III.
When young von Swieten came half an hour later to ask for the young composer, Signor Metastasio could not inform him where “Giuseppo” might have gone. How many hours of despondency did this forgetfulness of the wise man and renowned poet prepare for the poor, unknown, yet incomparably greater artist,—Haydn!
When Joseph after a long walk stood at length before Puderlein’s house, he experienced some novel sensations, which may have been naturally consequent upon the thought that he was to introduce himself to a young lady, and converse with her; an idea which, from his constitutional bashfulness, and his ignorance of the world, was rather formidable to him. But the step must nevertheless be taken. He summoned all his courage, and went and knocked at the door. It was opened, and a handsome damsel of eighteen or nineteen presented herself before the trembling Joseph.
The youth, in great embarrassment, faltered forth his compliments and his message from Master Wenzel. The pretty Nanny listened to him with an expression both of pleasure and sympathy—the last for the forlorn condition of her visitor. When he had ended, she took him, to his no small terror, by the hand, without the least embarrassment, and leading him into the parlor, said in insinuating tones, “Come in, then, Master Haydn, it is all right; I am sure my papa means well with you, for he concerns himself for every dunce he meets, and would take a poor wretch in, for having only good hair on his head! He has often spoken to me of you, and you may rely upon it, he will assist you; for he has very distinguished acquaintances. But you must give in to his humors a little, for he is sometimes a trifle peculiar.”
Joseph promised he would do his best, and Nanny went on, “you must also accommodate yourself to my whims, for, look you, I lead the regiment alone here in the house, and even papa must do as I will. Now, tell me, what will you have? Do not be bashful; it is a good while since noon, and you must be hungry from your long walk.”
Joseph could not deny that such was the case, and modestly asked for a piece of bread and a glass of water.
Pshaw! cried Nanny, laughing; and tripped out of the room. Ere long she returned, followed by an apprentice boy, whom she had loaded with cold meats, a flask of wine, and a pair of tumblers, till his arms were ready to sink under the burden, while yet he dared not make a face,—for he had been in the family long enough to be sufficiently convinced of Mademoiselle Nanny’s absolute dominion. Nanny busily arranged the table, filled Joseph’s glass, and invited him to help himself to the cold pastry or whatever else stood awaiting his choice. The youth fell to, at first timidly, then with more courage; till, after he had at Nanny’s persuasion emptied a couple of glasses, he took heart to attack the cold meats more vigorously than he had done in a long time before; making at the same time the observation mentally, that if Mademoiselle Nanny Puderlein was not quite so distingué and accomplished as his departed patroness, the honored Mlle. de Martinez, still, as far as youth, beauty, and polite manners were concerned, she would not suffer by a comparison with the most distinguished dames in Vienna.—In short, when Master Wenzel Puderlein came home an hour or so after, he found Joseph in high spirits, with sparkling eyes, and cheeks like the rose—already more than half in love with the pretty Nanny.
Joseph Haydn lived thus many months in the house of Wenzel Puderlein, burgher, house proprietor, and renowned friseur in the Leopoldstadt of Vienna, and not a man in the Imperial city knew where the poor, but talented and well educated artist and composer was gone. In vain he was sought for by his few friends; in vain by young von Swieten; in vain at last, by Metastasio himself; Joseph had disappeared from Vienna without leaving a trace. Wenzel Puderlein kept his abode carefully concealed, and wondered and lamented like the rest over his loss, when his aristocratic customers asked him, whom they believed to know everything, if he could give them no information as to what had become of Joseph. He thought he had good reasons, and undoubted right, to exercise now the hitherto unpractised virtue of silence; because, as he said to himself, he only aimed at making Joseph the happiest man in the world! But in this he would labor alone; he wanted none to help him; and even his protegé was not fully to know his designs, till he was actually in possession of his good fortune.
Joseph cheerfully resigned himself to the purposes of his friend, and was only too happy to be able undisturbed to study Sebastian Bach’s works, to try his skill in quartettos—to eat as much as he wished, and day after day to see and chat with the fair Nanny. It never occurred to him, under such circumstances, to notice that he lived in a manner as a prisoner in Puderlein’s house; that all day he was banished to the garden behind the house, or to his snug chamber, and only permitted to go out in the evening with Wenzel and his daughter. It never occurred to him to wish for other acquaintance than the domestics and their nearest neighbors, among whom he was known only as “Master Joseph;” and he cheerfully delivered every Saturday to Master Wenzel the stipulated number of minuets, waltzes, &c., which he was ordered to compose. Puderlein carried the pieces regularly to a dealer in such things in Leopoldstadt, who paid him two convention guilders for every full toned minuet—and for the others in proportion. This money the hairdresser conscientiously locked up in a chest, to use it, when the time should come, for Joseph’s advantage. With this view, he enquired earnestly about Joseph’s greater works, and whether he would not soon be prepared to produce something which would do him credit in the eyes of the more distinguished part of the public.
“Ah—yes—indeed!” replied Joseph; “this quartetto, when I shall have finished it, might be ventured before the public; for I hope to make something good of it! Yet what shall I do? No publisher will take it; it is returned on my hands, because I am no great lord, and because I have no patron to whom I could dedicate it!”
“That will all come in time,” said Puderlein, smiling; “do you get the thing ready, yet without neglecting the dances; I tell you a prudent man begins with little, and ends with great; so to work!”
And Joseph went to work; but he was every day deeper and deeper in love with the fair Nanny; and the damsel herself looked with very evident favor on the dark, though handsome youth.—Wenzel saw the progress of things with satisfaction; the lovers behaved with great propriety, and he suffered matters to go on in their own way, only interfering with a little assumed surliness, if Joseph at any time forgot his tasks in idle talk, or Nanny her housekeeping.
But not with such eyes saw Mosjo Ignatz, Puderlein’s journeyman and factotum hitherto; for he thought himself possessed of a prior claim to the love of Nanny. No one knows how much or how little reason he had to think so, for it might be reckoned among impossibilities for a young girl of Vienna, who has reached the age of fourteen, to determine the number of her lovers. The Viennese damsels are remarkable for their prudence in what concerns a love affair. However that may have been, it is certain that it was gall and wormwood to Ignatz to see Joseph and the fair Nanny together. He would often fain have interposed his powder-bag and curling irons between them, when he heard them singing tender duets; for it must be owned that Nanny had a charming voice, was very fond of music, and was Joseph’s zealous pupil in singing.
At length he could endure no longer the torments of jealousy; and one morning he sought out the master of the house, to discover to him the secret of the lovers. How great was his astonishment, when Master Wenzel, instead of falling into a violent passion, and turning Joseph out of doors without further ado, replied with a smile,
“What you tell me, Mosjo ’Natz, look you, I have long known, and am well pleased that it is so.”
“Nein!” cried Ignatz, after a long pause of speechless astonishment; “Nein, Master von Puderlein! you should not be pleased. You seem as if you knew not that I—I, for several years have been the suitor of your daughter.”
It was Wenzel’s turn to be astonished, and he angrily replied, “I knew no such thing; I know not, nor will I know any such thing. What—Natz! is he mad? the suitor of my daughter! What has come into the man? Go to! Mind your powder-bag and your curling irons, and serve your customers, and set aside thoughts too high for you; for neither my daughter nor myself will wink at such folly.”
“Oho, and have you not both promised? There was a time, Master von Puderlein, when you and mademoiselle your daughter—”
“Hold your tongue and pack yourself off.”
“Master von Puderlein, you are a man of honor; are you doing me justice for my long years of faithful service? I have always taken your part. When people said ‘von Puderlein is an old miser and a blockhead,’ I have always said, ‘that is not true;’ even if it has been often the truth that people said.”
“Have done, sir, will you?”
“Master von Puderlein, be generous; I humbly entreat you, give me your daughter to wife.”
“I will give you a box on the ear presently, if you do not come to reason.”
“What!” cried Ignatz, starting up in boiling indignation, “a box on the ear, to me—to me, a free spoken member of the society of periwig makers?”
“And if you were a king, and if you were an emperor, with a golden crown on your head, and a sceptre in your hand, here in my own house I am lord and sovereign, and I will give you a box most certainly, if you provoke me much further.”
“Good,” answered Ignatz, haughtily; “very good, Master von Puderlein; we are two, henceforth; this hour I quit this treacherous roof—and you and your periwig stock. But I will be revenged; of that you may be sure; and when the punishment comes upon you and your faithless daughter, and your callow bird of a harpsicord player, then you may think upon Natz Schuppenpelz.”
The journeyman then hastened to pack up his goods, demanded and received his wages, and left the house vowing revenge against its inmates. Von Puderlein was very much incensed; Nanny laughed, and Joseph sat in the garden, troubling himself about nothing but his quartetto, at which he was working.
Wenzel Puderlein saw the hour approaching, when the attention of the Imperial city, and of the world, should be directed to him, as the protector and benefactor of a great musical genius. The dances Joseph had composed for the music seller in the Leopoldstadt, were played again and again in the halls of the nobility; all praised the lightness, the sprightliness and grace that distinguished them; but all enquiries were vain at the music dealer’s, respecting the name of the composer. None knew him; and Joseph himself had no idea what a sensation the pieces he had thrown off so easily, created in the world. But Master Wenzel was well aware of it, and waited with impatience the completion of the first quartetto. At length the manuscript was ready; Puderlein took it, carried it to a music publisher, and had it sent to press immediately, which the sums he had from time to time laid by for Joseph, enabled him to do. Haydn, who was confident his protector would do everything for his advantage, committed all to his hands; he commenced a new quartetto, and the old one was soon nearly forgotten.
They were not forgotten, however, by Mosjo Ignatz Schuppenpelz, who was continually on the watch to play Master Puderlein some ill trick. The opportunity soon offered; his new principal sent him one morning to dress the hair of the Baron von Fürnberg. Young von Swieten chanced to be at the Baron’s house, and in the course of conversation mentioned the balls recently given by Prince Easterhazy, and the delightful new dances by the unknown composer. In the warmth of his description, the youth stepped up to the piano and began a piece, which caused Ignatz to prick up his ears, for he recognized it too well; it was Nanny’s favorite waltz, which Joseph had executed expressly for her.
“I would give fifty ducats,” cried the Baron, when von Swieten had ended, “to know the name of that composer.”
“Fifty ducats,” repeated Ignatz, “your honor, hold a moment; your honor—but I believe I can tell your honor the name of the musician.”
“If you can, and with certainty, the fifty ducats are yours;” answered Fürnberg and von Swieten.
“I can, your honor. It is Pepi Haydn.”
“How? Joseph Haydn? How do you know? Speak!” cried both gentlemen to the friseur, who proceeded to inform them of Haydn’s abode and seclusion in the house of Wenzel Puderlein; nor did the exjourneyman lose the opportunity of bepowdering his ancient master plentifully with abuse, as an old miser, a surly fool, and an arch tyrant.
“Horrible!” cried his auditors, when Ignatz had concluded his story. “Horrible! This old friseur makes the poor young man, hidden from all the world, labor to gratify his avarice, and keeps him prisoner! We must set him at liberty.”
Ignatz assured the gentlemen they would do a good deed by doing so: and informed them when it was likely Puderlein would be from home; so that they could find opportunity of speaking alone with young Haydn. Young von Swieten resolved to go that very morning, during the absence of Puderlein, to seek his favorite; and took Ignatz along with him. The hairdresser was not a little elated, to be sitting opposite the Baron, in a handsome coach, which drove rapidly towards Leopoldstadt. When they stopped before Puderlein’s house, Ignatz remained in the coach, while the Baron alighted, entered the house, and ran up stairs to the chamber before pointed out to him, where Joseph Haydn sat deep in the composition of a new quartetto.
Great was the youth’s astonishment, when he perceived his distinguished visitor. He did not utter a word, but kept bowing to the ground; von Swieten, however, hesitated not to accost him with all the ardor of youth, and described the affliction of his friends (who they were Joseph knew not) at his mysterious disappearance. Then he spoke of the applause his compositions had received, and of the public curiosity to know who the admirable composer was, and where he lived. “Your fortune is now made,” concluded he. “The Baron von Fürnberg, a connoisseur, my father, I myself—we all will receive you; we will present you to Prince Esterhazy; so make ready to quit this house, and to escape, the sooner the better, from the illegal and unworthy tyranny of an avaricious periwig maker.”
Joseph knew not what to reply, for with every word of von Swieten his astonishment increased. At length he faltered, blushing, “Your honor is much mistaken, if you think I am tyrannized over in this house; on the contrary, Master von Puderlein treats me as his own son, and his daughter loves me as a brother. He took me in when I was helpless and destitute, without the means of earning my bread.”
“Be that as it may,” interrupted young von Swieten, impatiently, “enough, this house is no longer your home; you must go into the great world, under very different auspices, worthy of your talents. Speak well or ill of your host, as you please, and as is most fitting; to-morrow the Baron and I come to fetch you away.”—Therewith he embraced young Haydn with cordiality, quitted the house and drove back to the city, while Joseph stood and rubbed his forehead, and hardly knew whether all was a dream or reality.
But the pretty Nanny, who listening in the kitchen had heard all, ran in grief and affright to meet her father when he came home, and told him everything. Puderlein was dismayed; but he soon collected himself, and commanded his daughter to follow him, and to put her handkerchief to her eyes.
Thus prepared, he went up to Haydn’s chamber; Joseph, as soon as he heard him coming, opened the door, and went to meet him, to inform him of the strange visit he had received.
But Puderlein pushed him back into the chamber, entered himself, followed by the weeping Nanny, and cried in a pathetic tone, “Hold, barbarian, whither are you going?”
“To you,” answered Joseph. “I was going to tell you—”
“It is not necessary,” interrupted Puderlein; “I know all; you have betrayed me, and are now going to leave me like a vagabond.”
“Ha, surely not, Master von Puderlein. But listen to me.”
“I will not listen; your treachery is clear; your falsehood to me and to my daughter. Oh, ingratitude, see here thine own image! I loved this boy as my own son; I received him when he was destitute, under my hospitable roof, clothed and fed him. I have dressed his hair with my own hands, and labored for his renown, and for my thanks, he has betrayed me and my innocent daughter. There, sir, does not your conscience reproach you for the tears you cause that girl to shed?”
“For Heaven’s sake, Master von Puderlein, listen to me. I will not leave you; I will not be ungrateful; on the contrary, I will thank you all the days of my life for what you have done for me, so far as it is in my power.”
“And marry that girl?”
“Marry her?” repeated Joseph, astonished, “marry her? I—your daughter?”
“Who else? have you not told her she was handsome? that you liked her? have you not behaved as though you wished her well, whenever you have spoken with her?”
“I have indeed, but—”
“No buts; you must marry her, or you are a shameless traitor! Think you, a virtuous damsel of Vienna lets every callowbird tell her she is handsome and agreeable? No! the golden age yet flourishes among our girls! Innocence and virtue are paramount with them! they glance not from one to another, throwing their net over this one and that one; they wait quiet and collected, till the one comes who suits them, who will marry them, and him they love faithfully to the end of their days; and therefore are the Viennese maidens famed throughout the world.—You told my innocent Nanny that she was handsome, and that you liked her; she thought you wished to marry her, and made up her mind honestly to have you. She loves you, and now will you desert and leave her to shame?”
Joseph stood in dejected silence. Puderlein continued, “And I, have I deserved such black ingratitude from you, eh? have I?” With these words, Master Wenzel drew forth a roll of paper, unfolded and held it up before the disconcerted Joseph, who uttered an exclamation of surprise as he read these words engraved on it, “Quartetto for two violins, bass viol, and violoncello, composed by Master Joseph Haydn, performer and composer in Vienna.—Vienna, 1751.” “Yes!” cried Puderlein, triumphantly, when he saw Haydn’s joyful surprise; “Yes! cry out and make your eyes as large as bullets; I did that; with the money I received in payment for your dances, I paid for paper and press work, that you might present the public with a great work. Still more! I have labored to such purpose among my customers of rank, that you have the appointment of organist to the Carmelites. Here is your appointment! and now, go, ingrate, and bring my daughter and me with sorrow to the grave.”
Joseph went not; with tears in his eyes he threw himself into Puderlein’s arms, who struggled and resisted vigorously, as if he would have repelled him. But Joseph held him fast, crying, “Master von Puderlein! listen to me! there is no treachery in me! Let me call you father; give me Nanny for my wife! I will marry her; the sooner the better. I will honor and love her all my days. Ah! I am indeed not base nor ungrateful.”
Master Wenzel was at last quiet; he sank exhausted on an arm chair, and cried to the young couple, “Come hither, my children, kneel before me, that I may give you my blessing. This evening shall be the betrothal, and a month hence we will have the wedding.”
Joseph and Nanny knelt down, and received the paternal benediction. All wept and exhibited much emotion. But all was festivity in No. 7, on the Danube, that evening, when the organist, Joseph Haydn, was solemnly betrothed to the fair Nanny, the daughter of Wenzel Puderlein, burgher and proprietor in the Leopoldstadt in Vienna.
The Baron of Fürnberg and young von Swieten were not a little astonished when they came the next morning to take Haydn from Puderlein’s house, to find him affianced to the pretty Nanny. They remonstrated with him earnestly in private, but Joseph remained immoveable, and kept his word pledged to Puderlein and his bride, like an honorable young man.
At a later period he had reason to acknowledge that the step he had taken was somewhat precipitate; but he never repented it; and consoled himself, when his earthly muse mingled a little discord with his tones, with the companionship of the immortal partner, ever lovely, ever young, who attends the skilful artist through life, and who proved herself so true to him, that the name of Joseph Haydn shall, after the lapse of centuries, be pronounced with joyful and sacred emotion, by our latest posterity.