Ludwig Van Beethoven

Life Stories for Young People
Translated from the German of Franz Hoffmann
BY GEORGE P. UPTON Translator of “Memories,” etc.
THIRD PRINTING
CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1910
Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1904 Published October 1, 1904
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
The life-story of Beethoven, contained in these pages, is a résumé of the events of his childhood and youth, those of his maturer years being merely indicated in order to give symmetry to the narrative. It covers just that period of his life in which young readers are likely to be interested. Those who have the leisure and inclination to study the details of his entire career will find them in the biographies of Schindler, Ries, Marx, Thayer, and others, but it is questionable whether any of these will bring the reader as closely to the actual man and musician as this little story. And this is so not only because it is a story, but because it is a story true to life, with actual, not imaginary, personages, set in a social, domestic, and musical environment which is accurately reproduced, and dealing with historical events which are correctly stated. In a strict sense, therefore, it is not fiction, far less is it rhapsody; and to this extent it is valuable not alone for facts charmingly set forth, but for effects which are realistic and which seem to bring the actual Beethoven before the reader. It is the story of a sad struggle against obstacles which sometimes appeared almost insuperable; but its lesson for youth is the reward of world-wide fame which followed the exercise of industry, courage, honesty, self-respect, and self-devotion to his calling. The translator has endeavored to reproduce the story in an English setting without sacrificing its charming German characteristics.
G. P. U.
Chicago, September 1, 1904.
December days are not usually considered the most agreeable or most comfortable days of the year, but no December day could have been more disagreeable or uncomfortable than the seventeenth of that month in 1774. A dense, almost impenetrable fog enveloped that afternoon the city of Bonn on the Rhine, and the country for miles around, in a cold, gray veil of mist, through which hardly a ray of sunshine could find its way. A fine rain, mingled with occasional flakes of snow, drizzled through the fog and made the pavements slippery and filthy. Everything one looked upon, whether animate or inanimate, seemed disagreeable. The sky was disagreeable. Disagreeably the trees and shrubs in avenues and gardens shook their leafless branches to free them from the frozen raindrops which weighed them down. The houses in the street were disagreeable, and their usually attractive and brightly lighted windows appeared that day most inhospitable. Disagreeably and sullenly the rooks sat upon the roof-tops, and the sparrows themselves, usually the sauciest and jolliest companions among the feathered folk, fluttered about anxiously, deserted each other, and sought the warmest and driest little nooks in the cornices, or near a warm chimney, without any concern for the rest of the world. If two acquaintances met on the street, the one greeted the other with a woe-begone countenance. Everything seemed depressed and disagreeable—the huckster women in the market, the sentries at their posts, the few pedestrians on the promenade, and the few faces which appeared here and there at the darkened windows and looked with lonesome gaze into the tedious, gray, dense, cold fog.