann handed a letter to his brother which could have no other result than to bring about a decision to go back to Vienna at the earliest possible moment, and to carry with him a heart full of bitterness which could only be intensified by the sufferings which attended upon his journey. The letter bears no date, but an allusion to the fact that von Breuning had allowed Karl a fortnight for recuperation and he had already been two months at Gneixendorf, is proof that it was written near the end of November. That the brothers discussed it and cognate matters while it was in their hands is evidenced by the fact that it contains on its back the words in Johann’s writing: “Let us leave this until the day you go.—An old woman.—She has her share and will get no more.” The letter was as follows:

How Beethoven received this letter must be left to the imagination. Its wisdom temporarily disarmed Schindler, who forgot all of his frequently wicked charges against Johann long enough to admit that the document proved that he was not utterly without good qualities of character. He adds that he was in a position to assert that Ludwig took his brother’s suggestion with bad grace and that before his departure from Gneixendorf there was an exceedingly acrimonious quarrel between the brothers, growing out of Ludwig’s demand that Johann make a will in favor of Karl, thus cutting off his wife. It is to this that the penciled endorsement on the letter refers. This subject, Schindler says, was the real cause of the estrangement between the brothers during the last five or six years of Ludwig’s life. The blame, he adds, rested with Ludwig, who, “constantly at odds with himself and all the world, loved and hated without reason.” Weeks afterward, while he lay dying in Vienna, Beethoven’s thoughts were still occupied with the purpose of persuading his brother to make a will in Karl’s favor.[162] A moment’s reflection on a single fact will serve to give the quietus to Schindler’s insinuation as to improper relationship between the young man of 19 and his aunt of 40; at the time that Karl is pleading to stay in the country, Johann is urging his brother to send him about his duty, and Beethoven is halting in irresolution, the woman is in Vienna.

It must be assumed that the Monday referred to in Johann’s letter was Monday, November 27; but several days must have elapsed between this date and the time when Beethoven and Karl set out on the fateful journey to Vienna. A determination seems to have been reached when the Book shows Johann as saying: “If you are to start on Monday the carriage must be ordered on Sunday.” There is no recorded conversation touching the use of Johann’s carriage, which, so far as anything is known to the contrary, may have still been in Vienna, whither, it is safe to assume, it had carried Johann’s wife, and whither it was to carry its owner as soon as he could make a satisfactory adjustment of his financial affairs. That means of conveyance were discussed is proved by Johann’s remark and also by a report made by Karl to the composer: “There is no postchaise to Vienna, but only to St. PÖlten.... From here there is no opportunity except by a stagecoach.”

Exactly when and how the travellers set out it is not possible to determine. Schindler says that owing to Johann’s refusal to let his brother use his closed carriage, Beethoven was obliged to make the journey in an “open calash.” This is his statement in the first edition of the biography, but in the third, for an unexplained reason, the “open calash” is the vehicle used from Gneixendorf to Krems only, a distance which was easily traversed on foot inside of an hour. If Dr. Wawruch, Beethoven’s attending physician during the illness which ended in his death, is correct, Beethoven told him that he had made the journey “in the devil’s most wretched vehicle, a milk-wagon.” Later Dr. Wawruch calls the vehicle in which he arrived in Vienna a “Leiterwagen,” from which we might gather, which is utterly preposterous, that it was a rack vehicle. Beethoven arrived in Vienna on Saturday, December 2, and as there is a reference to only one night spent in transit (as there had been one on the journey from Vienna to Gneixendorf), it is likely that he left Gneixendorf early in the morning of Friday, December 1. “That December,” says Dr. Wawruch, “was raw, wet and frosty; Beethoven’s clothing anything but adapted to the unfriendly season of the year, and yet he was urged on by an internal unrest and a gloomy foreboding of misfortune. He was compelled to spend a night in a village tavern where, besides wretched shelter, he found an unwarmed room without winter shutters. Towards midnight he experienced his first fever-chill, a dry hacking cough accompanied by violent thirst and cutting pains in the sides. When seized with the fever he drank a few measures of ice-cold water and longed, helplessly, for the first rays of the morning light. Weak and ill, he permitted himself to be lifted into the Leiterwagen and arrived, at last, weak, exhausted and without strength, in Vienna.” Wawruch derived his information from Beethoven, possibly in part also from Karl, the only witness from whom a succinct and absolutely correct account was to have been expected; unhappily the tale, which Karl must have been called upon to tell many times, was never reported. The untrustworthiness of Schindler’s statements about the incidents of which he had no personal knowledge is emphasized by obvious efforts made to falsify and emasculate the record in the Conversation Books, concerning which it will soon become necessary to speak.

It was Saturday, December 2nd, 1826, then, that Beethoven arrived in Vienna from Gneixendorf and went to his lodgings in the Schwarzspanierhaus. It does not appear that he considered himself seriously ill, for in a letter to Holz which must have been written two, or more likely three, days later, he says merely that he is “unpÄsslich,” that is, indisposed. The letter was the second of its kind, the first having been mislaid. In this letter he asked Holz to come to him. It was written from dictation, but before appending his signature Beethoven wrote, “Finally, I add to this ‘We all err, only each in a different way’,” setting the quoted words to music for a canon. This canon, of which an autograph copy on a separate sheet of paper is preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin, points to a possibility that some misunderstanding had arisen between Beethoven and Holz just before the former started for Gneixendorf. Inasmuch as Holz is at Beethoven’s side at least ten days before Schindler appears there, and gives his services to the sick man until the end, though not to the extent that Schindler does after his coming, the latter’s efforts to create the impression that Beethoven had sent Holz away from him is disingenuous, to say the least. Holz’s first act convicts Schindler of an error which can scarcely be set down as an innocent one. The story involves one of the slanders against Karl which has been repeated from Schindler’s day to this, although its refutation needed only a glance into the Conversation Books of December, 1826. Schindler says that he did not learn of Beethoven’s condition until “several days” after his return to Vienna. That he then hurried to him and learned that neither Dr. Braunhofer nor Dr. Staudenheimer, though sent for by Beethoven, had answered the summons and that Dr. Wawruch’s coming was due to something only a little better than an accident. Karl, though charged with the duty of summoning a physician, had forgotten, or neglected, to so do, for several days. His commission occurred to him while playing at billiards, and he incidentally asked a marqueur (scorer) in the billiard-room to send a physician to his uncle. The marqueur, not being well, could not do it at the time, but mentioned the matter some time later to Dr. Wawruch at the hospital to which he had been taken. This story of unexampled heartlessness, to which Dr. Gerhard von Breuning also gave currency, Schindler said he had heard from Dr. Wawruch; but it is branded as a shameless fabrication by Dr. Wawruch’s published statement and the evidence of the Conversation Book. Dr. Wawruch wrote a history of Beethoven’s illness entitled “Ärztlicher RÜckblick auf Ludwig van Beethoven’s letzte Lebensepoche” under date of May 20, 1827, which was published by Aloys Fuchs in the “Wiener Zeitschrift” of April 30, 1842. In this report Dr. Wawruch says, “I was not called in until the third day.” This third day would be December 5th, and the date has twofold confirmation in the Conversation Book. A fortnight after Beethoven’s return to Vienna there is an entry in Karl’s handwriting of the physician’s visits beginning with December 5th and ending with December 14, which shows that within this period Dr. Wawruch made daily visits and on one day came twice. Schindler’s name does not appear until some time after this entry, and it is recorded in a manner which indicates plainly that it was his first meeting with the sick man. As the book was folded and renumbered by Schindler the page on which this entry appears is made to look as if it preceded others which are filled with evidences of Holz’s helpfulness, but the records of the first call of the physician are plain and undisputable. It was Holz who sent for him and he did so on December 5, the day on which the first visit is noted. Evidently Holz had hastened to Beethoven on receiving the letter asking him to come which Karl seems to have delivered to him on the 4th or 5th. What passed at the first meeting does not appear, but this remark in the handwriting of Holz does:

Vivenot was a physician. In all probability Beethoven had exhausted the list of physicians of his acquaintance (Smetana, a surgeon, may not have been considered and Malfatti could not be at the time for reasons which Beethoven knew and was made painfully to feel later), before Holz succeeded in securing the attendance of Wawruch.[163] According to the accepted story, Braunhofer, who had been the last physician to treat Beethoven before the misfortunes of the summer, had declined the call because of the too great distance between his house and Beethoven’s, and Staudenheimer, whom Braunhofer had displaced, promised to come but did not. The latter, probably both, took part later in the consultations. Wawruch was an amateur violoncello player and an ardent admirer of Beethoven’s music. When he comes to his august patient, though he permits Karl to write the questions, he takes the pencil himself to tell who he is: “One who greatly reveres your name will do everything possible to give you speedy relief—Prof. Wawruch.” In his history of the case Wawruch writes:

Dr. Gerhard von Breuning, who was concerned in proving that Dr. Wawruch was a bungling practitioner, protests that Beethoven was not suffering from inflammation of the lungs but from inflammation of the peritoneum, which alone, he says, could have brought on the dropsy of the belly from which it has been thought until recently Beethoven died. He based his opinion on the fact, which, though only a boy of 13, he may have observed in the sick-room, that the patient did not cough, had no difficulty in breathing, and that afterwards his lungs were found to be sound. Wawruch, however, an experienced physician, is speaking of what he observed on his first visit and is not likely to have erred in so obvious a matter as incipient lobar pneumonia, the general history of which as now understood agrees with the recorded account of Beethoven’s case, even in such details as the critical period reached on the fifth day. The subsequent strength of the lungs is not inconsistent with the theory that in the first week Beethoven weathered an attack of pneumonia.

There are few references to the state of Beethoven’s health during the sojourn at Gneixendorf, but that he was ill when he arrived there is indicated by an early remark by Johann attributing an improvement in the condition of his eyes to the good air “without rosewater.” Johann wrote later that, when with him, Beethoven ate little. When the food was not prepared to his taste he ate soft-boiled eggs for dinner “and drank all the more wine.” He had frequent attacks of diarrhoea. His abdomen also became distended so that he wore a bandage for comfort. Wawruch had no knowledge of his patient’s previous medical history and was compelled to discover for himself what his colleagues, to whom the sick man’s call was first extended, would have known from their earlier experiences with him. Schindler attacks Wawruch on the ground that he had said that Beethoven was addicted to the use of spirituous liquors. The Conversation Books and other testimony plentifully indicate that the great composer was fond of wine and that his physicians had difficulty in enforcing abstinence upon him; but the only one who, by indirection, accused Beethoven of drinking to excess, was Schindler, whose statements on that point are not free from the suspicion that they were made only for the purpose of hitting Holz over Wawruch’s shoulders.[164]

Wawruch’s report continues:

After Dr. Wawruch had reached this decision, Dr. Staudenheimer was called in consultation and he confirmed the attending physician’s opinion as to the necessity of an operation. Beethoven was told. “After a few moments of serious thought he gave his consent.” The servant Thekla, who had, apparently, come from Gneixendorf (as her name appears in the Conversation Book used there), in the midst of the preparations for the operation had been found to be dishonest and dismissed. The composer’s brother had arrived in Vienna about December 10 and thereafter is found constant in his attendance, a fact which it becomes necessary to mention because of the obvious effort of Schindler to create the impression that the burden of the care of Beethoven had been assumed by him, von Breuning and the latter’s son Gerhard. Wawruch had retained Dr. Seibert, principal surgeon (PrimÄrwundarzt) at the hospital, to perform the operation. The date was December 20 (not 18, as Schindler says). Those present were Johann, Karl and Schindler. Beethoven’s sense of humor did not desert him. When, the incision having been made, Dr. Seibert introduced the tube and the water spurted out, Beethoven said: “Professor, you remind me of Moses striking the rock with his staff.”[165] Wawruch writes in the Conversation Book:

In the early days after Beethoven’s return to Vienna there is a continuation of the correspondence with Schott and Sons concerning the publication of the works which they had purchased, and before the end of December, probably in the third week, occurs the incident of the disappointing gift from the King of Prussia which makes its appearance in the record with something like a shout of “Good news!” from Schindler. Karl is busily occupied in preparations for his military career and upon him, until the arrival of Holz, appears to devolve the labor of writing and of carrying messages. The Conversation Book used by him on the 4th of December and the two following days bears a pathetic proof of Beethoven’s helplessness in the matter of figures. A page or so is filled with examples in simple multiplication—tables, without answers, of threes, fours, sevens, etc.—and the remark, “Then backwards.” Later Karl writes an explanation: “Multiplication is a simplified form of addition, wherefore examples are performed in the same manner. Each product is set under its proper place. If it consists of two digits, the left one is added to the product of the next. Here a small illustration: 2348 multiplied by 2.” It was thus that the great genius approaching his 56th birthday was employing his time while waiting in vain for the physicians who would not or could not answer his summons!

One joyful event brightened the solitary gloom of the sick-chamber in the middle of December. From Stumpff, of London, Beethoven received the 40 volumes of Dr. Arnold’s edition of the works of Handel which the donor had resolved to send Beethoven on his visit in 1824. Gerhard von Breuning pictures the joy of Beethoven at the reception of the gift, which he described as royal compared with that of the King of Prussia. One day the boy was asked to hand the big books from the pianoforte where they rested to the bed. “I have long wanted them,” said the composer to his faithful little friend, “for Handel is the greatest, the ablest composer that ever lived. I can still learn from him.” He leaned the books against the wall, turned over the pages, and ever and anon paused to break out into new expressions of praise. Von Breuning places these incidents in the middle of February, 1827, but his memory was plainly at fault. Schindler says the books arrived in December, and he is right, for Stumpff preserved the receipt for them, a letter and Reichardt’s “Taschenbuch fÜr Reisende,” which is dated “December 14, 1826.” The gift was sent through the son of Stumpff’s friend Streicher.

Stephan von Breuning had called on Beethoven shortly after his arrival and the work of making a soldier of Karl was begun at once. It was expected that the preparations would occupy only a few days, but they dragged themselves through the month of December, owing partly, no doubt, to an illness which befell the Councillor. There were formal calls to be made upon the Lieut. Field Marshal and other officers, a physical examination to be undergone (it was most perfunctory), uniforms to be provided, the oath of service to be taken, and his monthly allowance to be fixed. All this was disposed of by the date of the first tapping, and it was expected that he would set out to join his regiment at Iglau before the Christmas holidays. There is no evidence of a change in the attitude towards each other of uncle and nephew. Some of Karl’s entries in the Conversation Books betray a testiness which is in marked contrast to Beethoven’s obvious solicitude for the young man’s position and comfort in his regiment; but the entries also indicate that illness had not sweetened the disposition of the sufferer. His outbursts of rage are the subject of warnings from physicians and friends. We have Schindler’s word for it that Beethoven became cheerful after the graceless youth’s departure for Iglau on January 2nd, and the testimony of the Conversation Book that the old year closed upon a quarrel between the two. Karl writes this greeting on New Year’s day: “I wish you a happy new year, and it grieves me that I should have been compelled already in the first night to give cause for displeasure. It might easily have been avoided, however, if you had but given the order to have my meal taken to my room.”

It is very possible that Beethoven’s spirits grew lighter after the departure of his nephew. The service which Karl gave his uncle seems frequently to have been given grudgingly and no doubt looked more ungracious than it may really have been, when accompanied by protests that he would not be found failing in duty and petulant requests that he be spared upbraidings and torments. To satisfy the singular mixture of affectionate solicitude and suspicion which filled Beethoven’s heart and mind would perhaps have taxed the philosophy of a wiser as well as gentler being than this young man, who, as Johann’s wife told the composer in Gneixendorf, had inherited the testy family temper. When open quarrels were no longer possible, it is likely that a greater contentment than had lodged there for a long time filled Beethoven’s soul. There is no record of the parting, and it is safe to assume that it passed off without emotional demonstration of any kind. But Beethoven’s thoughts went swiftly towards his self-assumed duty of providing for the young man’s future. The very next day he wrote the following letter to Dr. Bach:

From Gerhard von Breuning’s account of the last days of Beethoven it would seem that this letter, though written on January 3rd, and then addressed to his legal adviser, was not signed until shortly before his death, and that at intervals in the interim it was the subject of consultations between the composer, Bach, Breuning, Schindler and Johann. Certain it is that before dispatching the letter to Bach, Beethoven submitted it to von Breuning for an opinion. Gerhard carried it to his father and brought back an answer which may have postponed its formal execution and delivery till two days before Beethoven died. Stephan von Breuning was not willing that Karl should enter upon unrestricted possession of the property immediately upon the death of his uncle. In his letter he pointed out that till now Karl had shown himself frivolous and that there was no knowing what turn his character might take as a result of the new life upon which he had entered. He therefore advised that for the young man’s own good and future safety he be prohibited from disposing of the capital of his inheritance, either during his lifetime or for a term of years after he had reached his majority, which under the Austrian law then prevailing was the age of 24 years. He argued that the income from the legacy would suffice for his maintenance for the time being and that to restrict him in the disposition of the capital would ensure him against the possible results of frivolous conduct before he should ripen into a man of solid parts. He recommended that Beethoven talk the matter over with Bach and wanted then to consult with both of them, as he feared that even a temporary restriction would not suffice to restrain Karl from making debts which in time would devour the inheritance when he should enter upon it. How Beethoven received this advice we shall learn later.

There is little that need be added to the story of the nephew. He was with his regiment at Iglau. Through Schindler, Beethoven wrote him a letter. It is lost, but apparently it contained an expression of dissatisfaction with Dr. Wawruch, for in the reply, which has been preserved, Karl says: “Concerning yourself I am rejoiced to know that you are in good hands. I, too, had felt some distrust of the treatment of your former (or, perhaps, present?) physician; I hope improvement will now follow.” He reports about his situation in the regiment, asks for money and the flute part of the Pianoforte Concerto in B-flat (Op. 19), which one of the officers of the regiment wished to play, and adds in a postscript: “Do not think that the little privations to which I am now subjected have made me dissatisfied with my lot. On the contrary, rest assured that I am living in contentment, and regret only that I am separated so far from you. In time, however, this will be different.” But communications from the young man are not many, and Schindler’s rebukes and complaints in the Conversation Books about his undutifulness are probably only a reflex of Beethoven’s moods and utterances. One cause of dissatisfaction was the fact that a letter to Smart had been sent to him for translation and was not promptly returned. But he acknowledges the receipt of money towards the end of February, and on March 4th he writes another letter, which has been preserved. He sends his thanks for a pair of boots, says the translation of the letter to Smart must have been received, and adds:

Here Karl van Beethoven practically disappears from this history. He never saw his uncle in life again, nor even in death, for he was not present at the funeral—as indeed in those days of tardy communication and slow conveyance he could not be.

Notwithstanding that they do not make a complete record, since the slate was also, and indeed largely, used by Beethoven’s visitors, and despite the fact that they have not been left intact, but bear evidences of mutilation and falsification, the Conversation Books furnish a more vivid and also a more pathetic picture of Beethoven’s sick-room than the writings of Schindler and Gerhard von Breuning. Busy about the couch of the patient we see his brother Johann and his nephew Karl, besides Schindler, Holz and Stephan von Breuning. The visits of the last are interrupted by illness and his official labors, but his son, the lad Gerhard, frequently lends a gracious touch to the scene by his familiar mode of address, his gossip about his father’s domestic affairs and his suggestions of intellectual pabulum for his august friend. He is a daily message-bearer between the two households. Even at a sacrifice of space it is necessary to recount a few incidents of small intrinsic interest in order that some errors in history may be rectified. Notwithstanding Schindler’s obvious efforts to have the contrary appear, Holz continues to be faithful in attendance, though his visits are not so numerous as they were during the weeks of Beethoven’s great trial in the summer. The reason was obvious and certainly not to his discredit, though Schindler attempted to belittle it. Holz took unto himself a wife about the time that Beethoven returned to Vienna. Thitherto he had been able to devote a large portion of the time not given to official duties to his friend. Now, this was no longer possible; nor was it necessary after Dr. Wawruch had assumed care of the case. Beethoven’s brother also returned to Vienna and Schindler found his way back to the composer’s side within a fortnight. It is Holz, however, who looks after the correction and publication of the last compositions, and collects his annuity; and if it were necessary, his apologists might find evidence of Beethoven’s confidence in his friendship and integrity in the fact that there is no indication that he ever questioned his honesty in money matters, while there is proof in Schindler’s own handwriting that Beethoven thought him capable of theft. It is pitiful that while Schindler is sacrificing himself in almost menial labors, Beethoven forces him to a pained protestation that he had returned the balance of a sum placed in his hands wherewith to make purchases. Schindler himself records the fact of Beethoven’s suspicion with sorrow. A livelier sense of gratitude took possession of the sufferer later and found expression in gifts of autograph scores (of the Ninth Symphony, for instance, now in the Royal Library[166] at Berlin), and a promise, which he was unable to fulfill, to take part in a concert for Schindler’s benefit.

Whether Schindler was always as scrupulously honest in his attitude towards the public as he was in his dealings with Beethoven may be doubted. There are mutilations, interlineations and erasures in the Conversation Books which it is difficult to believe were not made for the purpose of bolstering up mistaken statements in his biography, which had already been published when the documents passed out of his hands into the possession of the Royal Library. Here is a case in point: Schuppanzigh has called and reported that one of Beethoven’s quartets had been enthusiastically received by the public at a performance on the preceding Sunday (December 10, 1826). To what seems to have been an oral comment, Beethovens adds the words and music of the motto from the Quartet in F: “Muss es sein? Es muss sein.” This moves Schuppanzigh to say: “But does he”—(Beethoven, of course, whom Schuppanzigh addresses in the third person as usual)—“does he know that the dirty fellow has become my enemy on that account?” Here we have an unmistakable allusion to the anecdote about Dembscher and the origin of the Canon on the theme of the finale of the F major Quartet. A few pages later Schindler is the writer and has just brought the news of the arrival of the ring presented to Beethoven by the King of Prussia. He had been asked to carry the ring to Beethoven, but had been unwilling to accept it unless he could give Beethoven’s receipt for it in exchange. He adds the words “Es muss sein” as if in answer to a question by Beethoven. Now appear squeezed in between the music and the edge of the sheet the words: “The Old Woman (Die Alte) is again in need of her weekly allowance.” The handwriting is plainly of a different date and at the time of the conversation the “Old Woman” was not in Beethoven’s employ.[167] It is not easy to acquit Schindler of a sinister motive here nor to avoid the suspicion that it was his hand which made an attempt to obliterate the entry on December 5, which proves that Holz sent for Dr. Wawruch on that date and thus gives the lie to the infamous story about Karl and the billiard marqueur. The evidences of Schindler’s eagerness to encourage Beethoven’s detestation of his brother and his suspicion of his nephew are too numerous to be overlooked, and some of them may call for mention later.

An offer by Gerhard von Breuning to bring one of his school-books containing pictures of classic antiquities is an evidence of the lad’s familiarity with Beethoven’s literary tastes. It was Brother Johann, however, who suggested the novels of Sir Walter Scott for his entertainment, and the impression conveyed by the story that after beginning “Kenilworth” Beethoven threw the volume down with the angry remark: “To the devil with the scribbling! The fellow writes only for money,” that the composer would have no more of the novelist, is rudely disturbed by evidence that Beethoven read all of Scott’s works which were to be found in translation in the circulating library. Beethoven later himself calls for Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”; and his interest in international politics is so keen that he is not content with an abstract of Channing’s great speech of December 12, 1826, but expresses a desire to read a full report.

While Beethoven’s friends are discussing with Dr. Wawruch the necessity of a second tapping, and Karl is packing his boxes for Iglau, the year 1826 ends. The surgeon Seibert seems to have advised a postponement of the operation. In a conversation on January 6, 1827, Schindler says to Beethoven: “Then Hr. Seibert was really right in still postponing the second operation, for it will probably make a third unnecessary.” There are now signs of Beethoven’s dissatisfaction with the attending physician. Gerhard von Breuning has much to say on the point in his little book, and Schindler joins in the criticism many years after Beethoven’s death; but in the Conversation Books he appears more than once as Wawruch’s defender. From von Breuning we learn that while at a later date Malfatti’s coming was awaited with eagerness and hailed with unfeigned gladness, Wawruch’s visits were ungraciously received, Beethoven sometimes turning his face to the wall and exclaiming “Oh! the ass!” when he heard his name announced. But in the first week of January, Schindler is still concerned in keeping up the patient’s faith in the skill of his physician. In a Conversation Book he writes shortly after the remark about the surgeon:

Evidently, Beethoven renews his expression of distrust. Schindler continues:

A few days later (January 8, says Schindler, who was present) the second operation took place. There were no complications, the tapping was accomplished without difficulty and Dr. Seibert reported that the water was clearer and the outflow greater than the first time. Ten measures were drawn off. On January 11 there was a consultation of physicians to which, besides either Dr. Braunhofer or Staudenheimer, Dr. Malfatti had been called. It had become an ardent wish of Beethoven’s that Malfatti undertake his case, but Malfatti had refused, pleading professional ethics, but no doubt actuated by reasons of a more personal character. Many years before, probably as early as 1813, he had been not only Beethoven’s physician but also his friend; indeed, he was an uncle of the Therese Malfatti to whom the composer once made an offer of marriage. He made, what it is easy to imagine to have been, the experience of all the medical men who undertook the care of the great man. Beethoven was ever a disobedient and impatient patient. He became dissatisfied with Dr. Malfatti’s treatment and commented upon it and him in such a manner as to cause a serious and lasting estrangement. Ten years at least had elapsed between this incident and the time when Beethoven’s longing went out towards his one-time professional friend. Schindler’s story of the disappointments which he suffered when first he tried to persuade Dr. Malfatti to take the case in hand was printed in the “Frankfurter Konversationsblatt” of July 14, 1842. It was a long time afterward, and we can not withhold a suspicion that it is rather highly colored, but since the coming of Malfatti was a matter of large moment to Beethoven and the treatment which he recommended (strictly speaking, he can not be said to have prescribed it, for Dr. Wawruch remained in charge of the case to the end) has a large bearing upon Beethoven’s physical condition and its causes, it may be told here. Schindler writes, in his communication to the Frankfort newspaper:

On January 19, after a second visit to Dr. Malfatti, Schindler wrote to Beethoven saying that the Doctor would come to him and begging him to seek a reconciliation, inasmuch as Malfatti still cherished resentment because of the treatment which he had received a decade before at Beethoven’s hands. Malfatti came, a reconciliation was effected, and under the inspiration of the changed treatment which Malfatti introduced Beethoven’s spirits rose buoyantly, his physical condition responded and the despair which had begun to fill the sufferer gave way to a confident hope of recovery. The treatment was simple, but the improvement which it brought about was not lasting. Malfatti put away the drugs and decoctions and prescribed frozen punch, and rubbing the patient’s abdomen with ice-cold water. Dr. Wawruch in his history of the case confirms Schindler’s statement of the beneficial results which were at first attained. He says:

Wawruch’s remark here about Beethoven’s predilection for spirituous liquors formed the basis for Schindler’s charge, which has already been discussed, that the physician had slandered Beethoven and had tried to create the impression that he had contracted dropsy by inordinate use of alcoholic drinks. The account of the beneficial effect of Malfatti’s coming, no less than the treatment which he prescribed, is reasonable enough. Beethoven no doubt, in the warm glow of a recovered friendship, gave the physician a full measure of confidence and hailed in him much more than the ordinary professional leech. It is also safe to assume that Malfatti knew from the beginning that a cure was impossible and strove at once for temporary relief, which in Beethoven’s case was the surest of means for cheering him up and reanimating hope within him. By administering frozen punch he stimulated the jaded organs more successfully than Wawruch had succeeded in doing; at the same time he warned against excess in its use and forbade the patient taking it in a liquid form. But this was only at the beginning; when he saw the inevitable end approaching he waived all injunctions as to quantity. Schindler says:

The quantity of frozen punch permitted in the first weeks was not more than one glass a day. Not until after the fourth operation (February 27th), when it was seen that the case was hopeless, were all restrictions removed. The noble patient, feeling the marked effects of a doubled and even trebled allowance meanwhile, thought himself already half saved and wanted to work on his tenth symphony, which he was allowed to do to a small extent. From these days, so extraordinary in the sight of the friends who surrounded him, the last lines are dated which he wrote to me on March 17—nine days before his death—the very last page which the immortal master wrote with his own hands:

“Miracles! Miracles! Miracles! The highly learned gentlemen are both defeated! Only through Malfatti’s science shall I be saved. It is necessary that you come to me for a moment this forenoon.”