I.
"Seventeen kreutzers for a morning's work!" exclaimed a pretty but slovenly-dressed young woman, standing at the door of an apartment in a mean-looking house in one of the narrow streets of Vienna, addressing a man of low stature and sallow complexion, who had just come in. "And the printers running after you ever since you went out! Profitless doings for you to spend your time! At eight, the singing-desk of the brothers De la Merci; at ten, Count de Haugwitz's chapel; grand mass at eleven; and all this toil for a few kreutzers!"
"What can I do?" said the weary, desponding man.
"Do! Give up this foolish business of music, and take to something that will enable you to live. Did not my father, a hair-dresser, give you shelter when you had only your garret and skylight, and had to lie in bed and write for want of coals? Had he not a right to expect you would dress his daughter as well as she had been used at home, and that she should have servants to wait on her, as in her father's house?"
"You should not reproach me, Nanny. Have I not worked till my health has given way? If fortune is inexorable—"
"Fortune! As if fortune did not always wait upon industry in a proper calling. Your patrons admire and applaud, but they will not pay; yet you will drudge away your life in this ungrateful occupation. I tell you, Joseph Haydn, music is not the thing!"
Here a knock was heard at the door; and the wife, with exclamations of impatience, flounced away. The unfortunate artist threw himself on a seat, and leaned his head on a table covered with notes of music. So entirely had he yielded himself to despondency that he did not move, even when the door opened, till the sound of a well-known voice close at his side startled him from his melancholy reverie.
"How now, Haydn! what is the matter, my boy?"
The speaker was an old man, shabbily dressed, but with something striking and even commanding in his noble features. His large, dark, flashing eyes, his olive complexion, and the contour of his face bespoke him a native of a sunnier clime than that of Germany. Haydn sprang up and welcomed him with a cordial embrace.
"And when, my dear Porpora, did you return to Vienna?" he asked.
"This morning only; and my first care was to find you out. But how is this? I find you thin, and pale, and gloomy. Where are your spirits?"
"Gone," murmured the composer, and dropped his eyes on the floor. His visitor regarded him with a look of affectionate interest.
In answer to Porpora's inquiries, Haydn told him of the struggles and failures by which he had been led to doubt his own genius, till he had succumbed under the crushing hand of poverty. "I am chained," he concluded bitterly; and, giving way to the anguish of his heart, he burst into tears.
Porpora shook his head, and was silent for a few moments. At length he said:
"I must, I see, give you a little of my experience. I was, you know, a pupil of Scarlatti more fortunate than you; for my works procured me almost at once a wide-spread fame. I was called for not only in Venice, but in Vienna and London."
"Ah! yours was a brilliant lot," cried the young composer, looking up with kindling eyes.
"The Saxon court," continued Porpora, "offered me the direction of the chapel and of the theatre at Dresden. Even the princesses received my lessons; in short, my success was so great that I awakened the jealousy of Hasse himself. All this you know, and how I returned to London upon the invitation of amateurs in Italian music."
"Where you rivalled Handel!" said Haydn enthusiastically. "Handel, with all his greatness, had no versatility. Your sacred music, Porpora, will live when your theatrical compositions have ceased to enjoy unrivalled popularity."
"My sacred compositions may survive and carry my name to posterity; for taste in such things is less mutable than in the opera. You see now, dear Haydn, for what I have lived and labored. I was once renowned and wealthy. What did prosperity bring me? Envy, discontent, rivalship, disappointment! Would you know to what period I can look back with self-approbation, with thankfulness? To the toil of early years; to the struggle after an ideal of greatness, goodness, and beauty; to the self-forgetfulness that saw only the glorious goal far, far before me; to the undismayed resolve that sought only its attainment. Or to a time still later, when the visions of manhood's impure and selfish ambition had faded away, when the soul had shaken off some of her fetters, and roused herself to a perception of the eternal, the perfect, the divine; when I became conscious of the delusive vanity of earthly hopes and earthly excellence, but at the same time awakened to the revelation of that which cannot die!
"You see me now, seventy-three years old, and too poor to command even a shelter for the few days that yet remain to me in this world. I have lost the splendid fame I once possessed; I have lost the riches that were mine; I have lost the power to win even a competence by my own labors; but I have not lost my passion for our glorious music, nor enjoyment of the reward she bestows on her votaries; nor my confidence in Heaven. And you, at twenty-seven, you—more greatly endowed, to whom the world is open—you despair! Are you worthy to succeed, O man of little faith?"
"My friend, my benefactor!" cried the young artist, clasping his hand with deep emotion.
"Cast away your bonds; cut and rend, if your very flesh is torn in the effort; and the ground once spurned, you are free. What have you been doing?" And he turned over rapidly the musical notes that lay on the table. "Here, what is this—a symphony? Play it for me, if you please."
So saying, with a gentle force he led his young friend to the piano, and Haydn played from the piece he had nearly completed.
"This is excellent, admirable!" cried Porpora, when he rose from the instrument. "When can you finish this? for I must have it at once."
"To-morrow, if you like," answered the composer more cheerfully.
"To-morrow then; and you must work to-night. I will go and order you a physician; he will come to-morrow morning—how madly your pulse throbs!—and when your work is done, you may rest. Adieu for the present." And pressing his young friend's hands, the eccentric but benevolent old man departed, leaving Haydn full of new thoughts, his bosom fired with zeal to struggle against adverse fortune. In such moods does the spiritual champion wrestle with the powers of the abyss, and mightily prevail.
When Haydn, late that night, threw himself on his bed, weary, ill, and exhausted, his frame racked with the pains of fever, he had accomplished the first of an order of works destined to endear his name to all succeeding time.
While the artist lay on a sick-bed, a brilliant fête was given by Count Mortzin, an Austrian nobleman of immense wealth and influence, at which the most distinguished individuals in Vienna were present. The musical entertainments given by these luxurious patrons of the arts were at that time, and for some years after, the most splendid in Europe.
When the concert was over, Prince Antoine Esterhazy expressed the pleasure he had received, and his obligations to the noble host. "Chief among your magnificent novelties," said he, "is the new symphony, St. Maria. One does not hear every day such music. Who is the composer?"
The count referred to one of his friends. The answer was, "Joseph Haydn."
"I have heard his quartettos; he is no common artist. Is he in your service, count?"
"He has been employed by me."
"With your good leave, he shall be transferred to ours; and I shall take care he has no reason to regret the change. Let him be presented to us."
There was a murmur among the audience and a movement, but the composer did not appear; and presently word was brought to his highness that the young man on whom he intended to confer so great an honor was detained at home by illness.
"So! Let him be brought to me as soon as he recovers; he shall enter my service. I like his symphony vastly. Your pardon, count; for we will rob you of your best man." And the great prince, having decided the destiny of a greater than himself, turned to those who surrounded him to speak of other matters.
News of the change in his fortune was brought to Haydn by his friend Porpora; and so renovating was the effect of hope that he was strong enough on the following day to pay his respects to his illustrious patron. His highness was just preparing to ride, but would see the composer; and he was conducted through a splendid suite of rooms to the apartment where the proud head of the Esterhazys deigned to receive an almost nameless artist. The prince, in the splendid array suited to his rank, glanced somewhat carelessly at the low, slight figure that stood before him, and said, as he was presented, "Is this, then, the composer of the music I heard last night?"
"This is he—Joseph Haydn," replied the friend who introduced him.
"So—a Moor, I should judge from his dark complexion. And you write such music? Haydn—I recollect the name; and I remember hearing, too, that you were not well paid for your labors, eh?"
"I have been very unfortunate, your highness—"
"Well, you shall have no reason to complain in my service. My secretary shall fix your appointments; and name whatever else you desire. All of your profession find me liberal. Now then, sir Moor, you may go; and let it be your first care to provide yourself with a new coat, a wig, and buckles and heels to your shoes. I will have you respectable in appearance as well as in talents; so let me have no more of shabby professors. And do your best, my little dusky, to recruit in flesh—it will add to the stature; and to relieve your olive with a shade of the ruddy. Such spindle masters would be a walking discredit to our larder, which is truly a spendthrift one."
So saying, with a laugh, the haughty nobleman dismissed his new dependent. The artist chafed not at the imperious tone of patronage; for he did not yet feel the superiority of his own vocation. It was the bondage-time of genius; the wings were not yet grown which were to bear his spirit up, when it brooded over a new world.
The life which Haydn led in the service of Prince Esterhazy, to which service he was permanently attached by Nicolas, the successor of Antoine, in the quality of chapel-master, was one so easy that it might have proved fatal to an artist more inclined to luxury and pleasure, or less devoted to his art. Now for the first time relieved from the care of the future, he was enabled to yield to the impulse of his genius, and create works which gradually extended his fame over all the countries of Europe.